Russia plays down idea of coalition with West to strike ISIS in Syria

Protester holds a poster depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin and reading "Putin, killer!" during a demonstration against Russia on Nov. 27, 2015, in Fatih district in Istanbul. AFP PHOTO / CAGDAS ERDOGAN/AFP/Getty Images (Cagdas Erdogan/AFP/Getty Images)

By Andrew Roth

November 27 at 9:29 AM

MOSCOW — The Kremlin on Friday played down the possibility of a grand coalition with the West to strike the Islamic State in Syria, despite personal visits by French President François Hollande to both Washington and Moscow following a spate of horrific terrorist attacks tied to the terrorist group.

“At the moment, unfortunately, our partners are not ready to work as one coalition,” Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin’s personal spokesman, told reporters during a conference call on Friday.

Peskov’s comments came less than 24 hours after Putin himself sounded hopeful notes at a meeting with Hollande in the Kremlin, where he said Russia “was ready to cooperate with the coalition which is led by the United States.”

But Russia has sought cooperation on its terms, providing diplomatic and now military shelter to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and attacking rebel groups that include the Islamic State but also more moderate opponents of Assad backed by Western countries. President Obama and other Western leaders have sought to bring Putin into a U.S.-led coalition instead, a force that Putin has called illegal because it is launching airstrikes in Syria without Assad’s permission.

is is one of multiple videos released by the Russian government which shows hits on targets in Syria between Nov. 23 and Nov. 26. (Russian Defence Ministry)

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius raised the prospect Friday that Assad’s troops could be used against the Islamic State, but only in the context of a political transition in Syria that would remove Assad from power, French news media reported. The Islamic State, a heavily armed al-Qaeda offshoot also known as ISIS and ISIL, has declared a “caliphate” in tracts of Iraq and Syria under its control and has claimed responsibility for terrorist attacks against Russia and the West.

The opposing goals of Russia and Assad’s opponents burst into conflict on Tuesday, when Turkey shot down a Russian plane that was allegedly in its airspace. Russian and Turkish political analysts have said the plane was more likely targeted because Russia had been bombing Turkish-trained Turkmen rebels in Syria’s north.

One pilot of the Su-24 attack aircraft was killed after parachuting from the stricken plane. Another was rescued, but a Russian marine was killed in the operation.

Putin called the shootdown a “stab in the back” and has refused to take phone calls from Erdogan since.

“There have been requests from Erdogan of a telephone conversation in the past two days,” Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters Friday, the Interfax news agency reported.

When asked why Putin had not taken those calls, he said, “We see Turkey’s non-readiness to bring elementary apologies over the aircraft incident.”

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan warned Russia not to "play with fire" in a dispute over the downing of a Russian warplane this week, but added he did not want to harm relations with Moscow. (Reuters)

Erdogan has also formally asked for a meeting with Putin when the two join other world leaders in Paris on Monday for the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference. Peskov said Putin has been informed of the request but has not said whether he would meet with Erdogan.

Russian is introducing widespread sanctions against the Turkish government because of the shootdown. The Russian government took aim at deep tourism ties between the two countries on Friday, as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that Russia would cancel a free-visa regime with Turkey, a move that would likely be reciprocated by the Turkish government.

Putin’s two-month-old intervention in the Syrian civil war was seen as a way for Russia to break out of international isolation after the West imposed sanctions over Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and its backing of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Peskov said Putin and Hollande on Thursday did not discuss the possibility of repealing the European Union’s financial and individual sanctions against Russia.

These iconic American leaders were once refugees

By Jena McGregor November 20 - The Washington Post

In September, Silicon Valley's Churchill Club honored former Intel CEO Andy Grove with its "legendary leader" award. The tech industry icon transformed Intel from a struggling memory chip maker into a microprocessor powerhouse. Grove has since devoted his substantial wealth and intellect to research on two diseases for which he's been diagnosed during his life—prostate cancer and Parkinson's.

After the videos and accolades were over, Grove stepped onto the stage and asked if he could say a few words. "Let's remember that millions of young people who had the misfortune of being born in the wrong national boundaries are going through all the horrors [that] I had to," Grove said. "I made it. Let's try in a little way to help them make it."

You see, Grove—one of America's most admired business leaders, up there with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs for the impact he had on the tech industry—was once a refugee. Born to a Jewish family in Hungary in 1936, he survived the Nazis only to flee Hungary after Soviet tanks rolled in to Budapest to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

Grove is one of many people who have fled persecution, violence, war or political oppression to create something extraordinary out of their lives. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her family fled to America following the Communist coup in 1948. Albert Einstein was a German-Jewish refugee who escaped Nazi Germany in 1938.

Albert Einstein accepting U.S. citizenship certificate from judge Phillip Forman.

The film director Billy Wilder ("Sunset Boulevard," "Double Indemnity," "The Apartment") left Germany amid Hitler's rise and his mother, grandmother and stepfather were killed at Auschwitz. Thong Nguyen, whose family escaped Vietnam in 1975, is now a top executive at Bank of America.

The list goes on.

Such stories are a stark reminder of one thing that seems to have gotten lost amid all the negativity that current and would-be political leaders are slinging over Syrian refugees coming to the United States. Nearly all the focus has been on what the chances are that one of them could be a terrorist, rather than the possibility that many of them or their children could become notable leaders.

Never mind that, according to the Migration Policy Institute, just three of the 784,000 resettled refugees since 9/11 have been arrested connected with terrorist activities. (Two of those instances were not in America and "the plans of the third were barely credible," according to the institute's co-founder.) Or that the process of screening refugees in the United States is actually quite onerous, rigorous and lengthy. Or, among other things, that rejecting refugees could actually help ISIS.

On Thursday, the House passed a bill that would require intelligence, FBI and Department of Homeland Security leaders to certify that each refugee applicant is not a security threat. This followed moves by more than half the country’s governors to oppose letting Syrian refugees into their states—with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie going so far as to say even young orphans shouldn't be admitted under current vetting. Texas Governor Greg Abbott put it this way in a letter to President Obama: "Texas cannot participate in any program that will result in Syrian refugees - any one of whom could be connected to terrorism - being resettled in Texas."

Yet it's worth remembering that the inverse is also true: What if, in turning away Syrian refugees, we were to miss out on the ones who could change industries, upend scientific theory and create cultural masterpieces? What if we keep out the next Andy Grove? What if fear, ironically, causes us to reject someone whose leadership, courage and creativity could make the world a safer, better place?

What we're seeing right now is a pessimistic and reductive worldview for leaders, one driven by fear at the expense of possibility. Of course, it is critical for our country's leaders to worry about security, remain vigilant and weigh all the risks. But weighing those risks requires not just thinking about whom we might let in, but what remarkable individuals we might keep out.

Did You Know...

People remember:
10 percent of what they read,
20 percent of what they hear,
30 percent of what they see,
50 percent of what they see and hear,
80 percent of what they say, and
90 percent of what they say and do.

If you tell 100 people something without repetition:
After 24 hours, 25 percent have forgotten it.
After 48 hours, 50 percent have forgotten it.
After 72 hours, 75 percent have forgotten it.
After one week, 96 percent have forgotten it.

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