Op/Ed on Russia's Syria campaign
if you are like me, it has become easier to track romantic relationships on a soap opera than the spider web of who is killing who and why in the middle east.... so I looked up and just read this piece.
Thoughts?
Russia's airstrikes against Syrian rebels last week came as a surprise to many Americans — including, it seems, many in the Obama administration. They shouldn't have.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his aides have been bolstering their support of Syria's president, Bashar Assad, for months — visibly, with troops and aircraft, and volubly as well. The Russians insist that Assad is part of the solution in Syria, not — as President Obama insists — the core of the problem.
When the two presidents met in New York last week, Putin rebuffed Obama's plea that he pledge to strike only the terrorists of Islamic State, not the moderate rebels the United States has been supporting. (That's why you haven't heard U.S. officials charge that Putin broke a promise. He never made one.)
The disagreement between the two governments is fundamental.
~snip
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-mcmanus-obama-syria-putin-20151004-column.html
