Thank you for a very thoughtful and informative post. Like yourself and so many others I am appalled by the bloodthirstiness of the military industrial complex and its corporate puppets in Congress. It would appear that the neo-con warhawks are driving us towards another Cuban Missile Crisis scenario.
I do not share the worship of Putin shared by many on the left, although I am proud to say I am a socialist.
I do have one hope that Putin learns from the history of the Cold War. As a historian of the Cold War one thing stands out very clearly to me: the United States was constantly on the offensive and the Stalinist leaders of the USSR sought peaceful cohabitation with Washington. Oliver Stone makes this point in his Untold History of the United States.
The leaders of the USSR, who lived a parasitical existence while most of the population suffered all sorts of deprivations, always gave into U.S. aggression throughout the Cold War.
The history of appeasement in the 1930s and during the Cold War shows that giving into the aggressor (i.e. Nazi Germany and the USA) always encourages them to be even more aggressive.
Over Syria Putin needs to stand up to the golden haired psychopath resident in the Oval Office.
We are living in very dangerous times when a wide variety of combustible factors have come together at this present historical juncture.
I agree with you that if humanity is to have any kind of future then ordinary people must throw off the shackles of their respective political systems.
RE: Powers-that-be are moving us towards World War 3