Escalation... Syrian style

So, Ryan is (I think) on his way back to MS from NV... leaving the Land of Reed for the greener fields of his family's home state.  I know what a nightmare moving is, so I'm not holding my breathe for his rapid return to the Bund... but I'll post things to irritate him none the less.

Syria is embroiled in a civil war that is costing it far more than simply millions of Syrian pounds a month and hundreds of innocent lives... it is costing it what little cooperative spirit the Ba'athists in power might have had with countries like Russia, Iran, and the rest of the Arab world.  The despotic regime of the Ba'ath party in Syria has held sway since 1970... but I've a feeling that is about to change.

Last week, the Syrian Army shot down a Turkish fighter plane.  Now, Turkey is calling on NATO to view the attack as a violation of the NATO agreement:  attack one, attack all.  They have moved heavily armed units right to the border with Syria, including a brigade of SAM missile batteries that are more than enough to give any pilot in the Syrian Air Forces pause.  More concerning yet, there are now probably two battalions of tanks taking positions at the Syrian frontier, and that (in the modern sense) is NOT a defensive move.  It might be meant to deter further acts, but it isn't defensive... it is OFFENSIVE.

I'm confident that our commanders in Brussels are more than capable of talking Turkey down from an all-out assault over the frontier... but does Obama have the chutzpah to follow through with the NATO treaty obligations, should Turkey follow this course of action?  I'm not suggesting he'd be expected to put troops on the Syrian dirt, as was done in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Sixth Fleet's TF60 is ready to roll, as we saw in the recent Libya actions... and any one US aircraft carrier is more than a match for the entire Syrian Air Force.