The author reviews the recent items in the Washington Post which report on the secret meetings of the National Security Council (NSC) regarding strategies to pursue in Syria. (Unfortunately WSWS's policy is not to include any links to relevant articles, and I don't have time to search for them.) The NSC is a top agency that decides on the imperialist policies of the US. Because the meetings are secret, the substance of the Post's articles must have been leaked to the Post.
Although no decisions have been reached yet, the Post reports seem to indicate that the preponderance of opinion is for the most aggressive strategy which would likely result in the shooting down of Syrian and Russian airplanes.
I fully agree with the author's concluding remark:
The recklessness of such policies, aimed at deliberately provoking military confrontation with Russia, a power that controls the world’s second-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, is staggering.