[Wash Times] Russia is sweeping into Syria with what one defense official described to Fox News as "the largest deployment of Russian forces outside the former Soviet Union since the collapse of the USSR."As Russian officials continue to play Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama for the fools they are, the world has realized Russian President Vladimir Putin is not rushing in to stop ISIS, he's doing something much different. He's saving his client, Syrian tyrant Assad, but also he intends to defeat the United States, the West in general, and to take control of the region.
Overrunning feckless Europe with hungry mooslim refugees is a bonus dividend for Vlad.
With Mr. Obama's ascension to the American presidency, Americans have become used to so-called leadership wrapped in retreat, surrender, acquiescence, ambivalence, incompetence, naivetas, and very often, idiocy. The world will now be reminded what happens when someone has a plan for defeating an enemy versus a plan for another round of golf.
After annexing Crimea and attacking Ukraine, Mr. Putin learned the West would do nothing. The great United States sent Meals Ready to Eat, arguing any arming of Ukrainians would "escalate" the situation.
For a man like Mr. Putin who likes real estate, the message was clear: go and get what you can while you still have a useful idiot in the White House. And boy, is he going and getting.
Russia's involvement with Syria is nothing new. The first time the Soviet Union provided arms to Syria was in 1955. At Fox News, Jennifer Griffin reminds us, "Moscow helped rebuild Syria's military after its disastrous wars with Israel in 1967 and 1973. Syria is home to Russia's only naval facility in the Mediterranean, a base at Tartous. Since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, Russia has been a chief backer of Assad, fending off U.N. resolutions against him and stepping up arms deliveries to his military."
Mr. Obama's refusal to aid Ukraine, his infamous Syrian "red line" debacle, lack of action when an American ambassador and three others were murdered in Benghazi and the U.S. consulate destroyed, and his capitulation to Iran, was like setting the table for a tyrant like Mr. Putin.