The Assad Republicans Are Wrong

There is a serious dispute among the Republican presidential candidates on one of the most important foreign policy issues facing America. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump want the United States to join with Russia and Iran in backing Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad as a necessary policy to fight the ISIS terrorist group. Marco Rubio is willing to use U.S. military forces to defeat ISIS and set up a no-fly zone over the non-Assad controlled regions of Syria, thereby containing Assad and putting a check to the expansion of the power of the Kremlin-Iran alliance across the Middle East.

In this dispute, Rubio is right, and Cruz and Trump are dead wrong.

In the first place, the Assad-Kremlin-Iran alliance is not a useful partner in fighting ISIS. On the contrary, as many astute analysts have noted, for example here, and here, there is plenty of evidence that Assad has been deeply involved in creating and supporting the ISIS group. These actions include releasing most of the ISIS leadership from his jails in 2011, providing the group with funds by purchasing its oil, and providing the terrorists with direct tactical air support for their attacks on the Free Syrian Army and other elements of the regime’s real opposition. Assad’s game plan in doing this is simple. By building up the deliberately-horrifying ISIS and helping it wipe out the Western-backed rebels, Assad hopes to present the world with a choice of just two alternatives: ISIS or himself.

The Kremlin is also not a suitable ally against ISIS. On October 31, an airliner carrying over 200 Russians was brought down by a bomb, supposedly planted onboard by ISIS. In response, Russia has sent troops and squadrons of aircraft to Syria for the stated purpose of retaliation. Yet very few of Putin’s blows have been directed against ISIS. Instead, his aircraft, like of Assad, have been raining destruction on Syrian civilians in regions far removed from ISIS control.

This discrepancy, which has been noted sharply noted by many observers, raises some very serious questions regarding the Kremlin’s actions and true intentions. Who really planted the bomb on the Russian airliner? If it was really ISIS, the Russians would be tearing them to pieces right now. But they are not. Why not? Is it possible that the bomb was planted by the FSB to provide a pretext for sending Russian armed forces into Syria?

Suggesting that the FSB might be behind the murder of over 200 Russians may seem outrageous to some people. Such people are extremely naive. In fact, the FSB is an organization which, under other names, such as NKVD and KGB, has murdered millions of Russians within living memory. Moreover, it was Putin’s FSB which, posing as Chechens, detonated bombs in Moscow and other cities in 1999, killing over 300 Russians to provide the terror necessary to justify the dictator’s seizure of absolute power. There is no question about this: After a string of these bombings in Moscow, Russian cops on the beat in Ryazan actually caught FSB agents in the act of planting another bomb in an apartment building. For those who want further details, former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko wrote an entire book, Blowing Up Russia, laying out the entire operation, for which he was subsequently murdered in London by FSB agents using signature polonium poison -- as a British court recently reconfirmed.

So Putin and his FSB unquestionably have the character and track record to support the suspicion that they might be responsible for placing a bomb on the Russian airliner. But whether or not they did the bombing, they certainly have taken advantage of it to step up their game in Syria.

So what is the Putin gang really up to in Syria?.........................

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