The Escalator

The United States, after an exhaustive study, has reluctantly concluded that Syria leaders have used chemical weapons against their own people … crossing Obama’s “red line.”  Thus the U.S. will now send small arms and ammunition to the rebels there … “satisfying” Presidents Obama’s pronouncement that such actions on Syria’s part would incur “enormous consequences.”  Not to be outdone in this pissing contest, Russia’s Premier Putin has warned Obama not to take such an action.  Meanwhile Saudi Arabia is also providing the Syrian rebels with MANPAD anti-aircraft missiles (however unfortunate the name) … see: France24 Story.

Again upping the ante, Iran is sending 4,000 Revolutionary Guard soldiers to aid Assad in his counter-revolutionary struggle … see: Daily Mail Story …  and Hezbollah has also entered the fray on the side of Assad … see: Huffington Post Story.

This Syrian struggle has clearly now become another proxy war between the East and the West … like so many of the other bloody conflicts over the last seventy years. And it is also another brutal cage match between the various Muslim sects. Moreover, it is rapidly escalating … to a point where things might easily get out of hand.  Clearly, the American public has not the stomach for more involvement in such mayhem and Israel is secretly relishing the possible neutralization of one of its primary enemies … at least for the nonce.

This weekend I drove past a group of about a dozen postered protesters against war … standing in a local church yard.  I somehow doubt that Assad or Putin or Senator John McCain were listening.  Maybe President Obama heard their visual whispers.  Then again, maybe not ... there is this thing called "saving face.".