

“We might be forced to ask Russia to launch airstrikes in Iraq soon,” said Hakim al-Zamili, head of the Iraqi parliament’s defense and security.

Hegemony: Iraq may ask Russia to bomb IS targets within its borders, giving Moscow “definitely a bigger role than the Americans.” Will we look back on this as the moment when America ceased being a superpower?

Russia may no longer be Communist and follow Lenin’s theories of seeking world revolution. But a leading Iraqi parliamentarian’s call Wednesday for Russian military assistance against the terrorist Islamic State would have been music to the ears of Khrushchev or Brezhnev.

Why? It’s exactly the role the Soviet Union sought for itself in the Mideast, as evidenced in its alliance with Egypt until the presidency of Anwar Sadat began in the early 1970s.

“We might be forced to ask Russia to launch airstrikes in Iraq soon,” Hakim al-Zamili, chairman of the Iraqi parliament’s defense and security committee, told Reuters. “We are seeking to see Russia have a bigger role in Iraq. . . Yes, definitely a bigger role than the Americans.”

As Reuters points out, this means Iraq’s government, and the Shiite militias fighting IS that it backs, “question the United States’ resolve in fighting ISIS militants, who control a third of the country.” What’s more, “They say U.S.-led coalition airstrikes are ineffective.”

Syria’s ambassador to Russia now claims that Moscow in just a few days of bombing has destroyed 40% of IS infrastructure.

And with PR obviously in mind, Moscow televised Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reporting to ruler Vladimir Putin on Wednesday the results of a naval bombardment from the Caspian Sea of 26 cruise missiles into Syria, traveling over 900 miles over Iran and Iraq, and hitting 11 targets.

As IHS Jane’s analyst Jeremy Binnie told the Washington Post, it was an atypical use of cruise missiles, “intended to demonstrate that even the small ships in the Russian navy are stronger than they look.”

One of the purposes is clearly to show up the U.S., and it looks like it’s succeeding. Painful as it is to consider, these swift, apparently effective military operations make one wonder if Russia would have taken all those years to get the job done with ground forces in Iraq — then not finish the job — the way we did.

In the realm of geopolitical power, claiming the moral high ground, as America always does, means nothing to a fledgling representative government like Baghdad’s if the claims can’t be backed up by the successful exercise of power.

IS is also ruining the completion of President Obama’s plan for withdrawal from Afghanistan. Gen. John Campbell, commander of U.S. forces in the country, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that troop levels must be adjusted due to the growing strength of IS and al-Qaida. Obama’s plan would have meant only 1,000 troops based at the U.S. Embassy at the end of next year.

As disingenuous as he may be, Putin is making a moral case for Russia’s actions in the Mideast — we’ll defeat IS since America can’t, or won’t — and the Iraqis we’ve let down have little choice but to accept Moscow’s rescue.