Obama Petulantly Says No to Russian Cooperation

Officials at the Pentagon and the State Department, reflecting the views of the President himself, made clear yesterday that the Obama Administration will not share intelligence with the Russians on ISIS, or cooperate with Russia against ISIS in any other way.

“I don’t know how you share intelligence when you don’t share a common objective,” said State Deaprtment spokesman John Kirby.  The “common objective” that the Russians don’t share is the overthrow of Syria’s legitimately-elected President Bashar al Assad.

“If there are some forces that also have weapons in their hands and are on the ground fighting, as the coalition says, with the Islamic State, and they should not be touched, then wonderful,” said Maria Zakharova, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman.  “Give the list, give the call signs of these people, tell us where are they located, explain why they shouldn’t be touched.  Indeed, this information is not provided.”

The US response to the Russian offer is, in effect, “not on your life.” Unnamed US officials told the New York Times that the last thing they were going to do was provide coordinates for where American-backed opposition groups were, lest they be bombed by the Russians as part of Moscow’s alleged “effort to back Assad.”

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, while in Italy yesterday, went so far as to describe Russia’s strategy as “tragically flawed,” and claim that, therefore, the US could not cooperate with the Russian campaign. Carter said:

“We believe that Russia has the wrong strategy. They continue to hit targets that are not ISIL.  We believe this is a fundamental mistake…We are not prepared to cooperate in a strategy which is tragically flawed, and that is why I said the United States is not collaborating with Russia.”