Putin's actions must be based on the assumption that Obama will not act, right? Or that, if he acts, out of a sense of looking beaten by Putin and fear of how that might roil power dynamics in the region, his actions will be, as Kerry emphatically said, 'incredibly small' and have no effect, thereby making Obama look reckless, weak and uncomfortable with or even contemptuous of the traditional strategic uses of American power, an impression that would also roil power dynamics in the region. Because if Obama rejects Putin's no doubt hollow offer to broker a deal with Assad on surrendering his WMDs and launches significant strikes that actually threaten the viability of Assad's regime, well then Putin will look the loser, yes? Or would he have some other trick up his sleeve should that happen?

I'd say Putin must feel confident about three things here: that the UN will point blame at Assad for the chemical attack but that there'll be no beyond reasonable doubt proof [remember, Russia must have inside info on all of this]; that the EU will be very worried about escalating this mess and will jump on his offer no matter how dubious it is, thus isolating America; that, caught like this, Obama will have no stomach to meet the challenge Putin has tossed in front of him and instead will look for a means to talk his way out of his predicament.

What about trying to trap Putin at the UN with a counter offer that says if Assad doesn't surrender his WMDs within a certain time frame punitive military action will be authorized? I assume at that point Israel's possession of WMDs would enter the fray and scuttle everything. But wouldn't that show Putin's plan up as having been a ploy? Possibly - but again he may be simply looking for two things here - sucker in the EU to accept anything in order to wriggle out of this mess, and stretching out the timeline which increasingly makes a punitive attack look ridiculous. And remember as well, verifying stockpiles and consequent removal of WMDs in a country not at war is difficult, so one has got to figure everyone starts off here knowing that Putin's offer is bullshit and so it really becomes a question of how desperate are the various parties to crawl out from under the mess they've made. Putin I guess feels they're very desperate to do that.

Yes, I should have realized Putin's scheme didn't pop up out of nowhere - US and Russia have been talking about plans to secure Assad's WMDs for a least a year now, which makes complete sense since back when this war began the big fear, and one of the most compelling reasons to support the US getting involved, was what to do about Assad's WMDs should he fall. I should have seen that.

Anyway, question still out there - why did Putin spring it now, what with Obama looking like he was heading to defeat on the AUMF resolution? Could be he's just screwing with Dear Leader, the way a cat tortures a mouse. Could be just a play for time, knowing that the longer this drags out the more ridiculous a 'punitive' strike seems, or because he knows something about the facts of the alleged attack that isn't public yet. Could it be he's trying to split the EU off from Obama, thereby totally isolating him? That sounds intriguing.

[I dunno - not getting this - Putin has given Obama a way out, even if it's only temporary, from a rather dire problem - he sure as hell didn't do it out of kindness - so that leaves two options: it was a mistake; or he's working a scheme - the fact that today Putin suggested he was open to selling the advanced S-300 air defense system to Iran doesn't clarify things: that could be over compensation for a mistake made; could be used as leverage in service of a scheme. The timing is curious, right before Obama's speech - I guess you could argue that to do it after the speech would make it look like Obama had pressured you into a concession, whereas before gives you the appearance of initiative with the added advantage of leaving Obama with nothing much to say - or maybe the whole point was to throw a wrench into his speech, trick him into welcoming a Russian plan that everyone knows is probably just a ruse, and thus make him look even less in charge of things or less reliable to be trusted with what he's asking - or not asking]

Didn't attempt to endure any of Obama's blather yesterday - it's just getting too depressing listening to these people speak utter nonsense dressed up as serious policy - did read some takes on where we stand now in this farce, what with Putin delivering what appears to be the coup de grâce to Obama's strategic incompetence by astutely treating Kerry's gaffe as an actual proposal - including this assault by Tobin at Commentary which sounds pretty much like what I would have wanted to say had I the stomach to listen to the noise.

The question becomes, what will be the fallout of all this awfulness? Anyone, friend or foe, who still harbored illusions concerning Obama's ability to lead the nation as the superpower it is, well those illusions are now dust - so where does that leave us? Certainly, Israel is not feeling too good right now - I think Bibi always understood what a weak leader Obama was, but possibly he still held out hope - no more, and now they must recalibrate their thinking on Iran and the Mideast as a whole - and needless to say Iran as well will be making appropriate adjustments. The other concern is an increasingly aggressive China - people in that theatre look to America to thwart a Chinese hegemony in the Pacific - they too must recalibrate thinking - and certainly Japan, which was already modifying its military posture, will do so now with more urgency I imagine. Taiwan? Boy - seems like a real stretch but if China had something in mind when it comes to Taiwan, wouldn't they at least have to consider moving on it now given that America is led by a president who makes Jimmy Carter look like a cunning and strategically gifted hawk?

And what about ol' Vlad? He knows that if it looks like he's 'bested' America and made Obama look like an amateurish fool that that buys him a lot of good will with Russians - so if he comes out of this thing looking like the 'wise hero', well, it's not like he's a man to rest on his laurels, not like he's a man without ambition - he'll be looking to capitalize on that windfall - and it's pretty much a guarantee his objective will not be a reset with Washington.

I dunno, people, I think we must come to the sad conclusion that the entire executive branch of the most powerful country on earth is populated by fools - Kerry yesterday doubled down with great specificity on how what they're planning for Syria will be short and theatrical, a gesture, a show of limited, narrow power - these redoubtable idiots seem to have no conception of reality that actual escalation must be implied in a threat otherwise the threat has no meaning - nor do they seem to have any understanding of war and how, once you begin hostilities, they take on a logic of their own and you cannot simply walk away from that logic without doing great harm to your reputation as a power to be respected. I think congress has no choice but to vote 'no' on the resolution because incompetence like this cannot be endorsed - in short, endorsing such foolishness would do much more harm to the country than a rejection of the president is like to do.

So the question becomes, if congress does turn him down, will Obama go ahead regardless? He's put himself in quite a bind because he has maintained all along that he has the right under the War Powers Act to do so and he and his catamites have built their flimsy case on the idea that a failure to act would be immoral - therefore he can't simply blame all this unconscionable immorality on congress should he not act. But then he's going to have another vexing problem: if congress says no it's a virtual certainty that Russia and China, who both have warships in the Mediterranean now, would argue vociferously that any action would be both illegal as an international matter and a US constitutional one - a difficult argument to simply ignore - but here's the problem, if Obama decides to stand down with Russian and Chinese naval forces glowering nearby it's not going to look like he backed down because he no longer had legitimacy to act, he will look like he backed down in the face of Russian and Chinese power - that's a pretty awful message to be sending. Yep, he's put himself, the congress and the whole bloody country in quite a bind here.

Just listened to Obama's Chief of Staff Denis McDonough talk on Face the Nation and I gotta say, these people seem clueless - they don't understand how the military works, how military interventions work, how wars work, how extremists think, how dictators backed into a corner think - they're clueless - it's as if the only thing they know how to do well is manipulate the media in order to get elected - and once again McDonough said the evidence is solid implicating Assad and yet doesn't say what that evidence is, instead suggesting people go watch the videos - the videos are proof of nothing! This is so astounding that I again am led back to thinking it's merely a shockingly misguided but I suppose in a sense somewhat cunning political ploy because I have a very hard time believing these people are that stupid. I was watching this McDonough interview with my mouth wide open - I couldn't believe the idiocy I was hearing being spouted as if it were brilliant insight and sound logic and established fact.

So, given the amount of effort Obama will be putting in over the next few days to convince Americans that he actually has a clue, I'm guessing that means that my fading idea that this is all just a desperate political ploy is probably a little off the mark. Hell, he's even sitting down for Fox News, which is like Cheney writing an op-ed for Mother Jones. Also, given this effort and apparently the graphic videos he's going to show to make his 'point', I have to assume that also means that if he loses the vote he's going to move ahead regardless - I mean, you can't play an emotional card like showing videos of dead children and then not act. Certainly, if it's a no vote and he indeed doesn't act, then that will mean I was right, it was a political ploy.

Anyway, prediction time - I see three likely scenarios. A few days of bombings, probably no more than three, and then things just continue on as before - which will result in America looking quite foolish. A few days of bombings, Assad comes out with his own video show of dead children and then he ups the ante, mounting a large offensive but with conventional weapons - this makes America look foolish and weak, since I see no way that Obama matches that ante. And then of course the worst scenario of all - Syria, Iran [with Hezbollah in tow] and Russia choose to see the missile strike as an act of war and then things really start to get interesting - America is in big trouble if it plays out that way because if they take the bait that quickly turns into the nightmare scenario of regional war - but if Obama backs away, he becomes a president that neither friend nor foe can take seriously anymore. Which is why I'm leaning to the last as most likely - and I've read people who study strategy who think the same, postulating [with direful foreboding] that if Iran sees an opportunity here to really stick it to America then they may not be able to resist taking that chance.

[which of course leads to the really big question: if the last scenario plays out, Obama backs away and Iran looks like the exultant victor, how does Israel avoid coming to the conclusion that they now have no choice but to attack Iran's nuclear assets? Oddly enough, meditation on that outcome may be the thing that causes Iran to back off from the doomsday scenario]

[there is a fourth option: that the rebels turn this into a wider war by using US strikes as an opening to launch a massive sort of Tet offensive type thing, which forces Assad into desperation mode, and then everything madly escalates from there - and good luck containing that]

Wow - tell me Kerry didn't actually say this:

US Secretary of State John Kerry has described the situation in Syria as "our Munich moment", comparing possible military intervention to the 1938 Munich Agreement, which ceded control of part of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany.

These remarkable morons do realize that there is no similarity whatsoever between Europe under Nazism and Syria right? That we went to war, actual full on war against Hitler for sound political reasons, to defend democracy and all that stuff and not simply because the man was a monster that we thought we could deter with a few martial theatrics? My God, this is just amazing - these people are astoundingly stupid - to compare what they're planning for Assad with Hitler and WWII?!! I'm speechless - these people are out of their fucking minds. Hell, maybe we'll see a coup in the US eventually. Why not?  I mean, I've got to believe every single high ranking military professional in the country is at this point having serious doubts about the people they're taking order from [well, actually not - Petraeus came out the other day in support of strikes - although, don't know if his opinion matters much anymore].

What are the prime 'dogs that won't hunt' in the bomb Syria narrative? That gassing a thousand people is a moral outrage that needs to be addressed in a way that risks sparking a greater, much more devastating war, but killing one hundred thousand people by conventional means is apparently tolerable. That punitive actions that aren't particularly punitive can deter combatants who cannot afford to lose - hell, combatants who won't be dissuaded by punitive actions that are decidedly punitive because they know full well they have but two choices: win or die [see war on Eastern Front in WWII for example of how this works]. That US military can become the humanitarian police force of the world and that won't lead to, one, serious degradation of US forces, two, a revolt amongst those forces because of, three, increasing entanglements in hopelessly incoherent scenarios that are impossible to fight because winning is not an option [see Afghanistan, Libya, Syria]. That the violence can be contained should the 'enemy' chose to turn your 'punitive action' into an act of war - in other words, that if the enemy decides to turn it into a war, you can pretend it isn't. That threats where you tell the person you're threatening that the threats you're making are really more gestures than threats are still threats. That it makes sense to attempt UN styled interventions without actual UN backing or lacking that at least a broad non-UN coalition of the willing that has that ebulliently naive UN feel to it. Thinking that 'doing good' on your own is noble and not begging for trouble or that symbolic wars devoid of attainable goals work out well. Spending your whole life thinking and talking as if the United States of America is not a special thing but then when you become President taking actions that are absolutely dependent on one frickin' god damn thing, the participation of the United States of America.

"... yes, it does seem obvious, but apparently some need to be reminded of it regardless... the assumed power in a shot across the bow comes from the ship to which the warning is aimed believing that the shooter is both more than willing to and capable of actually putting a shell through the bow should the warning be ignored... a shot across the bow absent a convincing threat of implied consequences if unheeded is nothing more than a shot across a bow... for the accused though, an empty threat becomes a golden opportunity to turn the tables and take the initiative..."

This article points to one of the most distressing and concerning elements of Obama's push to action in Syria - the fact that America's generals [and no doubt many all the way down the ladder] are clearly not on board with what's being talked about here - and then the insinuation one can legitimately make that many of these military professionals don't think much of Obama as a Commander in Chief. The article mentions something that has stood out to me regarding Dempsey's public performances over the last few weeks - both in what he says and how he says it it's clear the man is not happy at all with the civilian leadership of the country, and not just Obama - Kerry, Hagel, Obama's entire security staff but of course first and foremost Rice - every time I see this man speak I get the feeling he'd rather spit than answer the question being put to him. This cannot be a good thing if Obama actually goes ahead with action against Syria and it goes badly [spirals out control and leads to greater involvement than planned for], especially if he does it against the wishes of Congress.

Let's look at Obama's history here with his military - the surge in Afghanistan, which Obama took a ridiculously long time to decide upon and then sabotaged by not supplying enough troops and attaching a deadline to it [can also throw in his treatment of McCrystal which I'm guessing pissed a lot of people off] - then there was bin Laden which Obama had a tendency to talk about as if it was his bravery that made it possible, and I think it was Biden who called it one of the most courageous presidential decisions ever made; one assumes this grandstanding over a mission that Obama had virtually nothing to do with no doubt pissed off a lot of people too - then there's Obama's drone wars which are an insult to military professionals who view drones as tactically useful, sure, but the way Obama is using them they become the illusion of power and Obama seems to want to see them as the be all and end all of American military might; I imagine many in the military have nothing but scorn for the way Obama uses drones - then you have Libya and 'leading from behind', again from what I've read and heard military professionals have nothing but contempt for this LFB nonsense; America did all the heavy lifting in Libya but the weak air forces of Europe got all the credit, a lot of people are pissed off about that and pissed off that LFB took a six week war and turned it into a six month one - and to leave behind what? A crime riddled jihadist nightmare.

Then there's sequestration, which is really having a negative impact on readiness and training - Obama was offered a chance to exclude the military from sequestration and refused - and now he wants to involve them in Syria? Hard to know, but I'm guessing many in the military have no respect for the man whatsoever - and I'm guessing that most of them believe that Obama's view of the military is not just at odds with the traditions of American power, but is actually antagonistic towards them. From what I've read, many in the military view Obama and his cabinet as being almost contemptuous of the military's thinking on issues - and they're deeply troubled by fact that many pushing for action in Syria seem to be completely discounting the threat of what the hell happens should Syria, Iran and Russia decide to counter attack? All very nice to say it's just a punitive action, a shot across the bow - but what if they decide to interpret it as an act of war? This is the central absurdity at the heart of the 'responsibility to protect' conceit and I'm guessing every military professional out there understands just how absurd it is and are shocked at having to serve a president who doesn't seem to have a clue.

[although I'm hedging my bets - I'm still convinced there's at least a chance that Obama doesn't at all intend to strike Syria and is really at this point just looking for a way to involve the GOP house in the mess - that may sound hard to believe, but when you have sway over the media like he does, a lot of dumb stuff becomes possible]