Two days after Barack Obama’s UN confab talkathon with Vladimir Putin, Russia attacked U.S.-backed forces in Syria.

On Wednesday, a Russian general dropped in at our embassy in Baghdad and issued a démarche (a diplomatic slap down) summarily demanding that U.S. personnel and aircraft get out of Syria because Russia would begin airstrikes in an hour.

And Russia did just that — not against Islamic State adversaries but against the dwindling U.S.-backed Syrian militias attempting to topple the tyrannical Russian client state regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Unlike Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, his actions in Syria put Russian and U.S. military forces on a collision course for direct combat.

Of course, Putin knows that Obama will back down.

According to retired General Jack Keane, former Army Vice Chief of Staff, “Once again, Putin, who’s economy is in the tank and who’s military is no match for the United States … has outmaneuvered and out-bluffed [Obama]. He knows that [Obama] will do nothing but verbal condemnation. What he is counting on is [Obama’s] predictable fear of escalation and fear of confrontation. This is a game changer, this is significant because Putin is changing … the strategic balance of power.”

Indeed he is.

Former UN Ambassador John Bolton stated succinctly, “[Putin] is bidding for dominance in the Middle East and he thinks he can prevail because he [faces] a weak and feckless occupant in the White House.”

Obama’s secretary of defense, Ashton Carter, responded to the most serious direct Russian threat since the Cold War by offering nothing but “verbal condemnation”: “This is not the kind of behavior that we should expect professionally from uh, uh, uh, the Russian military, professionally, and it’s one good thing to have an avenue of communication that is less unprofessional than a drop-in.”

Carter added, “I take the Russians at their word — they’re exceptionally clear about what they’re saying, and their actions now seem to reflect what they said they’re going to do.”

That certainly distinguishes Putin from Obama. It appears that Ash Carter has adopted Jimmy Carter’s Middle East playbook.

John McCain had some advice for Obama and Carter: “What we should be saying to Putin [is], ‘We fly anywhere when we want to, when and how we want to, and you better stay out of the way.’”

Obama’s spokesman Josh Earnest surmised, “Russia’s not going to be successful in imposing a military solution inside of Syria. They’ll be no more successful in that regard than the United States was in imposing a military solution in Iraq in the last decade.”

Huh? The only reason our “military solution in Iraq” failed is that Obama retreated from Iraq to bolster his 2012 re-election campaign, having made his promise to exit Iraq the centerpiece of that campaign, amid his other colossal domestic and foreign policy failures.

Earnest also observed, “The president believes it is important for Russia’s military activities to not come into conflict with our efforts there. If Russia is willing, we would welcome their constructive contribution to this effort.”

Yes, “if Russia is willing.”

John Kerry shared an open mic with Russia’s foreign secretary, Sergey Lavrov, shortly after the bombing began and noted, “We agreed on the imperative of, as soon as possible, perhaps even as soon as tomorrow, that as soon as possible, having a military to military de-confliction discussion.” For Lavrov’s part, he just said the media should ignore what the Pentagon has to say about Russia’s attacks.

The Russians are not concerned about “de-confliction.” They just told us to get the hell out of their way. And Putin just authorized the conscription of 150,000 Army recruits.

Jonah Goldberg concluded that Obama’s response is a “perfect seminar on what you get, in reality, when you go into the White House with the ideology that Obama had.” Goldberg continued, “He sincerely thought that, from day one, if America withdrew from the world this wonderful tooth fairy-like organization called the ‘international community’ would fix all of our problems. … No, it turns out that when you create a vacuum … actors like Russia, China and Iran seek to take advantage of the vacuum, exploit it and become hegemons regionally or globally, and that’s exactly what we are seeing. It’s going to take us decades to put this thing back together.”

In contrast to Obama and Company, recall Marco Rubio’s lucid prediction two weeks ago at the Sept. 16 Republican debate: “I have an understanding of exactly what it is Russia and Putin are doing. It’s pretty straightforward. He wants to reposition Russia once again as a geopolitical force. … Here’s what you’re going to see in the next few weeks. The Russians will begin to fly combat missions in that region, not just targeting ISIS but in order to prop up Assad.”

Who can forget Obama’s condemnation of Mitt Romney in the final 2012 presidential debate? Wagging his finger at Romney, Obama said, “A few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia. You said Russia. … You said Russia. The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years. When it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s, and the economic policies of the 1920s.”

Of course, Romney was not only right on Obama’s failed foreign, but also on his failed economic and social policies. Our Friend, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), noted in reference to Neville “Peace in our Time” Chamberlain’s catastrophic capitulation to Hitler, “Well, now the 1930s are calling President Obama and they want their foreign policy back.”

Make no mistake, Obama and his administration are the “JV Team,” and the spillover from the vacuum Obama left in the region has not only created a humanitarian crisis of biblical proportions, but his feckless “leadership” has now empowered the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan.

Charles Krauthammer observed, “[Putin] is the luckiest Russian EVER – to have drawn and opponent like Obama, who is acting like a faculty club liberal living in a fantasy world. He’s taking advantage of it and will continue to do so for the next 16 months.”

The Obama-Clinton “reset” button with Russia is now buried under Russian-bombed out ruins.

Oh, and may I remind you that responsibility for the domestic and foreign policy disasters create by Obama, are shared by those who support him. For those who voted for him in 2008, they might have been categorized as impressionable idealists. But those who voted for him again in 2012 are nothing more than idiotic imbeciles.