Without this focus, the president’s Syria strategy will fail. The beneficiaries will be the extremists Obama seeks to block: the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and other Shiite radicals on the one hand, and on the other, the Sunni extremist battalions among the rebels who would ally Syria with jihadists and Muslim Brothers in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt.

Yet the administration has “the slows,” as President Lincoln memorably said of Gen. George McClellan before firing him. Although it has been obvious for a year that the moderate Syrian opposition lacks a solid command-and-control structure, very little has been done. A recent rebel memo to the State Department summarized the gaps in Idriss’s “Supreme Military Council” operation. Take the crucial area of training: There are no specialized trainers for handling chemical weapons, no training of elite forces, no training for protection of civilians, no leadership training, no communications or data training, and no planning for reconstruction.

Egypt is another puzzling example of bootless Obama administration policy in the Middle East. The Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohamed Morsi is demonstrably failing. The country is effectively bankrupt, save for misguided charity from Qatar. With just 28 percent of the public supporting Morsi, according to a Zogby Research poll, an opposition coalition called Tamarod claims to have gathered 15 million signatures on a petition withdrawing confidence in the president. This weekend protesters are gathering in Cairo.