Americans have some vague understanding that the U.S. wants Syria’s Assad to go, while Russia wants him to stay.

And Americans know that the U.S. “war against ISIS” hasn’t done much, while the Russians have been pounding Syrian targets with jets.

But Americans have no idea that the U.S. is deploying fighter jets designed solely to engage in plane-to-plane dogfighting … in order to counter the Russians.

And we don’t understand that the U.S. is arming the Syrian “rebels” with shoulder-fired weapons to bring down airplanes (this comes a week after ISIS may have used a Manpad to shoot down a Russian civilian airliner.)

Americans don’t know that sending Manpads into Syria and trying to establish a no-fly zone is what Al Qaeda leaders have been ASKING FOR, and that ISIS and Al Qaeda will end up with all of the weapons which the U.S. sends to Syria.

Americans don’t know the history of American regime change in Syria:

The U.S. carried out a coup in Syria in 1949

In 1957, the U.S. president and British prime minister agreed to use Arab extremists – including the Muslim Brotherhood – to effect regime change in Syria

In 1991, the U.S. hawks started planning another round of regime change in Syria

Americans don’t know that it was the “rebels” – not the Syrian government – who carried out the chemical weapons massacre in Syria.

Americans don't know that U.S. backed rebels told Christians, “Either you convert to Islam or you will be beheaded.” Syrian rebels slit the throat of Christian man who refused to convert to Islam, taunting his fiance by yelling: “Jesus didn’t come to save him!” A former Syrian Jihadi says the rebels have a “9/11 ideology”. Indeed, they’re literally singing Bin Laden's praises and celebrating the 9/11 attack.

Americans don’t know that the U.S. and its allies are largely responsible for creating ISIS, that U.S., Turkey and Israel have all been acting as ISIS’ air force, and that influential American figures are calling for openly arming Al Qaeda … and perhaps even ISIS.

Americans don’t know that Russia and China are catching up to the U.S. military, and that this isn’t a mere proxy war … but is “one step closer” to all out war between the U.S. and Russia.

And Americans don’t know that history shows that empires collapse when they overextend themselves militarily … and fight one too many wars.

Postscript. Americans also don’t know how close we’ve come to the worst-case scenario:

We came very close to nuclear war with Russia numerous times in the past … and only the courage of a handful of men to disobey the commands of their superiors saved the world

In 1962, the head of the U.S. Air Force – General Curtis LeMay – pushed president Kennedy to use the “opportunity” to launch a nuclear war against Russia, and was bitterly disappointed that Kennedy instead opted for peace. As highly-regarded reporter David Talbot said recently:

The military in this country and the CIA thought that we could take, you know, Castro out. During the Cuban missile crisis, they were prepared to go to a nuclear war to do that. President Kennedy thought people like Curtis LeMay, who was head of the Air Force, General Curtis LeMay, was half-mad. He said, “I don’t even see this man in my—you know, in my sight,” because he was pushing for a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. And even years later, Curtis LeMay, after years after Kennedy is dead, in an interview that I quote from in the book, bitterly complains that Kennedy didn’t take this opportunity to go nuclear over Cuba. So, President Kennedy basically, I think, saved my life—I was 12 years old at the time—saved a lot of our lives, because he did stand his ground. He took a hard line against the national security people and said, “No, we’re going to peacefully resolve the Cuban missile crisis.”

One of the world’s leading physicists (Michio Kaku) revealed declassified plans for the U.S. to launch a first-strike nuclear war against Russia in the 1987 book To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon’s Secret War Plans. The forward was written by the former Attorney General of the United States, Ramsey Clarke

The U.S. is so enamored with nuclear weapons that it has authorized low-level field commanders to use them in the heat of battle in their sole discretion … without any approval from civilian leaders. Indeed, some fundamentalist U.S. military leaders want to start a nuclear war in the Middle East

American, Russian and other experts warn that U.S. and Russian conflicts elsewhere could lead to nuclear war