Hey, has anybody been able to figure out what people mean when they propose establishing a no-fly zone in Syria?
Surely it can’t be about shooting down the Russian planes that fly over Syria. There’s zero logic in escalating like this over Syria when two seconds ago you were so terrified of provoking Russians that sending a couple of first aid kits to Ukraine looked like an intolerable risk bound to provoke poor little Russians to start a nuclear Armageddon.
Or is the talk of no fly zones just a way to hide behind Obama from the need to say something valuable on the subject of Syria?
Clarissa's Blog 
The idea behind a non-fly zone along the border between Syria and Turkey is to keep Assad’s Syrian air forces from dropping barrel bombs into civilian populations. That idea might have had some merit if done before Putin moved Russian forces into the area, but now it’s too late.
The risk of our inadvertently shooting down a Russian military airplane — or vice-versa — or too great, and nobody is going to risk starting WWIII over Syria.
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That’s exactly what I’m saying. It would be insane to provoke Putin like this. And he’d see this as a huge provocation.
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“Surely it can’t be about shooting down the Russian planes that fly over Syria.”
I think that is exactly what it means.
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But that’s insane. And extremely dangerous.
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Hillary was asked by Rachel Maddow (on Maddow’s Oct 23 show) whether her idea of a no-fly zone meant that Hillary would give the order to shoot down a Russian plane that refused to leave the zone, and of course she didn’t give a direct answer — said in effect that the idea of a no-fly zone would provide an opportunity to engage in dialogue with the Russians.
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Seriously, people are starting to get on my nerves with their fantasy of a dialogue with Putin.
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