"Today I want to make it absolutely clear to Assad and those under his command: The world is watching. The use of chemical weapons is and would be totally unacceptable. And if you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons, there will be consequences and you will be held accountable."
After a year and a half of sitting on the sidelines and not leading, even from behind, Obama is now warning Assad not to use his biggest weapon against those who want to depose him and then kill him and his family. I doubt is Assad is quaking in his boots over the warning. After all, Assad and his forces have now killed over 40,000 civilians across Syria and there have been no meaningful responses from the USA or its allies. Why should this be any different? The truth is that we are now at a point where action is needed. Words just will not cut it. Let me explain:
1) Assad is losing his fight. Larger and larger areas of Syria are under rebel control. Assad has gone from using troops to counter the rebels to using artillery and tanks to using air power. Assad has been forced to escalate because more and more of his non-Alawaite forces have defected to the rebel cause. The Sunni majority in Syria no longer will participate in the wholesale slaughter of their own countrymen. Even the Alawaites are losing the stomach for the killing. It is a matter of time until Assad is deposed unless there is a game changer.
2) The rebel side now has a significant contingent of fighters who support al Qaeda. They are not a majority by any means, but even 15% is way too high. It some of those terror supporters happen to be in the groups that "liberate" the chemical weapons storage depots, there easily could be a large number of poison gas shells that "disappear" only to later show up in the USA, Israel or Western Europe. We cannot take the chance that tens of thousands will die in an unprovoked chemical attack on New York or London or anywhere else. After an Assad loss, such a scenario is almost unavoidable. Just think of all the weapons that left Libya after Gadaffi fell and ended up with terror groups.
3) If things continue to deteriorate for Assad, he well may decide that he has to use the chemical weapons to get control back. Remember that Assad's father who was president before him used chemical weapons on the city of Homa back in the 1980s when there was another uprising. Nothing happened to the father, so the son may believe that the USA will do nothing about it.
For a year and a half, Obama has tried to ignore Syria. Remember the first four months of the killing in Syria when Obama and Clinton still called him a "reformer"? America has not relations with the rebel forces that will soon control the country. We have done nothing to try to shore up the more democratic components of the rebel coalition and to tamp down activity by al Qaeda. We have stood by and done nothing as Syria has moved towards becoming yet another battleground in the war on terror (or whatever Obama now wants to call it).
The time has come for a rather massive involvement of American forces into Syria. Had things been handled properly in the past, we would not find ourselves in this position, but we have no real choice.
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