On Tuesday, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) said that Russian President Vladimir Putin only had himself to blame for terror against Metrojet Airbus A321, a Russian civilian aircraft.
Royce said that Putin had decided to “ignore ISIS” by siding with the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, and by attacking U.S.-backed moderate Syrian opposition forces, rather than the so-called “Islamic start.”
The result, Royce suggested, was karma, as ISIS turned Putin into a target, downing a Russian airliner over Egypt on October 31, killing 224 people.
Royce said:
Vladimir Putin’s decision to ignore ISIS has reaped disaster. By avoiding ISIS, Putin clearly expected to be able to destroy the moderate Syrian opposition without becoming a target of ISIS’s attacks. That was a failure. These brutal terrorists are waging war on anyone who disagrees with their violent, apocalyptic world view.
When Putin saw the murderous Assad regime losing ground to the moderate opposition, it stepped in to solidify the Syrian dictator. But instead of focusing on ISIS strongholds, Russia has spent weeks bombing opposition forces in Syria backed by the United States and Saudi Arabia. Russian airstrikes have flattened markets, schools and villages – killing scores of innocents. And aided by those same Russian airstrikes, ISIS gained ground.
Despite deceptive reports out of Moscow that Russia was targeting ISIS, it was revealed during a November 4 hearing on U.S. policy in Syria, which was chaired by Rep. Royce, that roughly 90 percent of Russian airstrikes had, in fact, hit Syrian opposition forces that were backed by both the United States and Saudi Arabia. The Obama administration acknowledged this reality.
“If we’re going to defeat these terrorists, the Obama administration must push back on Russia’s destabilizing intervention in Syria and lay out the broad, overarching strategy needed to win,” Royce said in his statementTuesday.
On Monday, world-renowned Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov expanded upon his warnings of the dangers the world faces from Putin’s strategic war against the West–including the United States of America.
Speaking at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Kasparov discussed his latest book, Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped. The book is meant to serve as a warning about the impending doom that the world will face should the West continue down its path of chronic appeasement, weakness and moral capitulation on which Putin depends to maintain his power.
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