Outcast_Searcher wrote:Sixstrings wrote:Okay so if that's near Latakia then that's nowhere near ISIS.
So why was Russia bombing the Turkmen?
What I find interesting is the outraged reaction to the fact that supposedly (there are conflicting stories), the Turkmen shot the Russian pilots.
So let's see. It's fine for the Russians to bomb the Turkmen because they claim they're bad guys. Never mind that they're not ISIS. But it's a heinous crime for those being bombed to fire back.
No double standard there.
Actually, Russia doesn't even admit they bomb the other ethnic groups / moderate rebels.
Russia hasn't been all bad though, this really is an overall mixed picture -- they've been doing a lot against ISIS lately. And to Russia's credit, I've never heard about them doing strikes on the kurds. Rather, there was some talk that they may want to perhaps help the kurds.
So now we have a problem about the "turkmen" in the "turkmen mountains."
Russia has done a lot of good fighting ISIS, but what one CANNOT forget is that is in the context of an entirely different thing that Russia has going on -- cold war with the West, and Russia expanding a bloc. We may be allied with Russia sometimes, but they are still out there trying to forge an empire and have their own aims as well. Which may or may not include war in ukraine again to take more of that, or hybrid war in the Baltics or even Scandinavia.
Hanging on to Assad, their proxy, that's the REASON they are in Syria and ISIS is secondary. So maybe they MAY in fact wind up bombing innocent "turkmen" just because anyone that won't submit to Assad is a rebel.
Syria is so shattered though, everyone rose up against Assad, that Putin would have to bomb EVERYONE.
I feel bad for those pilots, but really Putin shouldn't have sent them to the Turkish border to fly around "turkmen mountain" that's got a bunch of "turkmen" hillfolk living there and probably they just want to keep to themselves and be left alone but aren't anything like what ISIS is.
You just have to know all sides of a story; maybe to them their "turkmen mountain" is just their home and they're defending it.
It's like with the kurds, that's an all ethnic thing too, it's not ideological. Kurds and turkmen aren't like ISIS. Kurds don't go doing terrorism on everyone over some ideology. And turkmen don't either, as far as I know.
The big, massive problem is that Putin really wants to hammer Assad's rule out across the country but then these ethnicities just don't want it and they'll just fight Russia too, same as Assad.
That's why the West has always said "Assad has to go." Because nobody wants Assad, except Putin and Iran.
So wtf do you do, you can't wipe out all the nations all around Syria that are all against Assad, and then all the ethnicities in Syria too, just to make Putin and Iran happy. It's an impossible situation, people just will not accept Assad.