A Turkish fighter plane shot down a Russian bomber near the Syria-Turkey border early this morning. Turkey claims the Russian aircraft violated its airspace, while Russia claims it was flying over Syria. Oddly enough, both claims could conceivably be simultaneously true in a sense, but only because Turkey has infringed on Syrian sovereignty by extending its airspace five miles over Syrian territory.
The pilots were able to eject and begin parachuting down, but they were executed in mid-air by gunfire from fighters on the ground. The fighters were insurgents who have been battling the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad in a war that has been raging since 2011. A video has emergedshowing insurgents standing over one of the dead Russian pilots.
A Russian helicopter searching for the downed pilots was also shot down, possibly with a U.S.-supplied anti-tank missile.
Turkey is a member of NATO, which means if it enters a war with Russia, it can drag the United States and most of Europe along with it. Such a war could rapidly go nuclear. In October, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stollenberg vowed military support if Turkey went to war with Russia.
Turkey is part of a U.S.-led coalition that has been training, financing, and arming the insurgents trying to overthrow Assad. Syrian regime change is official U.S.policy. That coalition also includes the U.K., France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others. Israel has bombed the Syrian military directly. The insurgency those powers are supporting is dominated by radical Islamist mujahideen militias, including ISIS, Al Nusra (the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda), and others.
The U.S. and several of its allies (including France) have been bombing purported ISIS targets for over a year while continuing to back ISIS’ fellow insurgents.
Recently, Russia began bombing insurgents in Syria in order to save the Assad regime from overthrow, and also in order to weaken or destroy ISIS, Syrian Al Qaeda, and other terrorist threats. Forces from Iran and Iraq, as well as the militia Hezbollah, are also fighting in support of the regime.
Russia has accused the U.S. of not being serious about eliminating ISIS. Russia has also accused Turkey of directly supporting ISIS. The U.S. has long seemed more preoccupied with overthrowing ISIS’s enemy, the secular dictator Assad. And Turkey has seemed more preoccupied with its war against Kurdish militias also fighting ISIS. The U.S., for its part, has accused Russia of being too preoccupied with saving Assad to focus enough on battling ISIS.
All parties in this war have killed many civilians. Members of Syria’s many religious minorities are terrified that if the Assad regime falls, the extremist, theocratic, and intolerant Sunni militias (including ISIS and Syrian Al Qaeda) will perpetrate religious pogroms and mass executions all throughout the country.
For years, the group now known as ISIS was moribund and marginalized. After it crossed over from Iraq into Syria to join the U.S.-sponsored insurgency in 2011, it rapidly grew in strength. In 2014, it returned to Iraq, conquering the north-west of the country down to Baghdad. It joined its Syrian and Iraqi conquests together, declaring a “Caliphate.” A recently disclosed Pentagon intelligence report indicates that U.S. planners anticipated the establishment of such a “Salafist Principality” as a likely outcome of support for the Syrian insurgency.
ISIS has recently launched several terrorist attacks, including bombing a marketplace in Beirut, taking down a Russian airliner, and perpetrating multiple simultaneous attacks in Paris.
For full coverage of the Turkish-Russian incident, see Antiwar.com.
For more analysis on the incident, see this article on Zero Hedge:
For more on Turkey’s regional interests, see this essay:
And for background on Syria and the Middle East in general, see these essays by this writer:
- They Sow the Cyclone – We Reap the Blowback
- Syrians Deserve Self-Determination
- Where Does ISIS Get Those Wonderful Toys?
- The US Government’s Not-So-Secret Support for al-Qaeda and ISIS
- The Neocon Hunger for Universal Empire
- When War Hawks Coo Like Doves
- Clean Break to Dirty Wars
- Seize the Chaos
This article (A NATO Country Just Shot Down a Russian Bomber: It’s Time to Start Paying Attention) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Dan Sanchez and theAntiMedia.org.
I hate war. I have always been antiwar. But enough is enough. This is the f**king line and NATO has crossed it with there latest monsters. ISIS and AL-Nusrah are this generations Nazi's and they have to be annihilated with extreme f**king prejudice and if those bastards in Turkey get in the way they deserve the same treatment.
I really, really hate to say this but it might be time to sick Spetznaz on these savages. The west must stay out. This is not there fight. But Russia has to do what they have to do. This isn't Afghanistan. Russia has half the Middle East on it's side.
It's time to nail these bastards, Stalingrad style. We'll see how tough those baby killers are when they face the toughest soldiers on earth.
It's tooth for tooth time.
i fail to see how some rag tag rebels who have vast support from some of the strongest countries in the world and are barely able to maintain a grip on the shattered shell of the otherwise irrelevant city of Aleppo are our generations nazis,
a simple arms embargo at the start of this war would have ended it in months,
remember this from 3 years ago?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/…
russia does not need to level any cities, they only need to control the borders.
2 points.
1.) The Nazi's started out as rag tag gang of beer hall hooligans until they got corporate sponsorship from the arms industry (sound familiar) and like Fascism, Wahhabism poses an existential threat to an entire region spanning two continents. It may also serve as an excuse for American interventionists, such as Madam Killary, to start another world war if Russia doesn't act fast.
2.) Spetznaz doesn't level cities. Spetznaz levels bastards. Why stop em?
"Stalingrad style"
In Stalingrad, the Red Army surrounded the Nazi's who had encircled the Soviet city and forced them into the heavily booby trapped war zone where they were slaughtered by the Partisans and Soviet soldiers who had already dug themselves deep into the ruins.
Think of Syria as one big Stalingrad. With Russian leadership a coalition of Shiites and Kurds can surround ISIS and corral them like cattle deep into the Syrian desert and slaughter them like dogs "Stalingrad style".
Books are cheap. History is fun and knowledge is power!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!
These US-backed and supplied proxy fighters are not acting like fictional Hollywood N***s by shooting parachuting Russian aircrew, they are acting like primitive, crazed savages paid for with our tax dollars. The little twits in the Turkish Air Force would never have fired and downed the Russian Su-24 without the approval of their NATO big brother, the USA.
The Russians certainly figured they might take losses in this operation, but Putin is very intelligent and I don't believe he will risk WW3 over this latest incident or deviate from his planned operation (mission creep) to go in to Syria to take out ISIS, then go home. He will no doubt retaliate against the Turks diplomatically and financially. However, I'm sure he already has Speztnaz troops on the ground there doing their thing, but we won't be hearing about it.
i fail to see how some rag tag rebels who have vast support from some of the strongest countries in the world and are barely able to maintain a grip on the shattered shell of the otherwise irrelevant city of Aleppo are our generations nazis,
a simple arms embargo at the start of this war would have ended it in months,