[txrefugee]

Wow! The militant boys in ISIS just thought they would establish their caliphate. Instead, they’ll be sent to hell by Emperor Putin’s army of Muslim haters. Who would have guessed things could turn out so splendidly for everyone but Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood.

[quantumman]

I have to admit, per Trump, the enemy of my enemy is my friend and that includes Zippy as one of the enemies of mine.

[Typical_Whitey]

WOW what are you smoking? Putin has no desire to destroy ISIS, he will blame the U.S. for ISIS as he plots his way to his true goals:

#1 Destroy the rebel uprising for Assad.
#2 Partner with Syria, Iran, Iraq to bring about a Shiite dominated Middle East State
#3 Use this power, influence and money gained from this domination to rebuild the Soviet States.
#4 Destroy the USA and Israel.

[Wallace T.]

The Russians are re-establishing their Soviet-era role as the principal supporter of secular, leftist governments in the Middle East associated with the Ba'athist Party. At one point, the Soviets had Egypt and Syria as allies. They were the principal nations involved in the Israeli-Arab wars of 1967 and 1973. In the 1970s, we turned Anwar Sadat from away from the Soviets, but lost Iran due in part to the stupidity of the Carter administration.

The Bushes defeated the Ba'athist dictatorship of Sadaam Hussein, and were triumphant against several rebellious factions in a prolonged war, in a large part due to General Petraeus and the much-maligned surge. However, the foreign policy team of the younger Bush was blinded by a Wilsonian idealism that sought democracy in a nation that never had one. They insisted on maintaining the World War I era boundaries of Iraq, which were drawn by Clemenceau and Lloyd George on a map after a few brandies at Versailles.

As flawed as the preceding administration was, the Obama foreign policy team makes them look like the New York Yankees in that team's heyday. Whatever they touched has turned to disaster. The support for the overthrow of the Libyan regime was a blunder on the worst level, as have been their poorly managed intervention in Syria. The negotiations with Iran were a disaster on the order of the concessions granted to Stalin by Roosevelt and his advisers, including the Communist spy Alger Hiss, at Yalta.

It is hard to blame Putin for taking advantage of American weakness and fecklessness to re-establish Russian influence in the Middle East, including an alliance with Iran that fulfills a Russian desire going back to the 19th Century.