What a dreadful shock, a politician admits to smoking crack cocaine. The story, if it can be called that, of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s drug taking, whilst evidently in a drunken stupor, has made headlines across the world.

I get the impression that many people are more upset by the fact that he only admitted to his wrongdoing after six months of denial than by the deed itself.  That may well be the case but,  putting it to one side, it seems to me that in an age where drug-taking is at epidemic levels worldwide (throughout all levels of society – including politicians, the judiciary and even journalists!), this is actually pretty small beer.

Not for a moment would I seek to condone such foolish and potentially life-threatening behaviour but, personally, as a voter I’m far more concerned by politicians embezzling public funds and faking expenses claims than by anything they might do in their private lives. Surely, the only question that needs to be asked by those clamouring for his head is this –  is he any good at his job? If he is why not  leave him alone, let him suffer the humiliation from the worldwide exposure of his stupidity and let him get on with being Mayor.

Anyway, what might his successor be like? I don’t see too many Mother Teresas in national or world politics these days and sometimes it really is a case of better the devil you know.

Well, it looks like the Syria crisis is over, at least as far as the West is concerned. President Assad has now agreed to hand over the chemical weapons which he doesn’t have and has never used, so that’s all right then!

It seems to me that nobody has covered themselves in glory in this squalid matter. President Obama, decent man that he undoubtedly is, has shown himself to be even more indecisive and dithering than many of us thought he was in the first place. No doubt he has spent the last month regretting ever talking about the crossing of red lines. His deputy, John Kerry, for all his humanitarian concern has proved to be all hot air and his talk of carrying out an “unbelievably small” strike on Syria was laughable. Americans have a splendid phrase about walking the walk and Obama and Kerry should observe it very carefully.

President Putin of Russia, that wily and crafty fox, has turned out to be an unlikely peacemaker since it was the Russians who brokered the deal which ended the crisis and got Obama off the hook. His country will no doubt continue to sell arms to Assad.

We British have our Parliament to thank for making our unrealistically ambitious Prime Minister think again and avoid committing British troops to yet another ill conceived foreign adventure. The opportunistic French have had their brief moment in the limelight as America’s best buddies and may well continue to make grave pronouncements backed up by nothing but rhetoric. Always been good talkers, the French.

The United Nations has shown once again that, in its present form, it is worse than useless and cannot be relied upon to do what it is supposed to do namely to keep the peace and prevent tyrants from butchering their own people. It needs an urgent overhaul and we in the West should be pressurising our politicians to campaign for that overhaul. It is not right or fair to expect the Americans to sort out the world’s multitude of problems.

In the meantime, the real victims of this tragedy, the ordinary Syrian people, who want nothing more than to live in peace and security with their loved ones will continue to pay, with their lives,  the price of Assad’s cruelty and the UN’s incompetence.

It’s astonishing how the decision of one man can affect the whole world and when that man happens to be the most powerful man in the world he has to make sure that he thinks carefully before he acts and that he gets those decisions right first time.

President Obama is clearly a cautious man, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, his official title of Commander in Chief means that he must make a decision sooner or later.

 I’ve been in the USA for over a week now and I haven’t met one person who is in favour of bombing Syria. When I turn on the television I see reports of demonstrations and protests against military action and it seems clear that if Congress (in effect the American Parliament) were to take a vote now they would vote against it too. Of course, that may change.

In the meantime Obama must be agonising over what to do. The American constitution is a complicated creature although there is a clear sequence of events. The President can take any action he sees fit where he perceives a threat to national security. As one political commentator said recently, the President acts, Congress reacts and the US Courts review.

There was no constitutional need for Obama to delay his plans (real or otherwise) to bomb Syria and refer the matter to Congress. If he truly wanted military action and believed it was necessary then it would have been carried out weeks ago – irrespective of what the rest of the world might say. It may be nice to have friends and allies but the cold fact is that America is so powerful it doesn’t really need any.

To me, President Obama is a truly modern politician (like a recent UK Prime Minister I can think of) who throws a proposed  policy or action up in the air, observes the kind of reaction it elicits and then proceeds accordingly. It seems to me that on this occasion at least, his caution may prove well-founded. 

There may well  be a lot of “national soul searching” as George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, put it after Parliament voted yesterday against the UK joining in any punitive military attack on Syria following the use of chemical weapons in that country. I’m sure he’s right and I’m sure too that Parliament was right in voting the way it did. If nothing else, it shows that the Prime Minister and his Government cannot act without first consulting the wishes of the people via their democratically elected representatives.

As mentioned before in this blog, involvement in Syria would be a big mistake, as it undoubtedly was in Iraq and Afghanistan and to a lesser extent Libya. Yes, all those countries were or are ruled by dictators whose behaviour is naturally abhorrent to anyone with an ounce of morality but what is to be gained by foreign involvement? Once the dictator has been removed who or what is going to take his place? Since the answer to that question is normally hard line Islamists it is probably better to leave the military despot in charge. Better the devil you know and all that. At least these despots generally have no wish to take on and destroy the West, unlike the hard core fanatics of Islam.

Military involvement in Syria by any western nation would be a huge mistake for many reasons and, in any event, it appears that there is still no concrete proof who was responsible for the chemical attacks in the first place. It may well have been the Syrian Government but it could also have been the struggling rebels who, let’s face it, have much to gain from western involvement. Chemical weapons are both repugnant and horrific and many in the West are rightly concerned by their use. However any death by violence is horrific. Are the people in favour of intervention saying that the death of 200 women and children by chemical weapons is worse than their death by bullets and bombs? If so, why? The end result is still the same.

This is a dangerous vicious world and horrible things are happening on a daily basis in virtually all of its four corners. What about the genocide in Somalia and other parts of Africa, the continued massacre of Kurds in Iraq, the torture and murder in North Korean prison camps and the butchery of Mugabwe’s cruel regime in Zimbabwe? Are people agitating to intervene there too? Where do we draw the line?

The United Nations was set up, among other reasons, to police the world. It’s sad that the security council often proves toothless due to the exercise of the member’s veto and unless they change the rules to allow action by majority vote the UN’s impotence and prevarication will continue. As for the UK, well, we are a small nation, no longer with the voice that we used to have. On a global stage we are weak both economically and militarily. Sad and brutal though it may be, we have no business getting involved in what, basically, are other countries’ problems.