Why did ISIS splash the Russian Airliner?
Or at the very least, why did they take credit for doing so?

Think about it, the Russians were bombing the anti-Assad forces WE were supporting, not ISIS. They were not attacking ISIS since the US and its allies were already heavily engaged with them. Or at least, that’s what our government was telling us.

So now, Putin is supposedly bombing ISIS targets, or at least, he’s claiming to do so. But why did ISIS pick a fight with the Russians? Or did they? Maybe they are just claiming responsibility for the airliner to show off what bad asses they are. Or maybe it was a rogue operation on the ISIS side, or even a big mistake, and now ISIS is trying to at least salvage a propaganda victory from it.

Could some Al-Quaeda splinter group have attacked the airliner in order to drag ISIS into a fight with Moscow? We know Al-Quaeda and ISIS are not exactly friends. Or maybe some other third party took out the airliner in order to drag the Russians into a fight with ISIS. I can think of a lot of “third parties”.

Maybe one of our allies did it. Maybe even us… But even so, that doesn’t explain why ISIS would take credit. Or does it?

How about the Turks? They have no love for Assad, ISIS, the US-friendly Syrian opposition or even the Kurds, but they have shown great reluctance to get into the fight themselves. Maybe they just want to stir the pot up a bit. For that matter, the Kurds have every reason to hate ISIS, maybe they hit the airliner to get the Russians involved. Then there’s the Iraqis and Iranians on the Shia side, and the Saudis and Gulf States on the Sunni side (no pun intended, that one would be really unforgivable), and they all have reasons to have Russia and ISIS fighting each other. So does Jordan, and they supposedly have one of the best intelligence agencies in the middle east.

And now the French are getting involved. I don’t doubt the Israelis aren’t pulling strings in the background, unrest and conflict among the Muslims is all to their benefit. The Egyptians and Israelis have been known to work together on the sly…, and the plane did take off from Egypt, from a resort where Israeli tourists sometimes take the waters.

We really have to get out of this part of the world. We have no idea what is going on and we really do not know what we are doing. We don’t even know what everyone else is doing. I get the feeling we are being manipulated by our friends as well as our enemies.

The whole region is what political geographers call a Shatterbelt. The only thing comparable to it I can remember is the Balkans, just prior to World War I.

How did we blunder into this mess in the first place?