Turkish Attack On Russia Reveals ISIS Support, Other Allied Deceptions

While most Americans were enjoying a Thanksgiving holiday, dramatic developments unfolded in the Middle East this week that could affect the region’s long term future.

Even so, the mainstream media have failed to report the most significant implications of these developments, including reaction of leading 2016 U.S. presidential candidates to vitally important issues of war and peace. Media outlets work in tandem with U.S. policymakers for the most part to put a rosy glow on all initiatives supported by the bipartisan foreign establishment that advocates war in the Middle East and increased military spending elsewhere, ostensibly to fight “terrorists.”

As a reaction to the murder of two military personnel by U.S.-supported rebels, Russia deployed advanced weapons system in Syria that may be creating in effect a Russian-controlled No Fly Zone in contrast to the buffer zone and No Fly Zone that Turkey, American politicians and NATO allies have previously advocated. Turkey had already declared that it had the right to extend its border unilaterally eight kilometers into Syria to create a safe zone for rebels from the Syrian government and its allies. 

On Nov. 24, two U.S.-supplied F-16 Turkish fighter planes had shot down a Russian Su-24 supersonic bomber (of the type shown in the Russian military photo) that, at most, crossed a narrow peninsula of Turkish territory in Hatay province for a few seconds.

In an apparent war crime atrocity, Turkmen Brigade rebels on the ground fatally shot the Russian pilot while he was parachuting to earth as a prisoner of war, and also killed a Russian marine attempting a helicopter rescue of the pilot and his navigator. The Russian government and the navigator said the Russian plane never crossed into Turkish territory at all.

Whatever the case, Russia reacted to the brutal Syrian rebel shootings by deploying the S-400 advanced anti-aircraft system that Israel, in particular, has long feared as a military “game-changer” in the region because the system (shown at right) could thwart Israeli and allied military flights.

For years, Israel had successfully opposed Russia’s delivery to Syria and Iran of the predecessor S-300 missile systems developed in 1979. The much more advanced S-400 entered limited service in 2004.

The S-400 deployment in Syrian and concurrent deployment of the S-300 to Iran coincided last week with Russia’s increased bombing runs against the land-based Syrian rebels who are allied with Turkey, NATO and other Middle Eastern governments seeking the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Russia also deployed a cruiser with anti-aircraft missiles in the nearby Mediterranean Sea and also stated that future bombing runs against terrorists in Syria would be accompanied by advanced fighters that could destroy attackers from the air. Further, it announced economic sanctions against its trading partner Turkey. But Russia vowed no tit-for-tat military reprisal for what Russian President Vladimir Putin called “a stab in the back.”

In the wake of the shootdown, the possibility of hostilities between Russia and NATO members gave new prominence last week to Western commentators who argue that U.S. allies — including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel — are secretly supporting the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh) and its Al Qaeda affiliates.

The gist of the complaint is that American political, military and intelligence leaders at the highest levels have secretly hidden basic facts from the Western public about government complicity with jihadists — and that the threat is so dangerous that true patriots must bypass the complicit mainstream media and warn the public.

Those officials hiding such secrets clearly include the Obama White House, 2016 Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, her major GOP opponents, congressional leaders of both parties, and top CIA and military leaders. They have consistently deceived the American public about foreign assistance that the United States and its allies have used in the so-far unsuccessful effort to overthrow Syria’s president beginning four years ago in a covert operation supervised by then-CIA Director David Petraeus, shown in an official photo before his forced resignation in November 2012.

The result of the U.S.-concocted rebellion in Syria has been an estimated 300,000 Syrian lives lost, with many millions more now refugees from their destroyed or unsafe homes and workplaces. Refugees include hundreds of thousands from Syria roaming through Europe, many of them shipped out by Turkey from relief camps. The migration is causing chaos in Europe, in part because legitimate Syrian refugees are mixed in with equally forlorn refugees from Libya and other nations that NATO destabilized in Africa and the Middle East. Angry jihadists and other cultural warriors are undoubtedly a major part of the mix also, although perhaps not visible until they get more rooted in new communities.

Impoverished refugees are en route to also to North America, much to the dismay of many Americans who fear that a deceptive and divided federal leadership in Washington, DC cannot cope with complex security and financial issues, especially given its track record of repeated failures and false promises.

Those following such issues know also that Petraeus, his successor John Brennan, and Obama’s special anti-ISIS “czar” John Allen, a former general and close ally of Petraeus, have an especially dangerous record of advancing sinister agendas under the guise of fighting terror.

Their top priorities have been to please their neoconservative supporters by conducting a secret war against Assad while quietly coddling Al Qaeda and ISIS elements that function at times as bogeyman generating Western fears and more public support for Western leaders. Petraeus, now CEO of a Wall Street firm and also a thought-leader in national security circles, even advocated this month that the United States ally with al Qaeda groups in Syria — as if the public could so easily forget that the Bush-era “War on Terror” was to target Al Qaeda and so they could hardly be regarded as “moderate” rebels now.

At this point, however, increasing numbers of Westerners are taking a close look at the supposed experts who guide our foreign policy — and at those foreign U.S. “allies” like Turkey who coddle the barbaric practices of radical Islam’s killers, rapists, sex slave traffickers, and torturers.