http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peterfoster/100285876/barack-obama-and-isil-time-for-americas-deliberator-in-chief-to-man-up/Barack Obama and Isil: time for America's deliberator-in-chief to man up
By Peter Foster World Last updated: September 10th, 2014
Tonight, exactly one year after Barack Obama strode to a microphone in the East Room of the White House to make a prime-time televised address to the nation on "what to do about Syria", the US president is preparing once again to do…just that.
Even by the tortured standards of Mr Obama, the 2013 address was a truly dismal affair in which the President could be heard arguing with himself over his own non-response to the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons.
In "my judgment as Commander in Chief", the president said, Assad should suffer "a targeted military strike" for breaking the century-long taboo against using chemical weapons. But as "President of the world's oldest constitutional democracy", Mr Obama explained half a breath later, he had decided to "take this debate to Congress".
But even that piece of decisive indecisiveness was rendered academic, the President explained, because Vladimir Putin had offered a face-saving way out of this dilemma by offering to get the Assad regime to give up its chemical weapons, alllowing Mr Obama to avoid a postpone a vote he knew he couldn't win so a "diplomatic path" could be pursued.
So a year on, where has that "diplomatic path" taken us?
For a start, the killing in Syria has continued unabated; in fact it has picked up speed. The death toll stood at 100,000 when Mr Obama spoke. Now it stands at nearly 200,000.
Assad is also still in firmly in place. And while his chemical weapons stockpile is mostly gone – 96 per cent according to UN report, although enough still remains - he continues to gas his people anyway, but with chlorine bombs instead of sarin.
"If we fail to act, the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons," Mr Obama (the commander-in-chief one) said helplessly in that speech, and he was of course right.
At the same time Mr Putin, a strongman who spotted that Mr Obama had got himself in a mess by dithering over air strikes, took the opportunity to "save" Obama's face in Syria, but at the cost of entrenching Assad and feeling sufficiently emboldened in the process to face down the US president over Crimea and Ukraine.
And yet for all the disastrousness of the last year – indeed because of it – Mr Obama finds himself in a stronger position now than he did then.
US public opinion – which was firmly against Syria strikes a year ago, even though the public accepted Assad had used chemical weapons – is now behind broadening the fight against Isil in Syria. A CNN poll this week found that three-quarters of Americans support strikes and even one-third some boots on the ground.
The rise of Isil, while humiliating to Mr Obama in the sense that it destroyed his fiction that they were a "regional problem" that could largely be ignored, now presents the president with an opportunity to correct his course.
Mr Obama promised a year ago that he would not "pursue a prolonged air campaign like Libya or Kosovo" but that is pretty much where he has ended up. True, the President's hand was forced by a threat he spent two years underplaying, but it is also a testament to the galvanising ground realities we now face.
The president, with a mixture of self-pity and self-regard, says he struggles with the "theatre" of his office, but tonight he has a real chance to put on a show.
The rampaging of Isil forces through Syria and Iraq and the beheading of two US journalists, while unspeakable, gives Mr Obama, deliberator-in-chief, an opportunity to show some leadership finally.
Whether he is willing, or even able, I do not know. But tonight will tell.
