Is two-and-a-half years since the Syrian people rose in revolt against an oppressive and brutal dictatorship. One hundred thousand corpses and two million refugees later, the United States stands on the brink of action. Even before the first US missile has hit home on the Damascus regime, there has been one significant outcome: Basher Al-Assad has been able to claim that in striking at him, President Barack Obama will be aiding and abetting Al-Qaeda. In an obscene reversal of virtue, the man who has been engaged in the brutal crushing of his own citizens, is trying to present himself as a fighter against terrorism and Washington as an ally of the Al-Nusra Front and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. From the outset he had pretended that the rebels were foreign terrorists, when in fact he faced the wrath of the people of Deraa, over the ruthless murder of children, who had sprayed anti-regime graffiti on a wall. For months it was Syrians and Syrians alone that Assad faced. The insurgents begged for support from the international community. The Arab League, backed by the United Nations, did its level best to bring about a truce that would pave the way for negotiations. A combination of the regime's bad faith and the inability of the Syrian political opposition to speak with a single voice, allowed Assad to wriggle free of the one real chance to end the conflict. Had Washington chosen this moment to play hardball, so many lives and so much misery would have been saved. But the Americans ignored a growing tide of world opinion, not least from the Arab world, which was spearheaded by the Kingdom. Washington let Assad and his thugs continue their savagery. It refused to give urgently-needed military aid to the Free Syrian Army. It refused to sponsor the establishment of buffer zones, where hundreds of thousands of wretched refugees might have sheltered. Indeed, it refused to do anything at all, except spout fine words and seek, with a singular lack of success, to bring the Syrian opposition together. And all the while, the Free Syrian Army, outgunned and outnumbered by Assad's troops and his vicious Shabbiha militia, fought doggedly and slowly gained ground. Tragically, the lack of US or British or French support, even in the form of weaponry, meant that Moscow was able to re-arm its client state, Iran could pour in weapons, with the connivance of Nouri Al-Maliki's Iraq, while sending revolutionary guard advisers. Finally Iran's faithful Lebanese ally, Hezbollah dispatched its own forces to tip the military balance away from the rebels. Into this deadly vacuum flowed Al-Qaeda elements, finally turning Assad's early lies into terrible truth. Deplorably, with every new bigoted fanatic who arrived in Syria, Assad's ability to claim the moral high ground became tragically stronger. Worse Al-Qaeda's killers were not about to place themselves under the orders of the legitimate Free Syrian Army. Instead they have been gunning down its commanders and so further undermining the rebel's military position. In short Obama's weak and dithering policy in Syria has produced a fatal and extremely perilous position for Syrians and the wider region. Now, it seems, he is acting, but far, far too late.
