This will be a disaster.

have their civil war if need be even to sort out the centuries-long Shia v Sunni/Wahhabism schism.

Maybe then modernity can be realized in terms of womens' rights, separation of religion and state and all the other myriad areas where that region has lagged in development.

And that might be a big "maybe, who knows, but they need to solve the problems themselves.

And this Saudi deployment may just be a feint to put pressure on the cease fire/peace talks coming up.

We, the US, certainly haven't helped with all of our troop deployment and wars and occupation. It's, I dare say, just about unsolvable for outsiders.

Syria and the US is not trying to discourage either country from taking what is blatantly an illegal action to destroy the Syrian government.

The fact that the Western news media keeps framing this pending invasion as an "anti-IS operation" shows just how bankrupt, propagandistic and irrelevant much of it is when both Turkey and SA are the prime supporters of ISIS. They are risking all-out war against Russia and Kerry is silent about it.

He has been a key person working to get the fighting to stop. It is Russia that has used the time before a possible ceasefire to carpet bomb areas outside Aleppo. In fact, the Syrian opposition was furious with Kerry for NOT providing military aid.

Neither Saudi Arabia or Turkey are passive allies who do what we want or whom we control. I agree that either or both could do something counterproductive if the goal is to move towards peace. The same could be said of Russia ' s actions, where they insist their targets were terrorists.

Kerry has spoken in various comments of the proxy wars here. The difficulty is there are too many sides with too many contradicting goals. Here, the Obama administration clearly wants to get Syria on a path to inclusive government. It is essential to fighting ISIS that you can have good governing that could move in after areas on won back. I do not think I am being naive in believing that is their goal. Note how often McCain has complained that they are NOT helping the rebels enough.

Obama has stated publicly on many occasions that the goal of US intervention is to topple Assad (really the only goal) and to fight ISIS (which is serving as our proxy army and fighting for US interests). The Russians didn't agree to stop bombing the Islamic terrorists who have held and terrorized the people in Aleppo for years, and I can't understand why, if defeating ISIS was really our goal, any Americans would be against Russia killing the terrorists (many of whom we are supporting).

We all should know by now that regime change is not a good policy, yet countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia are willing to go to war to overthrow Assad and turning over power in Syria to headchopping maniacs - the same people who supposedly attacked us on 9/11.

It is not up to President Obama to "get Syria on a path to inclusive government". Enough of this white man's burden bullshit! It is up to the Syrians to decide their leader, and if Assad were unpopular and widely disliked by Syrians, they would have turned against him years ago.

I hope Russia and Iran kill every single one of the jihadists we've been helping because I don't want to see anymore videos of these people burning others alive and sawing off someone's head. We should all want to see an end to that I would think...

Seriously, isn't this a bit out of character for Saudi Arabia? They are not known for their military prowess, and Turkey has a big military, but it is also a comfortable peacetime military, not in combat for a long time, logistically dependent. They would do better to think again. There is a lot of unrealistic "they would not dare" rhetoric being spouted by both sides. If you dare, they might too.

NATO leaders have made no secret of their belief that Russia is their biggest threat.

and Russia's too if they won't get out of the way. We don't seem inclined to do it, so far. The Sauds and Erdogan are becoming enraged at our intransigence. That's kind of the way it looks to me.

But yeah.

I've also read recently about talk of Assad stepping down. The postponed peace talks in Geneva are supposed to restart next week. Hopefully Saudi presence at Turkeys' border is pressure to help insure those things really happen.

Destroying the only Syrian group deserving of help (officially an ally of the U.S. and Russia!) is the main aim of Turkish policy.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia are the not-so-secret funder of the jihadis, including the ones the U.S. is ostensibly fighting, ISIS and Al-Nusra.

If they did invade and succeed, I suspect that they would re-brand IS with a new name and hand over the country to them.