The Syria crisis is escalating since Russia began bombing ISIS and al-Qaeda last week. The neocons in the US are demanding that Obama do something to stop the Russians. The US mission is to get rid of Assad and there is great danger of an over-reaction.
The Syria crisis is escalating since Russia began bombing ISIS and al-Qaeda last week. The neocons in the US are demanding that Obama do something to stop the Russians. The US mission is to get rid of Assad and there is great danger of an over-reaction.
The Syria crisis is escalating since Russia began bombing ISIS and al-Qaeda last week. The neocons in the US are demanding that Obama do something to stop the Russians. The US mission is to get rid of Assad and there is great danger of an over-reaction.
There's been a lot of news on there and what's been happening.
And it looks like it's escalating.
The Russians are becoming more firm on their willingness to defend their ally, the Syrian government.
They're talking about warships shooting missiles.
They have some planes down there now.
And there's talk about a coordinated Iranian troop movement in there.
So it is escalating.
But there is also something seriously going on in airspace.
You know, we have planes over there.
The Russians have planes over there.
How about going into that a little bit?
Who has the most planes and where are they?
Where are they allowed to fly?
And who's doing it legally if there is such a thing?
But all I know is it's very, very dangerous.
And our government stands for sending a lot of planes over there.
But just talk a little bit about the airspace argument going on.
Sure.
Well, according to press reports, you know, the deal was made with Turkey that we would be allowed to use Incirlik base.
And what we would give Turkey would be a no-fly zone in northern Syria from which our rebels could hold, take a base, and then move on to Damascus.
That was the plan.
The Russians preempted the plan by heeding a call from the government in Syria for help.
And they've essentially established a de facto no-fly zone over most, if not all, of Syria.
And they've been hitting targets for the past week now, a little over a week.
But if you'll see, there's actually a map behind me.
And this is interesting because the big thing this week is Russia violated Turkey's airspace.
And NATO has issued a warning.
But the fact of the matter, Russia went a few meters into Turkish airspace.
They apologized, said it was bad weather that led them to do it.
But NATO and the U.S. keep ratcheting this up.
You're threatening NATO.
But this is an interesting graphic if you look at it.
The white line, the graphic behind me, the white line is the Turkish-Syrian border.
You talk about violating airspace.
This is, say, as we do as we say, not as we do.
Because the yellow planes in there are over Syrian territory.
Those are Russian planes.
But all the green planes that are over Syrian airspace are U.S. fighter planes.
So who is violating whose airspace?
The U.S. is violating Syria's airspace because they don't have permission, unlike the Russians, not to defend what Russia's doing, but a sovereign state has given permission, and the U.S. is violating Syrian airspace.
So it's not as cut and tried as the mainstream media would like to believe.
So Assad didn't invite us in over there, to say the least.
It seems like our mission is there is to get rid of Assad, and that's been our position for four years and the basis of so many problems that we have.
But you know, this thing is escalating.
It's getting worse, and they're getting more determined, and the neocons are going to come flying back here more and more and more.
But I think it's so serious that we are going to be tempted and we're likely to overreact.
First, the American people are sick and tired of this.
Just think of the election of 08.
No more wars, bring the troops home, no more foot soldiers and all this.
At the same time, nobody wants to get pushed around.
But I see this problem building as almost a victory for Iraq and Iran.
Iran, Iraq, and Syria now, along with Russia, I mean, they are really dictating.
And what is the reaction to the neocon?
Well, we have to put our foot down.
We have to, you know, really go in and we send more planes and all.
But, you know, one of the Republican presidential candidates has a solution and is going to solve all this problem.
And I guess I'd like to see what you have to say about this.
Carly Fiorina said, all we need to do now is 300 battleships.
I think she's missed her calling here, maybe a little bit.
Yeah, I mean, everyone makes gaffes in these campaigns, but it shows where her instincts are and where her knowledge is.
And they're two very different things.
We haven't used battleships really since World War II.
So that's not what our use, but it just shows her first reaction to these things is we need to build a bunch more weapons.
We need to confront.
But, you know, you talk about the neocons, and, for example, what John McCain said, and he's not alone in this, Tom Cotton and a few others have suggested, he wants to send stingers to the rebels in Syria to get them to shoot down Russian airplanes.
And this is just an open invitation for a direct confrontation with Russia.
That's number one.
But number two, we've seen the history of U.S. involvement in this conflict.
We hand weapons over to the rebels who hand them over to ISIS, or they are ISIS, or they are Al-Qaeda in the first place.
So you're looking at the end of commercial airline travel over that region for the foreseeable future, and that's the best case scenario.
And I don't think John McCain has a very good record for picking out the moderates, you know, the friends.
And I think it'd be hard for anybody to do that.
But the most famous general in recent times, so to speak, General Petraeus, and he's still called upon for advice.
So he said that what we need to do is to get closer and help al-Qaeda to fight ISIS.
And I thought, well, you know, where is he?
He's going to fight Assad who's tri-fighting ISIS.
Now we're going to help Al-Qaeda fight ISIS.
It just seems so bizarre that this could add anything.
And you just pointed out these weapons, nobody even knows where they end up.
So I'm afraid this is going to continue this way because, you know, the emotions with the neocons are such that people sort of sympathize.
What bothers me is, first, the American people don't want more ground wars.
They don't want to see anybody get killed.
At the same time, Americans don't want to be pushed around.
You know, I'll take charge and Putin won't push me around.
And so many of them are just, you know, you want to be tough.
But how can you be tough if you're not fighting a war and why should we be fighting a war that we shouldn't be in?
I think they're trapped.
I think it's not that the countries there or Russia have put us in it.
I think we've dug a hole for ourselves.
It's funny, you know, for 15 years, for 14 years since 9-11, they said, don't forget 9-11, never forget 9-11.
Now they want us to forget 9-11.
And we need to ally with Al-Qaeda.
But it's funny if you see how the mainstream media covers it in the U.S.
They no longer, the New York Times, for example, has a map where they'll label the government areas in Syria.
They'll label the areas that are controlled by ISIS.
But the areas that are controlled by Al-Qaeda, they just call it rebels.
So they're really carrying water for the administration.
But don't you remember, Dr. Paul, it was just about a week and a half ago that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was before Congress, and he said, we only have about four or five vetted rebels in Syria.
But now all of a sudden we hear about it.
Our rebels are being hit.
Our rebels are being hit.
Where do they come from if you only had four or five?
You forget, they were well trained.
We spent $500 million on training these five guys.
So they're supermen and they're going to take, it's a farce.
Ought We Withdraw?00:02:15
And hopefully, I hope we finally wake up because intervention foreign policy doesn't work.
And we see the failure all around us.
And all we hear about is modify our intervention.
Just change it a little bit and it'll all be okay.
But this is doomed to fail.
And others should deal with this.
You know, the Russians, the Soviets, you know, got bogged down in Afghanistan.
We're bogged down still in Afghanistan.
And now the Russians are coming back in and we're bogged down.
We're right down in the middle of it and we can't fight and we can't leave because technically we don't know that we're at war.
We're not allowed to be at war.
We don't declare war.
We just have hit and this and react and in and out and spend money.
Now some people that say build the battleships would use the old arguments that wars get us out of recessions and depressions.
It helps it helps unemployment.
And I think there's a little bit behind that.
Some people don't worry too much about, you know, just preparing for war because I actually believe that everybody that makes money off the military industrial complex doesn't enjoy seeing a lot of people get killed.
What they enjoy doing is making money.
So if you can have the battleship mentality, more people can make more money.
At the same time, we won't have to worry about, you know, actually fighting for anything.
Well, I think what we should be doing is intellectually fighting for our liberty and fighting for common sense and a decent financial situation.
That means we ought to give up on this intervention overseas.
We ought to bring our troops home.
We ought to have a sound economy here and a sound monetary system and get the Federal Reserve out of the business of financing these wars and we'd all be a lot better off.
But the way this looks to me, the way it's going right now, does not look good because there's going to be a major accident and there's going to be a rapid escalation and all we have to do is have a few more Americans killed.
The others being killed won't bother so many Americans, but a few more Americans will be killed and then we're going to have somebody come in on a white horse and say, this is what we have to do.
This is what we're going to have to do for America.