” Today’s admission that the U.S. Government believes that the Syrian regime has employed chemical warfare agents (chemical weapons) in its ongoing civil war places the Obama administration on the horns of a dilemma. Washington has twisted itself into the proverbial pretzel trying to avoid a deeper engagement in the Syrian civil war. Over the past two years, their excuses for inaction have multiplied and morphed in shameless fashion. They have hidden behind everything from “we can’t act without Russian permission” to the president’s appalling claim that he had to weigh intervention in Syria to alleviate the suffering there against the humanitarian needs of Congo—as if he were contemplating intervention there and despite the fact that he has intervened in neither country.

Nonetheless, the administration is right to be cautious about intervention in Syria. The United States could intervene—there is even a good case to be made that the U.S. and its allies could end the civil war in a positive, hopeful fashion. But doing so would require a huge effort, precisely on the scale of Iraq (as Tom Friedman has rightly warned in theNew York Times) because “solving” the Syrian civil war would require an effort tantamount to the surge in Iraq—but lasting longer to prevent the slide back into civil war that we are seeing in Iraq today.”

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