Two recent news stories crossed like ships in the night, without much public discussion of how they were related.

Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered a review of all agreements between the Justice Department and local police departments around the country. Sessions wrote that "it is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies," and said the DOJ might "pull back" on federal oversight responsibilities under Donald Trump.

The news came after the revelation by the New York Daily News that Daniel Pantaleo - the officer who used a chokehold in the killing of Eric Garner - had repeatedly been disciplined by the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) prior to the Garner case. New York City had fought like a tiger to keep this information out of the public eye, and when it finally was released, it was only through an anonymous leak.

The story about Pantaleo shows why the Sessions story is so unsettling.

People laughed when Donald Trump had to get Scott Baio to serve as an opening-day speaker at the Republican National Convention. But the Happy Days symbolism officially takes a darker turn with this Sessions news. What Sessions is suggesting means literally going back to a Fifties-era conception of the Justice Department's role in preventing local police abuse.

If Sessions has his way, he will holster the most powerful weapon the government has in addressing tragedies like the Garner incident: federal civil rights laws.

The key statute is 18 USC 242, which gives the federal government the right to intervene if a person has been harmed by a "deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution."

An example of when this law comes into play would be a police murder in which the officer is acquitted in a sham trial by an unabashedly corrupt local government. The federal government is supposed to then use its powers to step in and file charges for civil rights violations, correcting the local wrong.

It took decades of hard-fought legal battles to get the government to actually use this tool.

Back in 1959, during the days that Donald Trump once recalled fondly to Michele Bachmann as the time when "even my Jews would say Merry Christmas," a deputy attorney general named William Rogers wrote a memo very similar in tone to the one Sessions just wrote. He declared that the federal government should not intervene in local controversies and file civil rights charges absent "compelling circumstances."

In practice, the Rogers memo meant that, provided there had been some kind of local due process, no matter how flawed, the feds wouldn't step in and take a second whack at an offender in a race killing or a police brutality case.

This prohibition against "dual prosecutions" was the law of the land for nearly 20 years. It didn't change until after an egregious incident involving an unarmed African-American man named Carnell Russ. In 1971, Russ was shot in the head by a policeman named Charles Lee Ratliff at point-blank range in Star City, Arkansas, after being pulled over for speeding.

Ratliff was acquitted in a joke of a trial in which an all-white jury in Star City took less than 15 minutes to deliberate. Years later, the NAACP sued the federal government - specifically the attorney general under Gerald Ford, Edward Levi - for failing to use its civil rights authority to investigate the obvious problems in the Russ case.

The case went before a Nixon-appointed judge named Barrington Parker, who would later become famous as the judge in the trial of would-be Reagan assassin John Hinckley. Parker was African-American. He ruled in the NAACP's favor. Although the federal government appealed, a deal was later struck between the NAACP and Jimmy Carter's attorney general, Griffin Bell, whereupon the federal government would look at "each and every allegation of a violation of the civil rights laws ... on its own merits."

The 1977 Bell memo gave birth to the modern civil rights investigation. That means it took until the late Seventies, over 110 years after the Civil War, for the government to finally accept its responsibility to police local police. That the federal government still needs to use those powers is self-evident. Just look at the Garner case and countless others like it, where local governments routinely fail to investigate and/or secure indictments against brutal cops.

After the Garner case, three out of four Americans believed there should be charges for Pantaleo. There were protests around the country, and the onslaught of high-profile brutality cases that followed - from Michael Brown in Ferguson to Tamir Rice in Cleveland to Walter Scott in North Charleston to Freddie Gray in Baltimore to Sandra Bland to Dajerria Becton, the 15 year-old girl in a bathing suit thrown to the ground by police in McKinney, Texas - led some people to hope that there would finally be some kind of national discussion on the issue that would result in positive changes.

With the Sessions news of last week, things have officially gone the other way. The Trump administration is pushing for steep cuts to the Justice Department budget, including the outright elimination of funding for the Legal Services Corporation and Violence Against Women grants, as well as slashing up to a third of the Civil Rights Division's budget.

Sessions has already hinted that he will stop investigating local police departments. Coupled with the budget cuts, we can probably expect the feds to get out of the business of policing cops entirely. Add cuts to legal services, and what we get is a clear message from the people who elected Trump: Their response to all of these awful films of local police beating or strangling or shooting unarmed black people is to worry that there's too much federal oversight of police, and too much advocacy for people who come in contact with police.

The facile conclusion to all of this is that white America wants to go back to the Fifties. But it's worse, and weirder, than that.

Seventy years ago, affluent white people could huddle in the suburbs, watch Leave It to Beaver, and pretend that cops weren't beating the crap out of people in East St. Louis or Watts or wherever the nearest black neighborhood was. But these days, the whole country regularly gawks at brutal cases of police violence on the Internet. Nobody can pretend it's not going on, but millions of people clearly don't want to do anything about it - just the opposite, in fact. They want more. Is this a twisted country, or what?
(c) 2017 Matt Taibbi is Rolling Stone's chief political reporter, Matt Taibbi's predecessors include the likes of journalistic giants Hunter S. Thompson and P.J. O'Rourke. Taibbi's 2004 campaign journal Spanking the Donkey cemented his status as an incisive, irreverent, zero-bullshit reporter. His books include Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History, The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion, Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire. .

IN A few weeks, Israel will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War.

Millions of words, most of them hollow, will be poured out. As usual.

But the event deserves better. It is a drama unique in human history. Only a biblical writer could do it justice. William Shakespeare could have turned his hand to it.

I suppose that most readers were not yet alive at the time, and certainly not yet able to understand what was happening.

So let me try to recount the drama as I saw it unfolding.

IT STARTED on Independence Day, 1967, the annual celebration of the official founding of the State of Israel. It was only the 19th anniversary.

The Prime Minister, Levy Eshkol, was standing on the tribune reviewing a march-past of the armed forces. Eshkol was as far removed from military ceremonial as one can imagine. He was a civilian through and through, the leader of a group of party elders who had drummed the authoritarian David Ben-Gurion out of the ruling Labor Party four years earlier.

At the height of the ceremonies, somebody handed Eshkol a piece of paper. Eshkol glanced at it and continued as if nothing had happened.

It was a short message: The Egyptian army is entering the Sinai peninsula.

THE FIRST public reaction was disbelief. What? The Egyptian army? Everybody knew that the Egyptian army was busy in far-away Yemen. There, a civil war was raging, and the Egyptians had intervened, not very successfully.

But the following days confirmed the unbelievable: Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, the Egyptian president, was indeed sending military units into the Sinai desert. It was a clear provocation of Israel.

The Sinai peninsula belongs to Egypt. In 1956 Israel had occupied it, in collusion with two declining colonial empires, France and Britain. Ben-Gurion, then the Prime Minister, had declared the "Third Israeli Empire" (following David and the Hasmoneans more than two thousand years before), but had to retract mournfully.

US President Dwight Eisenhower and Soviet President Nikolai Bulganin had both sent ultimatums, and Israel had no choice but to obey. So Israel gave back everything it had conquered, but got two consolation prizes: the Sinai was demilitarized. UN troops occupied key positions. Also, the Egyptians had to open the Strait of Tiran, the exit from the Gulf of Aqaba, on which Israel's (small) exports to the East depended.

What had induced Nasser, a great orator but sober statesman, to start another adventure?

IT STARTED in Syria, a competitor of Egypt for the leadership of the Arab world. Yasser Arafat's guerrillas were raiding Israel from the Syrian border, and the Israeli Chief-of-Staff had declared that the Israeli army would march on Damascus if this nuisance did not stop.

Nasser saw an opportunity to reassert his leadership of the Arab world. He warned Israel to leave Syria alone, and in order to underline his message he sent his army into Sinai. Also, he told the UN troops in Sinai to evacuate several of their positions.

This angered the UN Secretary-General, the Burmese U Thant, who was not a very wise leader either. He answered that if Nasser insisted, all UN troops would leave. Since Nasser could not back down without losing face, all the UN troops left.

A mood of panic swept Israel. All the army reserves were called up. Men disappeared from the streets, Israel's manhood was concentrated on the Egyptian border, doing nothing and getting more impatient from day to day.

As if by design, the fear in Israel became worse from day to day. The civilian Eshkol inspired no confidence as a military leader. To make matters much worse, something curious happened. To quieten the panic, Eshkol decided to address the nation. He made a speech on the radio (no TV yet) which he had written down in advance. Before reading it out, he gave it to his main advisor, who made some small corrections, but at one place this man forgot to strike out the corrected word.

When Eshkol reached this place, he hesitated. Which version was the right one? It was as if the Prime Minister (who was also the Minister of Defense) was stuttering when the fate of the nation was hanging in the balance.

BUT WAS it? While the panic grew all around me, I was walking around like a bridegroom at a funeral. Even my wife thought that I had become a bit crazy.

But I had good reason. Some months before the start of the crisis I had been invited to give a talk in a kibbutz. As usual, after I was done I was invited to coffee with some of the veteran members. There, a member told me in confidence that a week earlier the army commander of the northern front had also given a talk and been invited to coffee, and confided to the veterans: "Every night, before going to bed, I pray to God that Nasser will send his army into the Sinai. There we shall annihilate them."

At the time I was the editor of a mass-circulation magazine, as well as a member of the Knesset and the Chairman of the party that had sent me there. I wrote an article called "Nasser has Fallen into a Trap", which only reinforced the impression that I was off my rocker.

But Nasser soon realized that he had indeed fallen into a trap. He frantically tried to get out - but the wrong way. He issued blood-curdling threats, declared the closure of the Straits of Tiran (but also quietly sent a trusted colleague to Washington, urging the President to restrain Israel. Like all Arab leaders at the time, he sincerely believed that Israel was just an American puppet.)

In fact, the straits were never really closed. But the announcement made war inevitable. Under immense public pressure, Eshkol had to give up the Ministry of Defense and turn it over to Moshe Dayan. Several of the most respected generals demanded a meeting with Eshkol and threatened to resign if the army was not immediately ordered to attack. The order was given.

ON THE second day of the war I was called to the Knesset. I was sick with influenza, but got up and drove to Jerusalem. My shining white car shone like a meteor among the mass of tanks also hastening to Jerusalem, but the soldiers let me through, showering me with jocular comments.

The Knesset was under fire from Jordanian artillery. We hurriedly voted on the war budget (I voted for it and do not repent it, as I repented two other votes, but that is another subject). Then we were rushed to the shelter.

There, a high-ranking friend whispered in my ear: "It's all over. We have destroyed the Egyptian Air Force on the ground." And so we had. The real founder of the Israeli Air Force, Ezer Weitzman, had been planning this day for years and had created a force specifically shaped for this one job.

The following is history. In six incredible days the Israeli army easily destroyed three Arab armies, and elements of some more, which were left without air cover. The country was in a delirium of joy. Victory songs and victory parties abounded. All reason was sent to the devil.

ON THE fifth day of the war I published an "open letter" to the Prime Minister, calling on him to order an immediate plebiscite among the Palestinians in the territories we had just conquered, allowing them to choose between return to the Kingdom of Jordan, or Egypt in the case of Gaza, annexation by Israel, or a national state of their own.

A few days after the end of the war Eshkol invited me to a private meeting, and after listening to my ideas about a Palestinian state side by side with Israel, asked me good-naturedly: "Uri, what kind of merchant are you? If one wants to make a deal, one starts by asking the maximum and offering the minimum, and slowly nears a compromise. You want us to offer them everything in advance?"

So nothing was offered the Palestinians. 50 years later we are stuck with the occupation. Israel has changed completely, the despised Right-wing has assumed almost absolute power, settlers roam the West Bank, and Gaza has been turned into an isolated ghetto. Israel has turned into a colonial apartheid state. IF I were religious, I would describe it this way: many years ago God sent his chosen people, Israel, into exile from the Holy Land as punishment for their sins. 130 years ago a part of the people of Israel decided to return to the Holy Land without God's permission. Now God has punished the people of Israel again by giving them a miraculous victory, and turning that same victory into a curse that is leading to disaster.

For this purpose, God borrowed an idea from his Greek colleagues. He has turned the occupied territories into the Tunic of Nessus.

DHARNA NOOR: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Dharna Noor, joining you from Baltimore. And welcome to this edition of, "The Ford Report."

This Monday, the House Intelligence Committee held it's hearing on the alleged Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 Presidential Election. In the opening remarks to this much-awaited hearing, the Democratic Congressman from California, Adam Schiff, set the tone; establishing the case for why Russia is America's adversary, and how they're interfering in American democracy, and democracies across the world. He laid out the case for Russian interference in the election. Let's hear a bit of that.

ADAM SCHIFF: Last summer, at the height of a bitterly contested, and hugely controversial presidential campaign, a foreign adversarial power intervened in an effort to weaken our democracy, and to influence the outcome for one candidate, and against the other.

That foreign adversary was, of course, Russia; and it acted through its intelligence agencies and upon the direct instructions of its autocratic ruler, Vladimir Putin. In order to help Donald J. Trump become the 45th President of the United States.

The Russian active measures campaign, may have begun as early as 2015, when Russian intelligence services launched a series of spear-phishing attacks designed to penetrate the computers of a broad array of Washington-based Democratic, and Republican Party organizations, think tanks and other entities. This continued at least through the winter of 2016.

While at first the hacking may have been intended solely for the collection of foreign intelligence, in mid-2016 the Russians weaponized the stolen data; and used platforms established by the intel services, such as DC Leaks, and existing third-party channels, like WikiLeaks, to dump the documents.

DHARNA NOOR: With us to discuss all this is Glen Ford. Glen is joining us from Plainfield, New Jersey. He's the co-founder, and Executive Editor, of the Black Agenda Report. And he's also the author of the book, "The Big Lie: An Analysis of the U.S. Media Coverage of the Grenada Invasion."

He's also a regular contributor to The Real News Network. Thank you so much for joining me, Glen.

GLEN FORD: Thanks for having me.

DHARNA NOOR: Glen, can we get your response to that clip from Adam Schiff?

GLEN FORD: Well, my response is that there's no proof of any of that. And even the statement that came from the U.S. intelligence agencies, basically in intel-speak, amounted to saying that -- well, that's a plausible theory, it hangs together -- but there is no proof.

So this, what Mr. Schiff is spouting off, is propaganda, a fantasy that has no basis in provable fact. And if we're going to have hearings that are based on fantasies, I don't know which committee really ought to be holding these hearings. Do we have a committee on fantasy?

DHARNA NOOR: Let's take another look at what Adam Schiff continues to say.

ADAM SCHIFF: Ours is not the first democracy to be attacked by the Russians in this way. Russian intelligence has been similarly interfering in the internal and political affairs of our European, and other allies, for decades. What is striking here is the degree to which the Russians were willing to undertake such an audacious, and risky, action against the most powerful nation on Earth.

That ought to be a warning to us. That if we thought that the Russians would not dare to so blatantly interfere in our affairs, we were wrong. And if we do not do our very best to understand how the Russians accomplished this unprecedented attack on our democracy, and what we need to do to protect ourselves in the future, we will only have ourselves to blame.

The stakes are nothing less than the future of our democracy, and liberal democracy, because we're engaged in a new war of ideas. Not communism versus capitalism, but authoritarianism versus democracy, and representative government.

DHARNA NOOR: What's your response to this? Are these so-called interferences unprecedented? And what do you make of his accusation that Russia is working against democracy with its support for authoritarianism?

GLEN FORD: Well, they're not just unprecedented, they're non-existent, at least as far as the evidence goes. But there is a great precedent in the world for interfering in other people's governments, and other people's right to order their own internal affairs as they see fit. And the biggest example of that interference -- the great interferer -- is the United States of America.

Nobody holds a candle to the United States, when it comes to interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. Nobody even comes close. And we only get a sense of the scope, and sheer size, and the unique character of U.S. interference in the rest of the world, by taking in the totality of history, and the whole wide range of meddling in other people's rights to self-determination that the United States is guilty of.

The U.S. has absolutely no respect for anybody else's right to self-determination, except its own. It overthrows governments. It overthrew most of the governments of Latin America, and still threatens to do so. It has participated in the overthrow of emerging governments in Africa, and now, basically is an occupier of Africa, through its Africom.

It annexes whole countries, and that begins with the beginnings of the United States, the annexing of all the original people, the original nations of the United States into the United States. And goes on to include, oh, about half or more of Mexico, and all of Puerto Rico and the Philippines. And they damned near took Cuba several times, including at the turn of the 20th Century.

The United States blackmails and coerces nations to form governments that will go along with the United States' wishes. And they use the threat of force to do that. They fund political parties all over the world. They do that covertly, and they do that overtly. And they do it to people, to governments, that are supposed to be their friends.

Most notably, right after World War II, they subverted and tried to guide the course of politics in France and Italy, when communist parties were very strong in those countries. It arms opposition groups -- that is, wages proxy wars. And it's been doing that in the Muslim world for some time, going on 40 years now. Starting with Afghanistan, and most recently with Libya, and with Syria, and with the cumulative loss of millions and millions of lives.

It imposes sanctions at the drop of a hat on countries all over the world. And sanctions are, and are meant to be, interference in the internal affairs of other countries. And it wages ceaseless propaganda wars for the purposes of regime change. And in this regard, it's certainly not just the U.S. government; the U.S. corporate media is not a junior partner, a full partner in these propaganda wars.

And they start off when you hear a government being referred to as a, "regime," rather than a government. That's when you know that the crosshairs are on that government's neck.

DHARNA NOOR: Yeah, the hypocrisy here is kind of dumbfounding. But even, supposing that Russia did interfere with the election, how does that interference compare with say, the interference of the DNC, in the Democratic Primary in 2016?

GLEN FORD: Well, you know, that is an internal U.S. affair, one that Americans should be righteously upset about, instead of being upset at the Russians. And the Russians certainly don't have the capability to create the kind of corruption that WikiLeaks revealed inside the Democratic Party. Where are the Russian operatives creating the corruption itself? And I think, if we're going to make comparisons, the real comparison is between what the United States does in Russia, and what Russia does here. In terms of what Russia is alleged to have done during the past election, there is no proof of it whatsoever. But the United States has spread money around, offered scholarships, distributed computers -- blatantly interfered in elections in Russia, in 1996, in order to prop up the drunken U.S. stooge Yeltsin, and in two elections, in which Vladimir Putin was involved in the 21st century, in Russia.

Are there any Russians roaming around New York City, or Washington D.C., with millions of dollars, and with all kinds of computers and other incentives for dissident groups in the United States? I'm a dissident, and most of my friends are dissidents, so if there were such incentives being offered by Russians, I think I'd know about it.

They don't exist, and yet, they certainly have existed in abundance -- that is, U.S. monetary incentives for dissidents in Russia.

DHARNA NOOR: And what the Russians are actually being accused of is leaking some official Democratic Party emails to WikiLeaks. So, why is it that so little is being made of the actual content of the leaked emails in this hearing?

GLEN FORD: It's a great diversion, and you know, Americans are super nationalist people. You know if you just watched American television, and you superimposed the words, German over American, you'd be scared of the United States, and its super nationalism.

And so, Americans can be quickly diverted in their attentions, by pointing out a foreign threat, even if it doesn't exist. It used to be that the Democrats were the least hawkish of the two duopoly parties. But now surveys show that when it comes to the Russians, a majority of Democrats now are treating the Russians as some kind of existential threat. While only a minority of Republicans feel that way.

So, this propaganda coming from the Democratic Party, related of course to the election, has been quite effective.

DHARNA NOOR: Before you go, Glen, I'd like to have us listen to another clip from the hearing. This is from Andre Carson, a Representative from Indiana.

ANDRE CARSON: There's a lot at stake here for Russia. This is big money, big strategic implications. If they can legitimate their annexation of Crimea, what's next? Are we looking at a new Iron Curtain descending across Eastern Europe? You know, most in our country recognize what is at stake in how the United States, as the leader of the free world, is the only check on Russian expansion.

DHARNA NOOR: So, he says, "Are we looking at a new Iron Curtain descending across Eastern Europe?" Speaking of Crimea. What's your response to this, Glen?

GLEN FORD: The Iron Curtain has been erected within the American bubble. It's only visible to Americans. It only reflects the internal developments in American politics. It does not really exist in the real world.

You know, back in 2015, when the Russians intervened in Syria, and did the world a favor by tipping the scales against the American-financed, and trained and armed jihadists, Vladimir Putin was still referring to the United States as, "our partners."

If there is one thing about the current government in Russia that should be obvious, it's that it tries to create less tensions, and open up avenues of cooperation at every opportunity -- despite the hostility, and imperial attitude of the United States. This Iron Curtain has been erected by U.S. administration.

DHARNA NOOR: Glen Ford, Executive Editor of the Black Agenda Report. Thank you so much for joining us again today.

GLEN FORD: Thanks for having me.

Vast efforts to portray Donald Trump as Vladimir Putin's flunky have given Trump huge incentives to prove otherwise. Last Thursday, he began the process in a big way by ordering a missile attack on Russia's close ally Syria. In the aftermath of the attack, the cheerleading from U.S. mass media was close to unanimous, and the assault won lots of praise on Capitol Hill. Finally, the protracted and fervent depictions of Trump as a Kremlin tool were getting some tangible results.

At this point, the anti-Russia bandwagon has gained so much momentum that a national frenzy is boosting the odds of unfathomable catastrophe. The world's two nuclear superpowers are in confrontation mode.

It's urgent to tell ourselves and each other: Wake up!

The dangers of a direct U.S.-Russian military conflict are spiking upward. After the missile attack, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that it was suspending a memorandum of understanding with the United States to prevent mid-air collisions over Syria. And Russia's prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, issued a statement referring to "our now completely ruined relations" and declaring that the United States was "on the verge of a military clash with Russia."

These ominous developments are a longtime dream come true for ultra-hawks like Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who've gained leverage in an alliance with numerous congressional Democrats. The neocons and the "liberal interventionists" really have something going now, after propagating the meme that Trump is a Putin puppet.

At this perilous moment in human history, the quality of the Democratic Party leadership was embodied in a tweet last month from the Democratic National Committee's new chair, Tom Perez, who sent out this message about a weekly address by President Trump:

"Translated from the original Russian and everything."

Such tactics aren't just McCarthyite. They are baiting, goading and pressurizing Trump to prove that he's willing to clash with Russia after all.

Those tactics are a far cry from what's actually needed -- truly independent investigations -- in order to address the charges that Russia interfered with the U.S. election last year. We most definitely do not need the kind of baiting and goading that creates enormous pressure on Trump to show he's willing and able to go to the brink of war with Russia.

Make no mistake. With 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons at the ready in the United States and Russia, pushing to heighten tensions between the two countries is playing with thermonuclear fire.

Early this year, citing the escalation of those tensions, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its "Doomsday Clock" even closer to midnight. "In 2017, we find the danger to be even greater, the need for action more urgent," the Bulletin declared. "It is two and a half minutes to midnight, the Clock is ticking, global danger looms. Wise public officials should act immediately, guiding humanity away from the brink. If they do not, wise citizens must step forward and lead the way."

People at the grassroots must lead, pushing and pulling the official leaders to follow. To stop the current war train -- and to quite possibly rescue the fate of the earth -- we must get a grip. If we depend on the "leadership" in Congress, all that we hold dear will drift into still-greater jeopardy.

With Congress now in recess, most legislators are back home -- and they should hear from us. Pick up the phone, make an appointment to visit their district offices, or show up without an appointment.

Right now, in one minute, you can send an email to your senators and representative with your own message or with this one: "As a constituent, I urge you to make a public statement that you support a complete cutoff of funds for U.S. military actions in Syria. This step is vital to prevent our country from adding to the deadly violence in Syria -- and to halt the momentum toward a military confrontation with Russia that could end with escalation into a horrific nuclear exchange."

Detente between the United States and Russia will be necessary for bringing peace to Syria. The same goes for reducing -- instead of increasing -- the chances that nuclear weapons will destroy us all.

What passes for leadership on these matters in Congress will not save us. On the contrary, right now the congressional leaders are serving as enablers for what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism."

Even the better statements from Capitol Hill about the April 6 missile attack have been grimly inadequate. So, Senator Chris Murphy warned of "the potential quagmire of Syria," while Senator Bernie Sanders said: "I'm deeply concerned that these strikes could lead to the United States once again being dragged back into the quagmire of long-term military engagement in the Middle East."

Expressing concern about a "quagmire" is all well and good, but falls far short of acknowledging what's at stake.

On Sunday, the Washington Post published a sobering -- and frightening -- article by the person who was the national security adviser for Joe Biden during his last two years as vice president. "If the Trump administration and the Kremlin are not able to come to a meeting of the minds on Syria," wrote Colin Kahl, "it could set the two nuclear powers on a dangerous collision course."

Kahl, now an associate professor in security studies at Georgetown University, sketched out a plausible scenario: "The Syrian dictator (perhaps prodded by Russia or Iran) may attempt to test Trump again, hoping to prove the president is a 'paper tiger.' And Trump, having invested his personal credibility in standing firm, may find himself psychologically or politically compelled to respond, despite the very real risks that it could result in a direct military clash with Russia."

And, Kahl added, "Given Russia's vital interests in Syria, Moscow is not likely to respond positively to U.S. ultimatums and maximalist positions. If the administration does not find a way to give the Kremlin a face-saving way out, conflict is much more likely than accommodation."