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[Loud Whispers]

No. They give them a friendly escort to international airspace, create some minor diplomatical fuss and go on about their daily business.

And show how weak you are.

We don't deploy nuclear weapons to prove we can deploy nuclear weapons.

Not really, it's a cat and mouse game that has been ongoing since cold war, with maybe a short pause in the period from Gorbatsjov till Putin.
Russian fighter / bomber: "Look! Here I am! I'm flying in your airspace!"
NATO fighter escort "Look! Here we are too! Pretty nice response time eh? How's the wife?"

Royal Air Force pilots and Soviet Air Force pilots used to have fun showing each other pictures of their families and the like up in the air. Officers on both sides got quite angry that their pilots were having aeronautical bants

As for the Russia thing, we WWIII now
Turkey did a bad thing

[Shadowlord]

(Although there have been reports of more chemical weapons being used)

Yeah, there have. He was 'able to convince Assad' to do the bare minimum amount necessary to give Obama the option of leaving him be without losing face. It's a prime example of lack of political will to change things for the better, really.

If you think we should have gone in and bombed the fuck out of Assad, or removed him, what happens then? Remember Iraq? You break it, you buy it.

[Helgoland]

Back in 2012 the opposition was relatively unified and secular. And guess what happened when we sat by and did shit while the ophtomologist massacred civilians, while we ignored his bombing campaigns, his torture camps, his brutal war against the Syrian people? I can't blame any Syrian fighter for becoming an Islamist when the only part of the opposition that was getting meaningful outside help was the Islamist faction.

We broke it long ago. Do you really believe things could be worse than they are now if we had just lifted the end of our collective pinky finger instead of sitting by, occasionally going 'That's bad, mkay? Don't do that, mkay?'

[smjjames]

Back in 2012 the opposition was relatively unified and secular. And guess what happened when we sat by and did shit while the ophtomologist massacred civilians, while we ignored his bombing campaigns, his torture camps, his brutal war against the Syrian people? I can't blame any Syrian fighter for becoming an Islamist when the only part of the opposition that was getting meaningful outside help was the Islamist faction.

We broke it long ago. Do you really believe things could be worse than they are now if we had just lifted the end of our collective pinky finger instead of sitting by, occasionally going 'That's bad, mkay? Don't do that, mkay?'

This
V

(Although there have been reports of more chemical weapons being used)

Yeah, there have. He was 'able to convince Assad' to do the bare minimum amount necessary to give Obama the option of leaving him be without losing face. It's a prime example of lack of political will to change things for the better, really.

If you think we should have gone in and bombed the fuck out of Assad, or removed him, what happens then? Remember Iraq? You break it, you buy it.

He was also running for re-election in 2012 and people really didn't want to join into another war, and he had pledged to not start new wars, so, there was a good deal of politics involved.

Though yeah, we were also trying to avoid the mistake in Iraq and Libya, so even if we had lifted the end of our collective pinky finger, who knows whether it would have been worse or not.

[miljan]

Back in 2012 the opposition was relatively unified and secular. And guess what happened when we sat by and did shit while the ophtomologist massacred civilians, while we ignored his bombing campaigns, his torture camps, his brutal war against the Syrian people? I can't blame any Syrian fighter for becoming an Islamist when the only part of the opposition that was getting meaningful outside help was the Islamist faction.

We broke it long ago. Do you really believe things could be worse than they are now if we had just lifted the end of our collective pinky finger instead of sitting by, occasionally going 'That's bad, mkay? Don't do that, mkay?'

If only things you said where true
The opposition was never secular, that is  one of the several  problems. Not gonna go in detail what is happening in syria as it looks like the only information you have collected is horrible syrian government without any insight in the rebel organisation and fighting during th beginning.

[sprinkled chariot]

I doubt, that secular opposition could hold out against ISIS, even If assad had been overthrown in the beginning. They would get suddenly allahakbared even more  hard as Iraq goverment and army were, despite being prepared for this stuff for years by american specialists in dealing with this kind of shit and being given fancy weapons and other wargear( which became property of ISIS)
Recently made up goverment trying to organise the new army would not do any better then Iraq did, and it failed horribly.

[misko27]

Turks(Probably almost exclusively Anti-Kurd)

In fairness, Turkey was and is the biggest proponent of bombing Assad into the stone age. If the US dropped a nuclear bomb on Damascus tomorrow, I'm sure Turkey would be the nation going "guys, if you think about it, was it *really* a bad thing?". But NATO hasn't let them bomb Assad, so they will bomb the other people they don't like (the Kurds).

People involved in the Syria discussion tend to be overly focused on what went wrong in the past, I find. Oftentimes, understanding the past is essential to understanding the nature of the future, but with this people seem to think that thinking about the past is a substitute for dealing with the future. Regardless of what should have been done by various actors before, there is a now, and that now demands action.

[miljan]

So ruissia stopped all military contacts with turkey, they will be from now on send with every bomber their  air fighters, and is also sending  the Russian cruiser Moskva closer to syria/turkish border. The cruiser  is known to have anti air possibilities similar to s 300 ground systems.

[smjjames]

Meh, sending ninja assassins after Assad sounds like a better idea.

Back in 2012 the opposition was relatively unified and secular. And guess what happened when we sat by and did shit while the ophtomologist massacred civilians, while we ignored his bombing campaigns, his torture camps, his brutal war against the Syrian people? I can't blame any Syrian fighter for becoming an Islamist when the only part of the opposition that was getting meaningful outside help was the Islamist faction.

We broke it long ago. Do you really believe things could be worse than they are now if we had just lifted the end of our collective pinky finger instead of sitting by, occasionally going 'That's bad, mkay? Don't do that, mkay?'

If only things you said where true
The opposition was never secular, that is  one of the several  problems. Not gonna go in detail what is happening in syria as it looks like the only information you have collected is horrible syrian government without any insight in the rebel organisation and fighting during th beginning.

Not so much 'secular' as being 'moderate', but even back then there weren't a whole lot of people who were 'moderate' enough for us.

So ruissia stopped all military contacts with turkey, they will be from now on send with every bomber their  air fighters, and is also sending  the Russian cruiser Moskva closer to syria/turkish border. The cruiser  is known to have anti air possibilities similar to s 300 ground systems.

It was one of their fighters that got shot down, not a bomber, but yeah, the knives are out now, metaphorically speaking.

[miljan]

It was one of their fighters that got shot down, not a bomber, but yeah, the knives are out now, metaphorically speaking.

No, su24 is a bomber aircraft

[ivze]

So ruissia stopped all military contacts with turkey, they will be from now on send with every bomber their  air fighters, and is also sending  the Russian cruiser Moskva closer to syria/turkish border. The cruiser  is known to have anti air possibilities similar to s 300 ground systems.

Yes. Russia deploys Moskva cruiser off Latakia coast to provide guaranteed destruction of any hostile aircrafts, attacking Russian war planes. Also all bombers are said to be now escorted with fighters for similar purposes.

https://www.rt.com/news/323329-russia-suspend-military-turkey/

If similar accident happened now, the attacking F-16 would be downed as a measure of symmetrical response. And Russia would even have a formal right to do so, had the Turkish plane violated Syrian airspace, as it happened during the last accident. Yet the fate of the pilots would not be as miserable...

From my point of view, this provocation of Turkey is motivated by the disruption of illegal Turkish oil business by Russian air strikes (a recent video of Russian MOD http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQZvNCRpdnQ, many similar exist, like the one with "ant-paths" of ISIL oil trucks bombed by Russian forces). Turkey trades oil with ISIL and other groups, that gives money to the terrorists and super-cheap oil to the Turks. This is big business. This oil comes at no cost, as the oil fields and refineries have been expropriated from the legal owners, and are now simply producing without any capital investments.

[smjjames]

So ruissia stopped all military contacts with turkey, they will be from now on send with every bomber their  air fighters, and is also sending  the Russian cruiser Moskva closer to syria/turkish border. The cruiser  is known to have anti air possibilities similar to s 300 ground systems.

Yes. Russia deploys Moskva cruiser off Latakia coast to provide guaranteed destruction of any hostile aircrafts, attacking Russian war planes. Also all bombers are said to be now escorted with fighters for similar purposes.

https://www.rt.com/news/323329-russia-suspend-military-turkey/

If similar accident happened now, the attacking F-16 would be downed as a measure of symmetrical response. And Russia would even have a formal right to do so, had the Turkish plane violated Syrian airspace, as it happened during the last accident. Yet the fate of the pilots would not be as miserable...

From my point of view, this provocation of Turkey is motivated by the disruption of illegal Turkish oil business by Russian air strikes (a recent video of Russian MOD http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQZvNCRpdnQ, many similar exist, like the one with "ant-paths" of ISIL oil trucks bombed by Russian forces). Turkey trades oil with ISIL and other groups, that gives money to the terrorists and super-cheap oil to the Turks. This is big business. This oil comes at no cost, as the oil fields and refineries have been expropriated from the legal owners, and are now simply producing without any capital investments.

Russia isn't the only one bombing the oil tanker trucks, so, trying to stop Russia from doing it will just give others a chance to target those trucks. So, that theory doesn't make sense, even if they ARE trading oil from ISIS and other groups.

Also, if they actually are trading with ISIS for the oil, they should be kicked out of NATO.

[Vilanat]

It's important to note that the help Iran is providing are all shi'ite militias, much of the Iraqi military is as well, and the great difficulty they've been having is retaking sunni areas without alienating the population, which is difficult when your troops exact retribution for Daesh's crimes on the citizens who merely lived under their rule and managed not to get killed (by being sunni or christian and following their strict 'moral' laws, etc).

There seems to be too many Iranians generals who are getting killed on Syrian soil for it to be only shi'ite militias.

Russia foreign department had issued a travel warning to Turkey and there are already rumors of the biggest travel agencies in Russia refusing to offer deals for Turkey. bad news for Turkey since Russia accounts for 12% of Turkey's tourists. personally, i tend to side with the German vice-chancellor and regard Turkey as unpredictable, and if i might add,  unbalanced and irrational and hope the Russian tourists completely stay out of this ISIS backing sultanate.

[Shadowlord]

"The Sukhoi Su-24 is a supersonic, all-weather attack aircraft/interdictor developed in the Soviet Union" - Wikipedia.

vOv

smjjames: You are proposing to kick a nation out of NATO because people are buying and selling fuel oil in that country on the black/grey market?

The US and France have been bombing those trucks, but I haven't heard of Russia doing it. Doesn't mean that they aren't, of course.

[smjjames]

smjjames: You are proposing to kick a nation out of NATO because people are buying and selling fuel oil in that country on the black/grey market?

The US and France have been bombing those trucks, but I haven't heard of Russia doing it. Doesn't mean that they aren't, of course.

I meant if the government is knowingly doing it, smugglers and corrupt/shady businesspeople are a different matter entirely.