[credit: John Darkow, Columbus Daily Tribune]
Fortunately B.O'Drama's "red line" in the case of Syria's internecine civil war is a mere Bushism that no longer incites. Vladimir Putin has candidly stated it is dangerous to support the militias fighting the Assad regime because they are some of the same people responsible for terrorist attacks elsewhere in the world. The most effective rebel fighters such as the Al Nusra Front are openly allied with Al Qaeda. According to the New York Times, the main constituency of the rebellion is Islamist and US weapons are reaching these extremists through its regional allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The same nightmare scenario of the United States equipping potential enemies played out in the Libya intervention. As the 'toon suggests the President may have boxed himself in with his own mouth, but the last thing the United States needs now is another dirty foreign war in which it has no stake. Besides, we have not finished the first one we got involved in--Afghanistan--with much more cause for belligerence. The reality is US backed rebels probably used chemical weapons first in the northern province of Aleppo. Under international convention tear gas, the same stuff our police spray on domestic demonstrators, is classed as a chemical weapon. US Person says that is hardly a basis for starting down another costly road of knee-jerk interventionism.