Pentagon minds looking at Syria, and filtering their word trash into the news media via Defense Department sources, have imposed a word on civilian Americans that ranks in my mind as one of the most inelegant words I've heard: deconflict.

     Obama and Putin met in New York during the United Nations mega-gathering.  Emphasis on their handshake and "shortest photo op in history" dominated cable news talk on their meeting.  Frosty.  Brrr.  Cold War Two?  

     Fox News Channel hosts and hostesses enthused, as usual, about Putin's toughness, comparing him to the do-nothing Obama.  This simple, craven tactic aims to further uselessly scrape barnacles from a ship that's already sailed.  Obama's tenure ends in fifteen months.  Putin will last longer.

     Russian expansionism is real.  Crimea, Ukraine, and northern Kazakhstan, not yet attacked, but ethnic Russians there feel increasingly nationalistic, matching Kazakhstan's own patriotic surge as ethnic Russians have been imprisoned for fighting in Ukraine.

     Russian air bases have been built in Syria, the government of Bashar al-Assad long-supported by Putin.  The meeting between Obama and Putin (they even sat at the same table for lunch) left us guessing, but many of us assumed Putin would direct his air force in Syria to attack ISIS targets.  The first Russian foray by air attacked rebels instead, reportedly killing a lot of civilians.  This looks like a double cross on Obama.  Is it?  I don't know, because the administration's policy and actions taken toward ISIS have made no sense, militarily.  

     Last year, when Obama said ISIS was going to feel the pain, "be degraded and destroyed," he sounded serious.  There've been airstrikes.  Syrian civilians have been killed by U.S. might from above, and ISIS fighters and leaders dropped dead in pieces.  Obama didn't commit U.S. troops to the endeavor, preferring proxy forces; a promised Contra-like U.S.-trained Syrian force with Saudi Arabian soil in the role played in the 1980s by Argentina, Costa Rica, and Honduras in Reagan's own Dirty War drama.

     One significant problem in trying to defeat ISIS is in dealing with their mobility.  Their reach has extended from northern Syria to the middle of Iraq, with satellite influence in Yemen, Libya, and the occasional maniac with a gun in Second Amendmentstan.  Without sending in ground troops, Obama relies on an ineffective Iraqi Army.  The pace of training the Syrian "freedom fighters" has been slow, perhaps careful.  Rebel groups fighting Bashar al-Assad's forces vary according to tribe, religious sect, but many of them hate American policies as much as does ISIS.  

     It doesn't surprise me that Putin directed his air force to attack al-Assad's non-ISIS enemies.  He's helping his ally, but then, whenever U.S. forces attack ISIS, Obama helps al-Assad, who doesn't want ISIS on his territory.  Syria may have taken over from Iraq as the world's biggest clusterfuck, a word known, I presume, to the same Pentagon minds using the far less clear word, deconflict.

     According to my Mac-supplied dictionary, that word means, "reduce the risk of collision between (aircraft, airborne weaponry, etc.) in an area by coordinating their movements."

     Not in an area, actually, but in a volume, since area deals with two dimensions, but okay, the Secretary of the Air Force on CNN this morning spoke of the necessity of deconfliction in Syrian airspace.  She didn't say that coordinating fast-moving warplanes, helicopters, and unmanned aerial vehicles in cooperation with another major power should be thought out well in advance of the actual campaign.  

     Did Obama and Putin in their meeting not discuss deconfliction?  Should we accept the suggestion that Putin sent his warplanes to bomb rebel targets without knowing concurrent U.S. air activities in Syrian airspace?  

     I propose that both Putin and Obama aren't telling us everything they know about their plans to further alter the Syrian landscape, and its people good and bad, with explosions and shrapnel.

     Russian strikes against Syria have been played up in American news.  It gets John McCain's goat that Obama hasn't tried to overthrow al-Assad.  The Russians look in our news like aggressive duplicitous assholes.  Our news people don't mention the uncounted thousands of obliterated human beings in the Middle East, who breathed their last breaths right before American bombs slammed shut the light in their eyes.  

     Deconflict: another way of saying, We don't know what the fuck is going on.

                                                                             Vic Neptune