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Turkey Downs Allegedly Intruding Russian Fighter Near Syria Border (reuters.com)
jones_supa writes: Turkish fighter jets shot down a Russian Sukhoi SU-24 fighter near the Syrian border on Tuesday after repeated warnings over airspace violations. Moscow said it could prove the jet had not left Syrian air space. Footage from private Turkish broadcaster Haberturk TV showed the warplane going down in flames in a woodland area. Separate footage from Turkey's Anadolu Agency showed two pilots parachuting out of the jet before it crashed. A Syrian rebel group sent a video to Reuters that appeared to show one of the pilots immobile and badly wounded on the ground and an official from the group said he was dead. This is the first time a NATO member's armed forces have downed a Russian military aircraft since the 1950s. The Guardian is following the developments with live updates.
Also covered by the BBC, which notes Russian aircraft have flown hundreds of sorties over northern Syria since September. Moscow says they have targeted only "terrorists", but activists say its strikes have mainly hit Western-backed rebel groups. Turkey, a vehement opponent of Syria's president, has warned against violations of its airspace by Russian and Syrian aircraft. Last month, Ankara said Turkish F-16s had intercepted a Russian jet that crossed its border and two Turkish jets had been harassed by an unidentified Mig-29.
Let's start World War III over a piece of land in the middle east we all gave fuck-all about five years ago.
Didn't we elect someone to get us the hell out of some sandy region where everyone hates everyone else, and the only people they hate more is anyone who shows up to help? Are we really going to do this all over again with the advisers and the airstrikes and then another Iraq/Libya/Egypt clusterfuck?
U.S., Iran, Turkey, Assad, Russia. All hate ISIS. All have an interest in destroying the ISIS "caliphate."
Can't stop fighting among themselves for even a minute to even consider an alliance.
Meanwhile, ISIS just slips across some other border that the side who happens to be fighting them at that moment can't cross.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Sure Russia won't deliberately shoot down a Turkish jet and risk war with NATO. But an "accident" just might happen.
If this claim is true, then Russians planes are shitty.
(I'm turkish),
It makes me sick to see the phrase, "Western-backed rebel forces". These are Islamists. When Russia says they're only going after the terrorists, they aren't lying. See, there aren't two sides in Syria's civil war, there are three (major ones). There is Assad's government, who represent a minority that would get massacred if they ever lose power (Russia is backing them), the Islamist rebels (we're backing them *puke*), and ISIS (against everyone). There aren't any good guys. The Syrians who want Western democracy? Laughable.
It continues to amaze me, year after year, all the journalists who simply do not comprehend that there are three (major) sides in the battle. When Russia bombs the Islamists, this is nothing more than a proxy war. Putin thinks Obama is finished, weak, and America is ready to be swept aside. This is all Obama's own fault, of course, for his miserable failure during the Syrian nerve gas crisis of 2013. His "red line" was shown to be nothing that anyone need be afraid of. Russia saw weakness and swooped in. According to Putin, this was America's "Suez Moment" and without it Russia would today not be in the civil war and NATO wouldn't have just shot down one of their aircraft.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
No, it wasn't. At one point there were moderate factions fighting against Assad, but the gifted members of the current US administration dragged their feet in providing them support until they were largely destroyed or driven out to be supplanted by extremist factions.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
No Mig-29 has ever locked a Turkish plane in the region. The Russians have none there. A F-16's RWR (Radio Warning Reciever) cannot distinguish easily between a MiG-29 or Su-30 or Su-27 radar.
According to the data the Turks themselves have provided, the Russian plane was in Syria save for a very brief instant (5-20 seconds depending the airspeed of the Su-24). This is normal in operations. Small strays at the bad side of a border are common and are not worthy of an incident. If the Su-24 had been in a straight line towards the deep inside of Turkey then it should have been intercepted -not shot down- and either escorted outside of the airspace or sternly asked to land on some Turkish military airfield pending diplomatic exchange between the two nations.
And you don't "warn multiple times" a plane in 20 seconds.
The Turks are clearly looking for war with Russia for whatever reason. Or their political leaders do not realise Russia is not Armenia and they are going to react. They will think it trough but it won't be pretty.
Until now, if you watch the images of Russian planes in Syria, you see they fly with old air-air missiles (R-27s) which show they didn't really expect anyone would be dumb enough to start a fight with them. That is going to change.
I hope NATO will stay out of this. If they start a WW3, I desert. I won't fight or even pay taxes for islamists.
WTF? Turkeys can't fly!
Did they use linux to do it?
Why is this story on /.?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
There's an old curse that seems relevant: "May you live in interesting times." Times are certainly interesting. At this point, it seems like some sort of full-scale war between NATO and Russia is more likely now than it has been any time since the 1980s (granted then it would have been NATO against the USSR but the basic point is the same). Worse, at least historically the military and diplomats spent much of their time making sure that things didn't spiral out of control. Without the Cold War feeling, people may feel less of a need to guard against such issues. Worse, Russian military doctrine currently describes a limited nuclear strike on conventional military targets as a de-escalation http://thebulletin.org/why-russia-calls-limited-nuclear-strike-de-escalation . While in official documents they reserve that terminology for using nuclear weapons to handle direct conventional military attacks on Russia itself, one finds very worrying the level of doublethink where one describes being the first to use nukes as de-escalating a situation.
During the Cold War, one popular explanation for the Fermi paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox, the apparent lack of highly advanced civilizations in the universe, was that species end up blowing themselves up. For most of my life, this belief looked almost quaint but it is not looking disturbingly likely. At this point, the evidence for some sort of serious barrier to civilizations emerging substantially is much stronger than it was a few decades ago. The apparent lack of K3 or K2.5 civilizations is at this point substantially robust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale with around 100,000 galaxies searched and almost no sign of any civilization using a substantial fraction of its galactic energy output http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alien-supercivilizations-absent-from-100-000-nearby-galaxies/. With this return to Cold War norms, it looks like we need to not only take seriously that there's a Great Filter, but that the Filter might be nuclear war. That's especially the case because a nuclear war does not need to kill every member of the civilization to completely destroy any hope of a technologically advanced civilization. If not enough natural resources have been consumed by the civilization (e.g. the easily accessible coal and oil) then even if the species survives it may not have the ability to reboot itself to a high tech level since getting to a high tech level may actually require access to these resources (in which case one gets essentially one chance to get to be a high tech civilization).
Turkey has shown to be rather itchy about engaging anyone who encroaches their boarder. Except when its ISIS and they sit and watch while ISIS kills and attacks.
Yet, it seems they are willing to quickly engage when a aircraft briefly enters their airspace possibly just because of the air craft maneuvering requirements. I am not discounted Russia air craft may have breached the boarder. But the question is, was this a aggressive act or did Turkey over react to this? Clearly I think we have some fair weather NATO friends in the bunch and I am not sure sometimes which side Turkey is on? This brings up questions in my mind on how much some of these Muslim countries want to defeat ISIS? Obama claims 65 country support. But all I see is France, Russia and US attacking ISIS on a aggressive basis. I thought this air traffic agreement was all worked out between NATO and Russia?
"moderate" factions... Yeah right, pull the other one. And please, keep passing the blame.. You wouldn't be you without that.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Almost 50% (content varies) of ISIS/ISIL are former Ba'athist that we paid not to fight against us in post Saddam Iraq.
Like that was a great idea!
There are no "moderate" rebels.
They are islamists. The only "moderates" are in hotels in Turkey; They have no power and are nicknamed the "five star opposition" because of the five star hotels they live in. For the Russians, a beardie is a beardie.
There is neither "the Russians are bombing moderates while they promised to bomb DAESH" They said form the start there were no moderate islamists and even joked they bombed moderate islamists with moderated bombs "which have more pleasant colors".
Turkey and Saudi Arabia are backing Al Nosra which is a local branch of Al Quaeda. And UK and particularly France with that idiot Laurent Fabius timidly backs them to please the Gulf states so they buy them weapons. Airplanes in particular. Against the advices of their own military. It is changing but slowly.
There are more than two sides. It's not just ISIS vs Assad. I am not saying there are any clean hands, but you are taking an absurdly reductionist view of the conflict.
This
We have an opportunity to forge an alliance between former enemies. The only reason the USSR and America were adversaries was the conflict over economic systems. that conflict no longer exists. Russia us just as capitalistic as the West, albeit a but more crude about it. But the point is that we have no reason to automatically line up against then anymore.
We have an opportunity to create a partnership that exceeds Nato and present a united front against Islamic Radicalism. This means not only immolating ISIS terrorists, but also, diplomatically confronting the bigger players in the Mideast that are the ones actually fueling his kind of crap with their fundamentalist nonsense. We could force them all to clean up their act, and reform Islam.
Of course, the US will need to stop supporting "moderates", mostly because there is no such thing.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Flight radar track on downed warplane issued by Turkish military via CNN Türk
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Russian violation was technical, according tothis morning's maps: in a flight across northern Syria, the SU-24 crossed a narrow finger of Turkish land sticking out of its southern border. The shootdown was over Syria, the crash was in Syria, and the crew were killed by Syrians after ejecting.
It is exploding....
It is crazy how a song from quite awhile ago is still so relevant. Somehow it feels that we will foolishly repeat the same stupid pattern over and over again. Simply using some screwed up country for the bigger countries to fight battles, all in the name of the greater good. Seems like if we really cared about solving the problems in Syria we would all join together in a common agreed upon plan. I can't imagine any government standing up to the full force of the world united.
But instead, we are on the eve of destruction.....
There's a very good documentary about this called "Return to Homs", which everyone should see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt31...
It shows how secular protests turn into massacre and then to desperate fight for survival. They received no support from outside world, other than from the islamists (who had plenty of weapons and supplies, likely sponsored by such countries as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia). You can guess the rest.
Watch it and then come here to say that they had a choice. I think that most western young people can easily relate to people shown in the film. They are not that different from us.
The Russians won't do anything to retaliate. I have a healthy respect for Russia and most people should. I grew up during the Cold War not too far from the former Soviet Union. I used to watch the Soviet submarines off the coast when I was a teenager. They would surface occasionally. My father purchased a powerful maritime telescope for my brother and I to see them better when they did surface. Once, a submarine surfaced and broadcasted an emergency. One of the crew suffered a burst appendix. Our guys sent out a helicopter and collected him and took him to hospital where he stayed for two day's time. The submarine waited off the coast, but was joined by 24 hour patrol helicopters and a frigate escort. This was 1983.
The Russians are good people, their military is very capable, and while some of their equipment might be a generation or so behind the West, make no mistakes in thinking this limits them. Russia and Putin have something the West doesn't have at present: will and intent. It doesn't matter why Russia is in Syria, although to my estimation, they are protecting their oil and gas pipeline interests (present and future) through Iran to Syria.
I rather admire Vladimir Putin for his nationalism and his refusal to play nice with islamists. His duty is to kill them and that he will do. Unlike the West, Russia is actually killing ISIS and other islamists and this is to be praised.
It's not as if we are ever going to learn the truth in these kinds of "incidents". Russia will say they were in Syria, Turkey will say they were in Turkey.
However this time since the pilot parachuted in Syria, and got captured by rebels, I tend to believe the Russian story. If the plane was shot down in Turkey, the Turkish army would have recovered the pilot, isn't it?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CU...
Turkey has released a radar track (I could dig it up if you want). See that little lobe that dips into Syria south of Yayladagi? The track shows that the plane flew straight across it rather than going around it.
I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
So Vladimir Putin ordered fighters into NATO airspace and was shots down.
Where is the storys here?
Simples: is start of WW3. Will probably delay release of new iPhone, hence news for nerd.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You're putting the cart before the horse. Assad was to be taken down to weaken the Shia states - that was the plan. The gulf states like the Saudis, our wonderful ally who still beheads people for sorcery and apostasy, funded an 'opposition' that was armed and violent from day one.
The fact that this would deny the Russians a key strategic port, on top of the attempted NATO expansion in Eastern Europe, just made it a convenient narrative for many. Well, trying to yoke a fanatic islamist organization has backfired... yet again. The latest example of which, is Paris. Once again, innocent people everywhere are dying because of perfidious foreign policies. I'm not a huge fan of Putin, but I take some pleasure in watching Russia derail these imperial projects while exposing the 'war on terror' as a load of shit.
Muslims, Christians, Druze, Alawites, etc., were all safe in Syria under Assad, relative to most of the ME. None of them will be pure enough for the 'moderates'. They will all be killed or exiled. Where were the hundreds of thousands of refugees before?
Not only that, but it flew over it twice. You can clearly see how the bomber made a big oval loop, overlapping exactly twice over Turkey. Thus whatever they were targeting was along that overlapping path that crosses through Turkey. More than likely there were hitting targets right on the border of Turkey or extremely close to it.
Better known as 318230.
As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Please run for president, or at least go explain to the president what a reasonable strategy might be. Based on your understanding, which is more thorough than 99.9% of people's, what do you think would be a reasonable strategy for the US going forward, considering the end game?
It seems pretty clear we don't want Daesh in control of the territory; which group(s) can we support which have a reasonable chance of establishing some stable control and aren't barbaric, and how should we be doing that? As a voter who hasn't heard of most of the groups you mentioned, what main point(s) do I need to hear from a candidate to think he or she might have stumbled on a reasonable approach?
First off, Turkey shot down this plane for reasons important to Turkey. The plane may well have crossed into Turkey, though it sounds like it flew over a spit of land on an irregular boarder area, but the Turkish air force pursued it and shot it down over Syria, that is blatantly clear by where it crashed. Sure they "warned" the plane, for 5 whole minutes, but they obviously had the aircraft right there with the finger on the trigger and at the time of the shooting the plane would have been in Syria. Turkey was looking for an excuse an got one. The reason the plane was so easy to down was because the pilot didn't expect them to shoot. The reason for the attack is Turkey is trying to make it as difficult as possible for Russia to use it's air power, not because anyone legitimately thought Turkish forces or civilians were in serious danger. Had Russia actually been dropping bombs in Turkey, that would be a different matter and there would be undeniable proof. If our top priority was to stop ISIS, we would support Assad and simply do our best to make the support conditional on reforms. He clearly only wants to stay in power and has already agreed to any number of reforms. This isn't to say that Assad is a good guy, but rather a statement that our so called allies in the area are pretty weak to non existent. Plus, at the end of the day I don't know that their priorities really match ours, all we really know about them is they aren't Assad and they aren't ISIS. So why are we doing this? This is feeling more like a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia, and less like anyone actually cares about ISIS one way or the other. We aren't going to bomb our way to peace over there, making the war last longer is going to create more terrorists, not less. I don't know what they will call themselves, but I know we are just going to create more people with a grudge against the West, and I suppose Russia as well.
I will likely be downvoted, even though what I write is absolutely true.
Revolution was predicted at least 6 years ago, a result of public land policy changes made 50 years ago and yet nobody talks about it. In fact, if anybody brings it up, they are immediately dismissed as radical, or simply silly.
Starving people are dramatically more likely to revolt than well fed people. Somehow, mentioning this ridiculously obvious fact is universally dismissed.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Don't worry, the Serbs and Croatians aren't involved in this fiasco yet. As long as nobody tries to shoot an arch-duke, we should be able to keep this contained to Asia minor.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Just remember that you want the farthest decontamination pod on the left when you enter the vault. It uh... decontaminates... you better than the others.
One important reason of the destabilization of the area near and including Syria, is to get Putin's influence out of Syria and put Biden's in.
Qatar wants to sell its gas to Europe through a pipeline through Syria, but Assad wants Putin to supply his gas to Europe. So Saudi-Arabia buys a lot of Toyota's while USA (McCain) supplies weapons for some fanatics that were trained and supported by the USA to fight the Russians in Afghanistan.
Of course you can't simply dismiss these people without expecting some major problems, so they are now directed at Assad after a brief period in Lybia.
Saudi-Arabia already saw that the USA was fracking too much and made that a losing proposition by lowering the oil prices through oversupply.
Further, as Brzezinsky writes in his book, the US, in order to maintain its hegemony as a superpower, has to do anything it can to prevent other powers become too strong and successful. Creating chaos is one way of obtaining that goal so no, I don't think the USA would reduce its presence there if there were no oil.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
If, as the article states, the Russian pilots came down in Syrian territory, then why should we believe they were flying above Turkeye?
Further this incident gives Putin the possibility to start downing the French, German, Britain planes within Syria.
The only thing I anticipate 'The Allied Forces' to do is bomb the hell out of Assad's infrastructure and military facilities.
Just like what happened in Syria. 'The Allied' got permission to establish a no-fly zone and took the opportunity to destroy pretty much the whole irrigation system that Ghaddafi had installed.
The downing of the plane is a nice precedent making it easier to down NATO planes once they fly over Syria and bomb or supply the 'wrong' side.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
The shot down the plane not even 1 km inside their border. A fighter jet would be flying casually at 600 Mph, around 900 feet per second or roughly 1 km every four seconds; yet,, the Turks were supposedly warning them for five minutes. And then they shoot them down for stepping an inch into their front lawn? Did they want to start a war or were they trying to protect. whomever Russia was after?
Did someone in Ankara misunderstand when someone told them that pretty nearly everyone in the US cheers for Turkey this Thursday?
-Styopa
I think this is why Washington advised "Avoid foreign entanglements".
Maybe it would have been paid attention to if he'd prefaced it with "Hey, Dickheads!".
Nah; war is far too profitable for (Raytheon, et al) to stop now.
If, as the article states, the Russian pilots came down in Syrian territory, then why should we believe they were flying above Turkeye?
Crashing four kilometres from the border leaves plenty of room for doubt.
Further this incident gives Putin the possibility to start downing the French, German, Britain planes within Syria.
Not remotely. If he does, that's going to result in a very rapid reduction in Russian air power.
The only thing I anticipate 'The Allied Forces' to do is bomb the hell out of Assad's infrastructure and military facilities.
What the fuck does Assad have to do with this? Why would you bring him into it? Are you talking complete shit?
Just like what happened in Syria. 'The Allied' got permission to establish a no-fly zone and took the opportunity to destroy pretty much the whole irrigation system that Ghaddafi had installed.
Ah. Yes, you are.
The downing of the plane is a nice precedent making it easier to down NATO planes once they fly over Syria and bomb or supply the 'wrong' side.
Taking into account the overflight occurred twice, that's a whole four km of Turkey being flown over.
This wasn't a perceived defensive move, this was aggressive posturing. Ironic that it's someone else doing that to Putin though.
....Turkey shoots you for Thanksgiving!
Honestly, 325 posts and nobody pulled this out?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
During the Bush 43 administration, Syria was one of the places that the US sent Jihadi soldiers for tortured interrogations that they couldn't legally do under US law. So Assad wasn't such a bad guy then.
And when he came to power in 2003, he released a lot of political prisoners in a Gorbachyev style attempt to reconcile the country and introduce reform. That actually went well until the Arab Spring started.
There is some. A lot less than Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya, et al, but that's not the same as there being practically no oil
U.S., Iran, Turkey, Assad, Russia. All hate ISIS. All have an interest in destroying the ISIS "caliphate."
Can't stop fighting among themselves for even a minute to even consider an alliance.
Meanwhile, ISIS just slips across some other border that the side who happens to be fighting them at that moment can't cross.
Turkey doesn't belong in the above list. As discussed elsewhere in this page, they see their main enemies as the Kurds, not ISIS. The Ottoman Empire too was at the center of a caliphate by virtue of controlling Mecca and Medina. So ISIS ain't that much alien to it
1) Partition Syria into Alawite, Sunni Arab, and Kurdish zones (ideally independent states).
2) Purge the Damascus government/army of Alawites (including Bashar Assad) so it can become acceptable to the Sunni Arabs in ISIS territory.
3) Arm and support this government (which would be much more religiously moderate than ISIS, al-Nusra, or any other rebels) as it reconquers ISIS territory.
4) Try to reach some agreement with Iraq where most Iraqi Sunni areas are absorbed into the Sunni Arab Syrian state.
page 172-173:
A the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird asked the assembled group, "What shall we call the program?"
Someone suggested. "De-Americanization."
"No! for God's sake," I protested. "That would really prove to the world that you have been fighting the war." So since it had always been our war, we settled finally on "Vietnamization."
Imagine, Pentagon Defense Secretary Ash Carter asked the assembled group, "What shall we call our militants?"
Someone suggested. "Moderate Terrorists"
"No! for God's sake," imagined-me protested. "That would really prove the world that you have been support the terrorists." So since it had always been our terrorists, we settled finally on "Moderate Rebels."
You are a bit confused, Su-24 not Su-25.
Su-24, a bomber, Su-25 is equivalent to A-10 Warthog (not A-2). The later is close air support aircraft.
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/...
> If, as the article states, the Russian pilots came down in Syrian territory, then why should we believe they were flying above Turkeye?
Another poster points out that it's right next to the border, but the bigger piece is that NATO says they were over Turkey, and that Russia has been flying like this for awhile, getting spammed with "gtfo" messages.
It's still very very bad news, though.
You kick your ball over my fence, you lose it.
Nah, APK isn't that competent.
I don't know who the AC is, but yeah, he does, my guess is he uses this page:
http://slashdot.org/~Coren22/c...
But occasionally he misses a comment, so it is possible he is just using Google.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I doubt anyone wishes they were you. No one wants to have untreated psychological issues and make an absolute fool of themselves with everything they post online.
Who would be proud of being number 7, with such hell holes as Russia, China, Ukraine and Belarus above them? How is that rating done anyways, if the US is #5 in coders?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
You think it makes you look good when random people are calling you a fucking stalker? Wow, you really have a demented view of good. It might have something to do with your untreated psychological issues.
(& the only real difference between shrinks & normal folks is basically a certificate that says they're sane).
You think that is what the certificate says? What kind of moron are you?
P.S.=> See, I've figured you out (along w/ other trolls like you around here, maybe 10 or so): You guys are really out to make me look good, but it's SO EASY dispatching you all with facts I use vs. your b.s. that THIS VERY THOUGHT occurred to me long ago - since, i.e., a real MCSE or CODER wouldn't have messed up so much vs. me as you have & you're allegedly MCSE... apk
Yeah...like you have actually made a single point yet. You like to loudly shout how you have won the argument, but you have yet to actually respond in the argument, except to loudly shout your superiority. So, when will you actually make a point that refutes anything I have said?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Reuters is just wrong to call it " shot down a Russian Sukhoi SU-24 fighter". SU-24 is relatively old bomber, not a fighter, and that is why Turkish F-16s could down it relatively easy. I doubt they could do the same with modern Sukhoi fighters, such as SU-35. Wikipedia it, dammit.
I am a fool, like numerous others. But you will notice, that despite having a signature about you for over a month, I don't have many posts that are downmodded, while you have a 90% downmod rate. You have to wonder who is the one being a trolling fool.
Some of the signatures I have found about you:
Only two facts are certain in this world: DNS is better than hosts, and APK has a bad case of OCD.
APK thinks spamming slashdot is good advertising... Definitely not for his doctor.
And mine:
APK: proving he knows nothing about networking, security, and programming, six++ posts at a time.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I'll take that bet. Feel free to ask Dice to provide the numbers to you. Including your IP addresses, and the IPs of your downmoders.
You will find something interesting, I never downmod you.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
My 5 cents
Getting rid of IS should be the top priority - they are the most direct threat to the US and their allies out of these groups. Boots on the ground is not a good idea, but the good news is those are probably not necessary - you can undermine IS using good old intelligence, diplomatic and law enforcement methods:
- shut down their online propaganda machines
- find and shut down their recruitment
- destroy their logistical centers
- disconnect their international support (money, weapons)
- stamp down on their oil business
With the above, you can weaken the enough that the other groups would annihilate them. Other than that it's hard to support any other groups in the fight against Assad - this would effectively be a proxy war with Russia and you know how those go...
It's ironic to criticize our US policy of interfering and training people that later become radicalized and turn against us, then offer "reasonable approaches" that resemble the same type of behavior being criticized, because someone knows a little more than you do about the major players in the conflict.
Do you not think that CIA, having a lot more information than your slashdotter-for-president above, may have attempted a solution that sounded just as reasonable in the past as this one sounds now ? "Arm and support this government" / "purge government of X group" / break out region into smaller states - how can you not see this is exactly how we got to where we are today, because of "reasonable" well-intended decisions like this made 20 years or more ago.
More importantly it was an F-16 FIGHTER (i.e.e equipped for AA) VS a SU-24 BOMBER as that is how it would have been configured, as that was it's mission. It isn't like the Syrian Rebels or ISIS or whomever Russia is against has any air power. Probably hard to win an air battle when not carrying air-to-air armaments, and weighed down by bombs (though he may have unloaded already).
Putin said as much in his immediate news release which said that from now on bombing missions would have a fighter escort. At that point, I am guessing things might turn out a bit differently.
Occupying Eastern Europe was very much Stalin's idea, not Trotsky's. So was his support to Mao Zedong during the Communist Revolution in China, as well as the support to North Korea in the Korean war. After WWII, the Soviets decided that they needed a buffer against the West, and so claimed everything that they had liberated from the Nazis, except maybe Austria, and occupied Eastern Europe and North Korea.
Communism was thought to be a threat b'cos of the idea that Communist countries would fall in the Soviet sphere of influence, and make more easier their attempts to make governments all over the world Communist, and swearing allegiance to them. It wasn't the fear that you'd have Russian troops in Birmingham or Boston or Fairbanks. It would also have meant things like the abolition of the US constitution and entire government set up, and making the Communist Party of the US the replacement of Congress.
The complaints about Poland having a missile defense was made b'cos there was no recognition of the changed geopolitical realities since the end of the Cold War. For the 8 years after they collapsed, Russia had pretty much disappeared from the world map as a major influential power, and was pretty busy subduing the Chechen rebels and trying to resurrect their economy. The new enemy was Islam, which the West to this day refuses to recognize, much less acknowledge. There are still NATO troops in Iceland, Germany and Japan. But the threats to the West are more from resurgent Islamic countries - not just Iran, but potentially other Islamic countries as well via Jihad terrorism - countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Turkey, Yemen, Qatar, Saudi Arabia... Even if their governments may be superficially pro-US, their populations definitely ain't, and are very committed to supporting Jihadi campaigns against the West. Some may do it out of religious fervor, and others may do it just out of a good ole Third World envy and hatred of the West.