Sunday, December 18, 2016

REAPING THE WHIRLWIND

Although Vladimir Putin seems to receive much adulation, from a segment of the American people, at least by comparison to the more circumspect approach of Barack Obama, the foreign policy of the latter may come to be more esteemed, by the people of their respective countries, than the former.

While both the West (U.S. and Europe) and Russia have been beset by terror attacks from groups that have arisen from the Sunni populations of Islam, they stem from different sources.  Terror attacks against the West results from the fallout of the Bush invasion of Iraq which unwittingly installed a Shia government in what was formerly a secular Baathist one, whereas Putin is faced with a breakaway nationalistic movement.

While Obama was trying to excise the bad actors with a scalpel, Putin has escalated the religious aspect of the conflict, in his country, by using brute force in Syria, to support a Shiite minority in a land having a Sunni majority.

The Sunnis outnumber the Shia by close to 3 to 1, in the world, and in addition, only Sunni Muslim nations have, at the moment, nuclear weapons. By attacking the majority Sunni natives of Syria, rebelling against a Shia minority represented by Assad, at the same time Sunnis are chafing at the Russian domination of Chechnya,  I fail to see how Putin is acting wisely; I think we, in the U.S. will reap the whirlwind if Trump leads us down the Putin path.

At a time when Obama's policies, were painstakingly clawing its way to reaching detente with the Sunnis, Trump looks hell bent on ruining those efforts by backing Putin in backing the Shia which makes us their enemies friend once again. 

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