Alexei Anishchuk – Putin Gains Record Support Among Russians Over Syria, Poll Shows

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s public approval rating has reached a record 89.9 percent since he ordered his military to begin air strikes in support of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, according to a state-run polling center. Support for Putin hit the new peak in an Oct. 17-18 poll of 1,600 people conducted in 46 regions of Russia, an increase of 3.3 …

THOMAS S. HARRINGTON – US Caught Faking It in Syria

The great danger of faking your ability to do something in the public square is that someone with an actual desire to the job you are pretending to do might come along and show you up. This is what has just happened to the US in Syria with the entrance of Russia into the fight against ISIL. And as is generally …

Robert Parry – Obama Boots Syrian Peace Chance

President Barack Obama is turning his back on possibly the last best chance to resolve the bloody Syrian war because he fears a backlash from Official Washington’s powerful coalition of neoconservatives and “liberal interventionists” along with their foreign fellow-travelers: Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf sheikdoms. The route toward peace would be to collaborate with Russia and Iran to get …

Mike Whitney – The Brookings Institute Plan to Liquidate Syria

Here’s your US foreign policy puzzler for the day:  When is regime change not regime change? When the regime stays in power but loses its ability to rule. This is the current objective of US policy in Syria, to undermine Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s ability to govern the country without physically removing him from office. The idea is simple: …

The War on ISIS is a Farce – T. J. Petrowski

Nowhere in recent years have the contradictions of imperialism been so clear than in the West’s war against ISIS. Working people are bombarded with messages in the media of the worldwide threat of ISIS, with the aim of the messages to convince working people of the need to sacrifice their civil liberties and democratic freedoms to counter ISIS and to …

Obama’s Fateful Indecision

The foreign policy quandary facing President Barack Obama is that America’s traditional allies in the Middle East – Israel and Saudi Arabia – along with Official Washington’s powerful neocons have effectively sided with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State out of a belief that Iran represents a greater threat to Israeli and Saudi interests. But what that means for U.S. interests …

How Iran and the US intersect in “Syraq”

A cliffhanger debate will take place this Wednesday at the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Picture Secretary of State John Kerry, new Pentagon supremo Ashton Carter, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey all testifying in the same room. The meat of the matter: the House of Cards, sorry, US Congress, mulling over what’s the real deal behind the Obama …