Russia joins the war in Syria

No one seems pleased about Russia’s air strikes in Syria. The two weathermen debated the unexpected turn of events.

Weatherman 1 : Russia has started flying missions in Syria but they are not shooting at ISIL.

Weatherman 2 : Well not yet, at least.

WM1 : The US said they were hitting Bashar al-Assad’s opposition instead. America criticised Russia for being indiscriminate.

WM2 : Maybe their aim isn’t very good. I do recall the Sunday Times once observing in an Iraq war, that America’s idea of precision bombing was to hit the correct country.

WM1 :  No they are being quite accurate, they are just not shooting who they are supposed to shoot. France is upset too; they lost 75,000 men to friendly fire in World War 1, so they are touchy about it, understandably.

 WM2 : Was it a Russian drone pilot who nodded off at his desk?

WM1 : No, these are Russia’s best fighter aces in state-of-the-art killing machines, so they know what they are doing. Russia had undertaken to target rebels and terrorists.

WM2 : So it comes down to how you label the opposition then. One man’s terrorist is another man’s ally. It’s a bit like trade unions; some people think they are freedom fighters and others see them as saboteurs.

WM1 : Precisely. America said “let’s go after ISIL” and Putin nodded, smiled and said “yes, we’ll kill the terrorists”   and America was silly enough to not ask any more questions.

WM2 : You do feel somewhat reassured with a big smile and a nod of the head, although it was Putin doing the nodding....

WM1 : America should have said “erhh..Who do you mean when you say terrorist?”

WM2 : Maybe they were just grateful for a bit of help. It’s expensive firing missiles at people. You know when someone says they’ll help you and you aren’t really sure, but you keep quiet because you think you will sound ungrateful....

WM1 : My girlfriend had that with some nerd who offered to carry her shopping to the car. He tripped and broke a bottle. He was only on the pull anyway – the prat.

 WM2 : Russia’s on the pull too, trying to win influence in that region.  And France and America are bombing already because they see ISIL as a destabilising influence. Everyone’s at it.

WM1 : That’s another fear, that all these planes buzzing around will get in each other’s way. One day you are about to murder some rebels and a French pilot whizzes by on his way to kill some ISIL fighters. They are going to need some traffic lights up in the skies.

WM2 : It reminds me of paintball. Everyone running around in the woods squirting dye at one another...someone who is on your side will get hit by a friendly splat of emulsion.

WM1 : Except there’s no woods, only clouds. They could just fly around and not shoot. Fear might do the trick – big jets are intimidating.

WM2 : But then they will be criticised as wusses, and they will be sneered at for spending all that money on bombs and not dropping them. It’s like Trident. There’s only one way to justify £100 billion of investment - fire the missiles....

WM1 : And we will all have about 5 minutes to congratulate the government on money well spent.