America's Russian foreign policy: F**k Vlad Putin

 I was at a gathering the other night and over the din of the crowd a guy yells out, “Hey, do want to hear a joke?”  Everyone enthusiastically yells back, “YES!”  The guy says, ‘Knock, knock.’”  The crowd responds in unison, “Who’s there?”  The guy says, “Barack Obama.”  And the place explodes in laughter.

Too bad that there is nothing funny about what The Empty Suit is doing to America and our foreign policy.  As the Russians bomb Syrian enemies of Assad, TES and his goofball SecState are worried about “modalities” of “deconfliction.”  WTF does any of that mean.  In the good old days, we’d tell the Rooskies, “Look Ivan, if you want to keep your $h!t from being blown up, stay out of our way.”  OK then, now we have a viable modality of deconfliction. 

We should be bleeding Vald Putin and his Rooskie azzbag invaders dry in Syria and Ukraine while destroying them economically with the grandest energy exploration and exploitation program in history.  If Putin wants to get bogged down in foreign entanglement in the Middle East and Ukraine trying resurrect the old Soviet Union while Russians starve at home, let him.  We should support proxies in both places that sap his military power abroad and his limited finances at home.

We should finance and support rebels in Syria that keep Assad and his Iranian backers in a protracted civil war that renders them and Russia impotent while carving out a safe haven for refugees under American and EU control.  Yeah, EU control.  I believe that, given their current refugee experience, they will be supportive of such a carve out.  All refugees would be repatriated to the safe zones.  If Putin wants to bomb our anti-Assad rebels, we’ll give them anti-aircraft weapons that will change that calculation.

Such a policy would be a four for.  The enemies here are ISIS, Assad, Iran and the Russians, but we should not fool ourselves.  There probably are no good options in the Middle East.  That includes our rebel “allies.”  Remember we backed what became the Taliban in Afghanistan against the Russians.  That did not work out well for us.