President Obama, having ordered President Assad of Syria not to cross the Obama imposed red line by gassing his own civilians, is now faced with the prospect of backing up his threat. His allies have abandoned him and he is now alone, without authorization from the US Congress as required by the Constitution, and without allies or UN sanction for cover. Any order he gives to the US military to attack a sovereign country that has done nothing to the United States, an order to carry out what is a personal threat, is entirely illegal. But Obama has shown repeatedly that the Constitution means nothing to him if it interferes with his agenda and personal wishes. He is above the Constitution, and is not bound by the laws that constrained lesser presidents. I spoke to a teenage State Department spokeswoman about the effect the rejection of military action by the British Parliament might have on President Obama’s course of action, and she said

It’s like totally bizarre
That we should have come this far
That the very ones we’ve rescued many times
Would not simply like, um, cave
In a word they should behave
And like join to punish Assad for his crimes
And the Congress makes me mad
And I’m totally so sad
That they seem to think the law must be upheld
Something written long ago
By some white guys we don’t know
It’s like what I said today to Tuesday Weld
She agreed that we must act
And act now despite the fact
There’s no proof that Assad did release the gas
As dear Barack likes to say
When I say someone will pay
Then I must use force if just to save my ass
Yes our president is wise
And it’s much to his surprise
That some people think the law applies to him
Everybody that I know
Says the whole world will eat crow
When he gives the word and lights begin to dim

Events in Syria appear heading to a point from which no one can say for certain where it will lead. The US Navy has been ordered to the scene, and it may be that Tomahawk missiles will soon be seeking out Syrian targets. But what will Russia do if Obama attacks a Russian client state? What will Iran do? Obama has very cleverly put the United States Army into a landlocked country that has no absolutely no strategic value to the US, and from which it will be very difficult to get out, should the Pakistanis elect to keep us there. Does anyone in the Obama White House know what the hell they’re doing? I spoke to a senior official of the Obama administration the other day, and he told me, on condition of anonymity, that all was going as planned and not to worry, that Obama had things well in hand. He said he knew hundreds of shoulder fired Manpad missiles had gotten into the hands of al Qaeda who would no doubt use them to shoot down a few civilian airliners, but there was solid reasoning why it was allowed to happen. He smiled and said

“I know all this must weary ya
But all is well in Syria
We know that all those manpads left the scene
But that was just a clever move
As more events will surely prove
And in due time you’ll see just what I mean
We’re playing chess here and we’re White
A pawn ahead and playing tight
And win or draw we’ll come out in the end
Much better off than we are now
And while we seem to scrape and bow
Our word’s a bond on which you can depend
We’re fighting world depravity
And thankfully it’s gravity
Will pull them down a peg and then it’s mate
In Egypt Morsi will be back
Our policy will simply tack
And that’s what makes Obama truly great
In Syria the rebels win
But if they don’t we’ll just begin
Another game and quit while we’re ahead
Iran won’t get the bomb unless
They figure out our full court press
And if they do, well only Jews are dead
You see we look at us with pride
There’s competence on every side
And may I say there’s genius here as well
The nuanced game is what we play
We dance and dodge throughout the day
And smoke and mirrors is the stuff we sell.”

For a country whose leaders cry incessantly that they hate war, we seem to be in an awful lot of them. The problem is, since Korea we have decided not to win any of them. Korea was a police action, designed to push the North Koreans back across the 38^th parallel, but not to remove the communist regime. Vietnam the same – push ‘em back, but don’t do anything to really hurt them. Kosovo we dropped a few bombs from 40,000 feet and went home. Iraq we won the war but threw it away by Obama who said victory was not an option. In Afghanistan Obama committed troops at the same time he announced the date we would leave. When we declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor did we tell them were leaving the war in 1943? We did not. We used to have presidents who thought victory was the desired result of going to war. No longer. And now Obama says war with Syria, but not more than a day or two. This is insane. Don’t we still make hobnailed boots?

The wars once won by hobnail boots
Now simmer, never boil
And thus it is that most disputes
Continue then to roil
The very instances in fact
That caused disputes to rise
And then the side the hobnails backed
Was wont to win the prize
The prize was victory of course
Loathed now as déclassé
We have instead the charging horse
A hobnail-less sashay