"No matter how targeted the strikes or how sophisticated the weapons, civilian casualties are inevitable, including the elderly and children, whom the strikes are meant to protect."

Unreal. This from the man who bombed Grozny into rubble, killing tens of thousands of civilians.

Putin's op-ed is one element in a larger and absolutely brilliant piece of political theater. Since the end of WWI, nations around the world have done their best to shame other states into avoiding the use of chemical weapons. Since the end of WWII, we have seen that they have a short escalation path to human extinction.

If you will indulge a hypothetical, it's not too hard to imagine a Syrian chemical weapons attack intended for use against their own people drifting south into Jordan and causing mass casualties. Imagine then if the Jordanians responded with chemical and/or biological agents and some of those happened to drift into Isreal. We would very quickly have the most serious nuclear crisis since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

All the world's major powers (particularly the nuclear powers) are very aware of this escalation path. This is why there was the urgency to shut down further chemical attacks in Syria. Obama and Putin played a classic good cop / bad cop routine, or perhaps a bit more of an unhinged cop / sane cop routine (even if Putin got to be Danny Glover to Obama's Mel Gibson).

The net result is what both parties wanted: Putin gets to look important on the world stage and gets off some quality one-liners against the US (which, we should note, do ring true) while Obama shows that the US can play a role in reducing weapons of mass destruction without actually bombing anyone.

Obama graciously plays a bit of a fool and maybe Putin gets the Nobel Peace Prize this time around. End scene, curtain, fin.

Of course, the pantomime only works if it isn't obvious that's what's going on. Surprisingly, so far fea people seem to have caught on.

Obama and Putin played a classic good cop / bad cop routine

You're attributing something to Obama that doesn't seem to be true, that this was an intentional thing. He was freelancing it, and Putin took advantage of his inexperience.

We shall have to wait and see what actually happens, given that the Russians seem to be pulling back on actually doing what Putin promised. Also, the Russians are in the process of putting restrictions on what we can send thru their air space into Afghanistan.

They're also going to sell S-300 anti-aircraft batteries to Iran. They also plan to continue to prop up Assad's regime, likely with more heavy weapons and attack helicopters.

Tell me, President Obama, if a child is killed by being shredded by a 30mm cannon carried by a helicopter gunship, is it less of a tragedy than one poisoned by sarin?

When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of putting it into practice.

Obama foreign policy - two gaffes make a right.

If this all turns out as badly as it might, President Obama just might go down in history with "peace in our time," Neville Chamberlain.

Darth Aggie,

You're right that we don't know for sure whether or not the Obama / Putin tagteam was intentional or convenient, and that's kind of the whole point. The deterrent effect is lessened if any coordination is apparent. You are also correct, of course, that relations between the US and Russia will remain strained for any number of reasons and that the political situation in the Middle East will remain awful.

I do think you are misframing the issue by asking if death by conventional weapons or chemical weapons is more tragic. I don't think that's really the issue. The reason the Syrian gas attack got such a large response from both the US and Russia is that chemical weapons have a rapid escalation path to all-out nuclear war. It is very much in the interest of the two countries with the largest nuclear arsenals to shut down the use of chemical, biological or radiological weapons which could very rapidly escalate out of control.

I guess I can understand why Obama can't go out and say that if Syrian chemical weapons get carried on the wind into Isreal that nukes will start flying, but the argument he did use (essentially the Sally Fields "Won't someone think of the children?") invites exactly the comparison you made.

And now we have Assad demanding that we stop supporting the rebellion. Strange, I don't remember that being part of the deal.

I also don't remember Darth Vader saying this deal is getting worse all the time. So we get to watch the smartest man in the world[*] get schooled by an old school KGB man and the son of a brutal dictator. Awesome!

I'll lay one more movie quote on ya, then I'm out:

This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it.

[*] I was assured by all the cool kids this was true

I guess I can understand why Obama can't go out and say that if Syrian chemical weapons get carried on the wind into Isreal

Because they wont?

My atmospheric dispersion modeling is a bit rusty, but I'm pretty sure the only way to get sarin into Israel is to launch an object carrying the material into Israeli territory. Otherwise, dispersion will be based on the amount of toxin, and 1/R^2 (R=distance from strike point). Tons of the stuff dropped on Damascus will probably kill most of Damascus and a certain distance out. And that would be it.

Once unleashed, it begins breaking down. It is blown around on the wind. It will settle to the lowest points. It isn't a mythological fog from a Stephen King novel that will hold together.

Assad does not strike me as being suicidal. There is likely a minimum safe distance from any border with their neighbors before those weapons would be authorized.

If anyone in Syria is likely to use sarin on a neighboring country it will be the al queda types. And their target would be Israel, hoping Assad would be blamed and the Israelis would strike at him. And the other countries are muslim, and at least in theory opposed to Assad, so they won't get hit.

Oh, yes, and the al queda types are actively hunting Assad's chemical weapons. And now that Obama has threatened strikes, I'm sure those weapons have been dispersed, increasing the possibility of such weapons falling into even wronger hands.

If this all turns out as badly as it might, President Obama just might go down in history with "peace in our time," Neville Chamberlain.

He won't. Chamberlain was advised by Dowding and other military advisors that Britain was not ready for war and that he needed to stall. So, he stalled.

In doing so, he conveyed to Hitler that he was weak and vacillating, but at least his objective was actually in his country's national interest and not some poorly-defined humanitarian concern.

Obama is not staling to give our industry time to build up a stock of fighters and tanks. He is floundering and this time stumbled onto a semi-workable solution. We can't make accidentally stumbling onto solutions our foreign policy.

Obama is like a novice playing against a grandmaster. The grandmaster has seen several moves ahead while the novice is still trying to remember how the horsie-piece moves.