Russia Says Air Strikes In Syria Would Be Act Of Aggression Without U.N. Vote

[Igel]

57. It misses the forest for a couple of trees.

In that area the border is meaningless. The "Sunni insurgency" was often supplied or sheltered in E. Syria during the Iraq War. That's just how it is. Tribal and clan boundaries ignore the artificial borders that were drawn. In some cases tribes have spread; in other cases the borders were stupidly drawn.

During the Iraq War Syria had to tamp down some of the insurgency's spill-over into Syria.

The insurgency was largely defeated and defused in Iraq--but not destroyed. But it "didn't take its show on the road to Syria." It was there all the while. But since "we" forgot that this had ever happened, it came as a complete surprise to "us."

It's rather like "forgetting" about the Berber discontent in Libya, or the ill-will between tribes that supported and those persecuted by Qaddhafi. There's a kind of blindness that is common: People fail to appreciate even facts that they know when they're in the way of what they want to be true.