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That feebleminded Daily Mail graphic doesn’t capture the situation at all.

Russia has no prestige, never will, its thug regime is the latest in a long line of thug regimes.

Russia’s our enemy, just as the USSR was. Instead of expelling their proxies and puppets from the western hemisphere, Obama has embraced each and every one, most recently the druglords running Havana.

Russia has a bunch of Russian nationals living in Syria — they’re muzzies, and married to Syrians for the most part, sometimes maintaining dual citizenship, and it was fine with Russia to have them not living in Russia; they aren’t a basis for war, but they have been put forward as a pretext. Putin wouldn’t care if all of them were burned to death by jihadists, but would welcome an addiitional pretext for intervention.

Putin is a commie and atheist, and isn’t a defender of any faith. He’s not sending troops and planes into Syria to protect its Christians, just as the Alawite muzzie Assad has never lifted a finger to protect Syria’s Christians.

Russian intervention in Syria came about because of the Lurch-Zero surrender document with Iran — it lit up a lot of alarms in Russia. For example, it will legitimize Iranian petroleum products and lead to modernization and redevelopment of Iranian fields. The Turks have pipelines running across their territory that carry Iranian product *now*, that’s bound to increase, and Russia regards Turkey as a longterm enemy (and vice versa). And it was really funny when Iran *didn’t* have nuclear weapon, and the Russians were helping them build a nuclear program to undermine the US, oops, I mean, “advance Russian influence in the Middle East.”

The Zero regime doesn’t appear to be interested in “maintaining relations with Israel”, and that’s also part of Lurch’s “hell of a pinpoint operation.” Israel’s been warning Russia that they won’t put up with advanced anti-aircraft systems getting shipped to Iran, or the production of an Iranian nuclear bomb. Russia’s rattled the saber regarding Turkey’s threat to Israeli development of offshore hydrocarbon resources, as well as Turkey’s threat to Cyprus’ similar operations. But Russia has also given some diplomatic support to the TRNC.

Iran and the US do not both give military support for Iraq; the US supports what’s left of the regime; the Iranian mullahcracy has been working nonstop to dismantle the Iraqi regime, and supports *only* the Shiite militias inside the country.

ISIS has operated inside Syria for a long while now; ISIS isn’t the product of US/CIA/wot covert activity, it is indigenous to Iraq, other than the fact that the USSR is the birthplace of modern terrorism including the modern version of jihad.

Like Obama, Iran supported the installation of Morsi in the overthrow of the Egyptian gov’t a few years ago. Unlike Obama and Iran, Syria’s Assad expressed joy when Morsi was removed.

Iran has missiles overlooking the sealanes at the southern mouth of the Red Sea; they’ve had them in Eritrea for years, and are trying to get the same thing going in Yemen.

There’s no upside (moral high ground) to the US to support Iran against Saudi Arabia, or to support Russia against Saudi Arabia.

Putin has followed Assad’s policy of attacking rebel groups other than ISIS; ISIS has attacked targets in Saudi Arabia. Iran’s proxy thugs, the hizbollah, have fought ISIS in spots where ISIS has contested control (mainly along the Lebanese border). The Iranians moved 19,000 troops into Syria four years ago, and most recently the overwhelming Iranian influence over the tatters of the Assad regime has led to purges, exiles, and the like among those who supported Assad but not the Iranian domination. That figures into Putin’s motivations for his escalation.

Whatever he manages to accomplish, Putin will be facing a steady stream of body bags.