It wouldn't be surprising if there were some civilian casualties - the US strikes against ISIS have produced their own share - but the difference between the US strikes and the Russian strikes is that the Russian strikes are aimed at helping the government regain ground and the US strikes were aimed at making the ground so broken that Al-Nusra could take it and civilians would flee. In the early days the
US hit a grain silo for a start. Note that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in this story does not dwell on any civilian deaths or destruction of Syrian civilian infrastructure (which would be a war crime) but shrugs it off as a mistake. This is fairly typical of the "UK based" organization where all our "collateral damage" is tragic mistakes but the war is necessary and everyone else's are just because they like killing civilians. The SOHR was basically set up to paint Assad black and turning them on Russia is a logical extension. Also remember that ISIS and Al-Qaeda have received funding from Qatar where Al Jazeera is based and since the less than favourable reporting of the US in Iraq, the news outlet has had the reins tightened a bit.
Targeting the Free Syrian Army would also be legitimate since they are an armed group fighting against the elected government (we'd shoot them if they were doing that here) however, the FSA has long since defected to Al-Nusra which is Al-Qaeda which is what the US is now calling moderate rebels.
I can only imagine that the Russian action is being effective because the US reaction has been extremely strong (in words) and they are even pulling out the NATO card because of the incursions into Turkish airspace. Initial reports indicated that the Russian plane was within five miles of the Turkish border which would make the claim of incursion seem specious. If this article is correct it partly explains the discrepancy but if Turkey is really treating a 5 mile buffer zone inside Syria as an incursion into Turkish airspace it is even more specious and seems to be the unilateral creation of a no-fly zone where Turkey can shelter anti-Assad forces.
It will be interesting to see how much sabre rattling the US will do to try to limit Russia's ability to help. Interestingly
Baghdad is considering asking Russia to help in Iraq too. Gotta love how the article is headlined "Some Iraqis" and then it turns out that one of those "some" is Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. Iraq is majority Shia and they are more moderate in general than the Sunni (and wahabi) Saudi backed terrorists. We should all be backing the Shia but this isn't about what makes the most sense for humanity. Russia is already
supplying weapons to the Iraqi government.
If this was about getting rid of terrorists we'd see the US agreeing that cooperation is for the best. Instead we see the (Washington aligned) UK saying
Russian jets are fair game for shoot down. In fact it seems that Turkey is already claiming a shoot down for another incursion.
Just check out the map here. Looks like a part of Turkey, right? Oh wait, no it doesn't. But it's "near" the border. Still a bit early on that report to know if it was a Russian plane or a Syrina plane that may or may not have been shot down. Seems that the Turkish pilots reported "mysterious Mig lock-ons" which is a rather bizarre thing to say. Perhaps a lock-on might be not very mysterious if you fly your plane into someone else's country while they are engaged in military actions.
It's getting interesting, isn't it.
