And in the Ongoing Clusterf%$# in Syria………

There is a very good reason why Presidents should never, Ever listen to the war mongering interventionists (on both sides of the political) who prowl the halls of power in Washington. Because they are always wrong.

All they bring are disaster and misery, in this case, of course, we are talking about Syria, where our support for regime change in Syria, particularly when juxtaposed by the Saudi desire to overthrow a secular Arab government at all costs has created an unrelenting string of disasters.

First, we are now seeing a realignment in the Middle East, with Russia, Iraq, Iran, and Syria sharing intelligence to aid each other in their fight against ISIS:

For the second time this month, Russia moved to expand its political and military influence in the Syria conflict and left the United States scrambling, this time by reaching an understanding, announced on Sunday, with Iraq, Syria and Iran to share intelligence about the Islamic State.

Like Russia’s earlier move to bolster the government of President Bashar al-Assad by deploying warplanes and tanks to a base near Latakia, Syria, the intelligence-sharing arrangement was sealed without notice to the United States. American officials knew that a group of Russian military officers were in Baghdad, but they were clearly surprised when the Iraqi military’s Joint Operations Command announced the intelligence sharing accord on Sunday.

It was another sign that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was moving ahead with a sharply different tack from that of the Obama administration in battling the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, by assembling a rival coalition that includes Iran and the Syrian government.

For the second time this month, Russia moved to expand its political and military influence in the Syria conflict and left the United States scrambling, this time by reaching an understanding, announced on Sunday, with Iraq, Syria and Iran to share intelligence about the Islamic State.

Like Russia’s earlier move to bolster the government of President Bashar al-Assad by deploying warplanes and tanks to a base near Latakia, Syria, the intelligence-sharing arrangement was sealed without notice to the United States. American officials knew that a group of Russian military officers were in Baghdad, but they were clearly surprised when the Iraqi military’s Joint Operations Command announced the intelligence sharing accord on Sunday.

It was another sign that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was moving ahead with a sharply different tack from that of the Obama administration in battling the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, by assembling a rival coalition that includes Iran and the Syrian government.

The ineptitude of our foreign policy apparatus has allowed Russia to resurrect the Soviet era relations that used to exist there.

It gets even worse, with even the Syrian Kurds approaching Russia military aid:

The Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) has asked Russia to support it in its fight against ISIS as well as the Al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front.

YPG chief Sipan Hemo told Sputnik Türkiye—which is owned by Moscow—that his fighting force requested arms from Russia as well as general military coordination, according to a translation of the interview prepared by Turkey’s Anadolu news agency.

“He also called on Moscow to bomb Al-Nusra Front’s positions,” Anadolu added a day after Russia began its airstrikes in Syria on behalf of the Bashar al-Assad regime.

In turn, the report added that a foreign relations official for the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party—which controls the YPG—said his party was “ready to cooperate with any actor fighting ISIS.”

I rather expect that the YPG does not expect Russia to support them, after all they want to secede from Syria, but this is a a great way to whipsaw the US into bombing other Islamist targets, and, more importantly, keeping the Turks from bombing the Kurds.

Yet another failure in a chain of failures.

It really is beginning to look like the end stage of empire:  Increasingly delusional policies that lead to failures, which lead to doubling down on delusional policies.

This is part of a series of failures that feed on themselves.