Yes:
Obama’s outclassed here — if, that is, his goals are really those stated above. If, as many suspect, Obama is perfectly happy to see America and Europe weakened on the global scale, then he’s not incompetent at all.
Regardless of Obama’s motives, I don’t think he’s capable of discerning those of Vladimir Putin.
B.O. and all the stinkers that let him lead after two sweeping elections are outclassed by a potted plant.
We could ignore Putin’s goals and instead focus on what is good for the USA, which is driving ISIS out of Iraq and preventing them from coming back. This allows us to save face, helps the Iraqi people, and reduces Iranian influence.
Or we could ignore Iraq and see Iran/Syria/Russia push ISIS into Iraq, then move onto Saudi Arabia, which would be just stellar for American interests, not to mention humanity in general.
But I guess some Americans hate ourselves so much that they think we deserve to have bad things happen.
If one doesn’t understand Putin’s goals, it’s hard to predict his next actions.
I don’t necessarily disagree but what we think Putin’s goals are could be very different than what he views his goals as. To me, it makes more sense to consider a variety of possibilities with an eye for how we can protect our interests.
Assuming that Putin, Iran, and Assad don’t want to win in Syria doesn’t strike me as wise and what they consider a win may be very different than what we do.
So in some ways, what we view as Putin’s goals matter less than the range of possible outcomes of Putin’s actions.
I will venture a guess as to what might be informing Putin’s goals, and that is the long history of Russian Empire and Soviet experience with Sunni Muslims within their territory. What kind of a burden are they? What kind of problems do they cause? How do you control them? How do you fire them up or calm them down? What does it take to keep them from going all jihad? The KGB would have whole floors full of fires addressing the issue.
Who has no idea how to deal with Muslims? Western Europe.
Putin didn’t take action in Syria until Merkel opened the flood gates and nobody stopped her. Once the stampede was underway, Putin probably saw that he could drive the whole herd right onto his enemies’ lawns, while simultaneously making major corrections to Syria’s Sunni/non-Sunni population ratio.
For the next fifty years the KGB will be able to exploit all those disaffected and disloyal refugees as Europe’s fifth column, even as they cause constant chaos, crime, and disruption and erode European values and freedoms.
How could anyone pass that up?