Will America go to War with Russia over Syria?

Vladmir Putin enjoys the aura of faux-machismo where pictures of his taming tigers, bear hunting with bare torso and robbing a US sport team owner of his ring-hood brings. Vladmir like very much, the image of Vladmir The Great of St. Petersburg.


Barack Obama is routinely derided as a whimp at home and a terrorist supporter abroad. These too characters make for a great romantic epic, but are they also made for a horrific global calamity?


Barack Obama allowed himself to be boxed into a corner by McCain and other right wing

carnival barkers in the the lead up to a must win US Presidential election last summer. The great ruminator found himself sounding like the great decionator, when our dear President set out a red-lined marker on the Syrian War.

Now, the same kooks that helped cook up the Iraq WMD charade have managed to overdo themselves with the now Syrian Chemical WMD. The claim of sarin gas use near Damascus, is almost incontrovertible, but who new who gassed the children of St. Paul's famous city of conversion? Obama was told, by his local taunters that he must make sure his "red-lined" words means something. Otherwise, America's enemies will never again take the words of the "most powerful man in the world" serious again. Russia double dares the US. And Iran, the ultimate goal of this middle-eastern chess game joins the sabre rattling.

But the great wars of the last century both started with a bunch of silly sabre rattling by a bunch of not so untragic characters. And within 30 years, Europe and the World lost more than fifty million people to unnecessary violence. We may be close to another one of those.

Russian is ascendant. At least, it has not been more powerful or richer in 60 years. America is still powerful, but has lost most of its comparative shock and awe power on the later twentieth century lead up to the original Iraq War. There is a powerful Pacific deterrent in China and Russia is not willing to ceed the middle east without a real fight. And yes, even Israel's ambitions may not be in line with America's goals, and who says the Europeans have the cojons for a real battle - just see how much they could't do in Libya or how easy David Cameron gave up in parliament.

America is broke and weary from two ill-advised decade long War, and the nation continues to reel from the division occasioned mostly by a shifty demographic trend. Will Obama launch a surgical strike on Syrian targets? Will Russian anti-aircraft and anti-missile battery stop the American barrage and perhaps down some American planes? Will a US pilot sink a Russian Warship and will the Russian submarine destroyer shot at an American submarine? Is this Obama's bay of Oman?

The next few days, and the decisions of Barack Obama will shed more light on the future of our nations, and indeed the future of our world. And the question is, will Obama go to war with Putin over Damascus?  Will the image of Putin in drag harden the host of the un-summit summit in St. Petersburg next week. Will the world at least have peace until after the G8 meeting of  The Great Frenemies? Perhaps uncle Hu will have a word of advice or two.