Jeralyn: "On CNN today, a Republican called that distinction false, saying the dividing line is whether our troops will be in harm's way and because these troops will be battling ISIS, they will be in harm's way and there will be casualties."

... all that worried about the possibility of unleashing a cascade of events beyond their own abilities to manage and control, when they stampeded the country under false pretenses into embarking upon a deliberate war of choice in Iraq 12 years ago. I'm therefore not at all inclined for the foreseeable future -- like, say, the rest of my natural life -- to take seriously anything they say on matters of war and peace. Their words aren't worth the breath expended to say them.

Now, that said, I can't help but wonder if this particular announcement and deployment is really more about protecting anti-Assad Syrian rebels from murderous air strikes by Russian warplanes, than it is about confronting ISIS on the battlefield. It's pretty apparent at this point that the Russians have been targeting them primarily, rather than ISIS.

We're engaging in a high stakes game of chicken here, betting that Assad's Russian allies can't help but think twice about continuing such aerial assaults, particularly now given the possibility that they might be siting U.S. special forces advisors in their crosshairs, whether inadvertently or otherwise.

I think this is very much an uncalculated risk, and were it my own call, it's certainly not the sort of move I would have made on the geopolitical chessboard, given the range of possibilities as to what could happen here -- and admittedly from my own limited perspective, most of them appear to not be very good.