China finally comes to the dance....with Putin.

Quote Lash:


You are vastly overstating his successes and ignoring his pitfalls. Putin looks like he has temporarily achieved his objective of keeping Assad in power for now. He also has taken the Crimea, but at the cost of sanctions and whatever deal Obama made with Saudi Arabia to keep pumping oil and drive down the price of Russia's main product. As a result of this, the ruble has fallen to less than half of what it was worth two years ago. Check the chart for the fall of the ruble over the past two years:




Similarly, the Russian inflation-adjusted GDP has fallen quite a bit since the first of the year:



All this economic dislocation because Putin wanted to prevent Ukraine from joining the EU, and Ukraine is going to join it anyway in a few years. As to what happens to Russia now that it is in such dire straits, only time will tell. Not exactly a success story.

Lash, I criticized you and all the other conservatives who fawn over Putin because they hate Obama so much, and that is not an ad hominem. And then I went straight to the facts and demolished your argument about the strength of the Russian Navy.

I think Putin is well aware of the huge advantage the US and especially NATO has over the Russian military. However, since neither the USSR / Russia nor NATO has really wanted a direct shooting, (or worse) confrontation between the two forces since the end of WWII, both sides have made sure that it never comes to that. The closest we have come is our ally shooting at Russia, or the Russian supported ally shooting at us. Never Russia shooting at the US or vice versa.

I think we can all be thankful for that.

PS: I will check out your second suggestion in a moment.

You lumped me in a group that I do not belong to, and said we like murder. Now you've said I hate Obama. Three lies about me. Shall you apologize or enjoy the same treatment?

What now?? Do you think people don't know about your views on Obama? I want whatever you are smoking (correction, I don't use recreational drugs).

Our country has been wringing its hands over ISIS, and Putin has made impressive gains against them. I applaud him on that one achievement.

Why are Obama and Hillary hellbent on regime change in Syria? Don't they know that's none of our business and that it will inflame terrorists?

Oh for Christ's sake.

You are a conservative, you dislike Obama, apparently to the point where you have joined the I Like Putin bandwagon. Your admiration for Putin has been clearly stated. And I notice you haven't said much lately about the Russian Navy, which was the alleged point of your post.

Putin hasn't done sh*t against ISIS. Russia's intervention has always been about taking out anti-Assad rebels. It was never about taking out ISIS or "defending christians," as Gunga Dim likes to claim.

I am not certain I have witnessed any rational acts by outside powers in that part of the world in my lifetime.

Winston Churchill was the First Lord of the Admiralty from 1911 to 1915. In 1906, Britain had built HMS Dreadnought, an "all big gun" battleship, which accelerated a naval arms race between Germany and Britain, and spurred the Japanese Imperial Navy and the United States Navy to join the fun. Little heed was paid by most observers at the time that Dreadnought used steam turbine engines rather than the older reciprocating steam engines--basically, coal-fired, giant piston engines. The steam turbine engines needed petroleum to get the high heat and therefore high steam pressure which made them efficient--coal was not any good for a steam turbine engine. Of the four nations mentioned above, only the United States had its own petroleum source--a fact which would profoundly effect world history.

Beginning in 1901, a British investor named d'Arcy had been looking for oil in Persia (now called Iran). He almost went broke and many people had begun to dismiss him as a crank, a once brilliant investor who had "lost it." Then in 1908, with the new naval arms race and steam turbines making petroleum even more valuable, d'Arcy's exploration team in Persia found oil, lots and lots of oil. D'Arcy was rich (again), and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was founded (today, it is known as BP--British Petroleum). When Winston Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty, as he did all his life, he read voraciously and kept himself well-informed about everything pertaining to his job, including petroleum explorations reports from what was then the Turkish Empire.

When Turkey became an enemy in the First World War, Britain and France came up with a secret agreement, endorsed by Russia, to carve up the middle east after the war. This was the Sykes-Picot agreement. France was too involved on the Western Front to take much of a part in the middle east, and their participation in the Gallipoli fiasco didn't encourage them to further military "adventurism." So Britain largely fought the war against the Turks alone. They made all manner of promises to the Arabs to get them to fight for them, and, of course, didn't care what they had promised to a bunch of "wogs."

When the war was over, and the Allies met in Paris for the big Peace Conference, France was already committed militarily all over eastern Europe. They sent armies to deal with the Czechs, who were trying to steal as much territory as they could, and the Serbs, who had already invaded Hungary and what became Romania. Bulgaria had been a German ally, but they weren't posing a threat. They were worried about the Red Army in Russia, too, and in fact, in 1920, the Red Army invaded Poland. Polish war veterans formed a small army under Pilsudski, a former Autrian army officer who had predicted in 1914 that Polish independence would require Russian to be defeated by Germany and Austria, and then be defeated in their turn by France. That is what happened. The defense of Warsaw was accomplished because a large French army arrived to bolster Pilsudski and defeat the Red Army. France had no time for the middle east. (They sponsored a disastrous Italo-Greek invasion of Turkey, and then washed their hands of the entire affair.)

Lloyd George's government, therefore, was left to carve up the middle east between France and Britain. The foreign minister was Arthur Balfour, considered an honest broker and very knowledgeable. He had, however, in 1917, told the Rothschild family that Britain would guarantee a Jewish homeland in the middle east. This did not, of course, endear him to the Arabs. He was getting old, he was in poor health and would soon leave government. He therefore gave the job of redrawing the map of the middle east to the new Colonial Secretary. The Colonial Secretary was a man avid to get as much petroleum as he could . . . the Colonial Secretary was Winston Churchill.

The middle east has been screwed ever since. Churchill got what he wanted, though.

Compared to me, you're conservative. i merely stated a couple of facts about Obsma. Drone killing and an intrusive NSA were considered very egregious prior to Obama's election. Must be ok now.

I don't subscribe to the weird American habit of defending everything done and said by members of my preferred political party. You should be ashamed.

The world isn't black and white and I'm not going to pretend it is. I think ISIS should be our only active concern in that region. The U.S. dabbling in regime change again is slowing the fight against ISIS, and causing more of the hatred that emboldens terrorist action against us.

We can make mistakes, and Putin can have successes. If all you're going to do is parrot your party line, why bother?

This article reflects my opinion about what is happening in Syria, although toward the end of the article, it wallows a bit too enthusiastically in Putin-worship.

The EU and the US are largely responsible for the refugee situation and the slow progress against ISIS.

Putin has been more successful.

Let's get out of the way, and stop buying in to the false narrative pushed by Obama and Clinton. just take a look at it without your partisan blinders.

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/327205-2015-syria-nato-putin-migrants/

Jesus wept . . . Putin hasn't done sh*t against ISIS. You link a Russian news site to tell us about how wonderful the Russians are? Can you say selection bias?

From Wikipedia:

Maybe Reuters is a more palatable source?



http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0UB0BA20151228

You have sources that say Putin has not been successful?

(I'm beginning to wonder if our mainstream news isn't becoming as much a vehicle of state propaganda as we suspect of Russia's.)

In case you missed the point, RT is funded by the Russian government. The Russian government is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vladimir Putin, Inc.

Did you actually read that article? It says just what i've been saying--that Russia is in Syria to prop up Assad''s regime by attacking anti-Assad rebels. Nowhere in the article does it say that Putin is attacking ISIS.

I'm aware of that. I offered you Reuters. The opinion I'm sharing is widely held in America, as well. I just liked the RT article. Try the Reuters.

I understand you disagreeing with the opinion, but do you also contest the facts presented?