That's an easy thought experiment, because it doesn't matter which president you ask that supposition about - neither of those things would not have been avoide

That's an easy thought experiment, because it doesn't matter which president you ask that supposition about - neither of those things would not have been avoided due to a saber rattling president. After more than a decade of the US being involved in a mistaken invasion, we, as a nation, are war weary. Without a serious issue within our borders, the US simply will not do it. Every analyst, both in the US and outside, knows that. I personally think the "red line" thing was mostly good PR for the anti-Obama politicians. I don't think it had any real impact on our foreign policy. The words the President used weren't, as so often claimed, "If Syria uses chemical weapons, we'll invade". He said, quoting him from his comments on Aug. 20, 2012; "We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation." By the time we knew that chemical weapons had been used, many other things had also happened, too, so the "equation" had a lot of new variables.