[Darris McNeely] We're back in the Beyond Today studio after having taken a break for the Feast of Tabernacles. Many of us scattered around the country and some internationally. I left the country myself, and I unplugged from the web, and from news, and even from television for about 10 days. Coming back it's almost like being gone for a month or so to try to get back into the scheme of things.

One of the things that caught my attention this morning as I was looking at the headlines is a question about whether or not the world order has changed since September 1st, in the last 30 days, because of two events, one of which we've covered in earlier BT Dailies. The situation in Syria where President Assad allegedly used chemical weapons to attack his own peoples and the threat from the United States, President Obama to bomb Syria as a result of that, which led to an interesting scenario because once the President of the United States, Obama, said that, then he said, "I'm going to go to the Congress to get approval for it," which cast it in a little bit different light. And then because of some diplomatic maneuvering and slide of hand almost it seems, Russia got involved and they offered to broker a deal with Syria if they agreed to turn over their chemical weapons for a guarantee that America would not bomb them. Would they go along with that? America took that deal, took their threat off the table, and left allies kind of hanging out there wondering, "Well, what does this country really want?"

What had happened earlier, and I had covered this in an earlier daily was that even in Great Britain the Parliament would not support David Cameron's desire to join the United States and President Obama in any potential action against Syria. So a key ally, Britain, wouldn't engage with us. We left others kind of hanging, such as France, Israel, the state of Israel as well. And so again the question was has the world order changed with all of this taking place, and the power, the prestige of the United States among world nations?

One other thing has taken place now since coming back from our break within the last day now, the United States' government has shut down because of the intransigence of the executive branch, the President and Congress, not being able to come to a deal on the budget and the debt level. And so government shut down now has taken place. Non-essential services are going to be curtailed until they can reach some agreement. And this creates just an aura of dysfunction with the United States and the world scene as well because the government branches are arguing back and forth. Leaders cannot come to some diplomatic reason to compromise to keep essential services going, to keep the government operating, its bills being paid, and its credibility strong in the world. So these two events that have taken place in Syria and the strange set of circumstances, and now the government shut down in the United States. All of this within just the last 30 days. September 1st dawned with one viewpoint.

September went out with a few people asking some questions. Has the world order changed? And so we leave you with that as we watch this with the important matter that we do need to understand why these things are important on the world scene and to the United States and its role within the world and the stability of the current world order.

That's BT Daily. Join us next time.