As Assad Regime Totters, Obama Can't Resist Embroiling the US

The UN envoy to Syria is asking Bashar al Assad to step down. A Russian deputy foreign minister said that Assad's control over Syria is weakening. So what does the Obama Administration do? It riles up the situation by sending US troops into the fray.

It's beyond unfortunate that 40,000 Syrians have been killed in the current civil war there. It does, however, seem to be coming to a close. So perhaps that's why the Obama administration chose today to embroil itself in the situation.

Over the past few days, signs are accumulating that Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad is losing his control over the country, including an admission of Assad's faltering by a Russian minister.

Mikhail Bogdanov, the Russian deputy foreign minister...who serves as Russia’s envoy to the Middle East, acknowledged that Syria’s rebels were on course to overthrow the president as they captured more and more of the country. “The tendency is for the regime and the government in Syria to lose more and more control, and more and more territory. Unfortunately, the victory of the Syrian opposition cannot be excluded,” he told a Kremlin advisory body.

Russia's government is now backtracking Bogdanov's comments just a bit, in the traditional fraudulent way the Russian government does these kinds of things:

Russia has denied that its deputy foreign minister said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was losing control of his country.

It's hard to deny something that was clearly said, but the Russian government doesn't let that stop them from trying.

As the Syrian civil war winds down, the best approach from the outside is to watch the implosion of the Syrian dictatorship.  Instead, however, as of today the Obama Administration is giving the Assad regime an incentive to retrench.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta signed an official deployment order on Friday to send 400 American military personnel and two Patriot air defense batteries to Turkey as cross-border tensions with Syria intensify.

From my perspective, that is a very poor move.  American involvement in the affairs of other nations over the last 10 years has given America a black eye in the eyes of the rest of the world.  It's a great way to put ourselves in position to find a pretext to further involved ourselves where we should not be. Come to think of it, it's almost as though the United States is on the side of Bashar al Assad and against the freedom of the Syrian people.