By comparison, the bitter debate before the 2003 Iraq invasion looks almost positive. At least people took clear positions. The George W. Bush administration would allow no middle ground. You are either with us, it said, or you are with the terrorists. Some old friends like—well, like France, ironically—tried bravely to stop what they figured was a pointless and potentially disastrous war. American congressmen itching for a fight declared they would no longer eat French fries, only “freedom fries.” Other countries, like Britain, charged into combat alongside the Americans. Almost 50 nations signed on to the so-called “coalition of the willing” and leant at least some small degree of support. Of those, only 10 are on record now backing the proposed American action against Syria. Britain is not among them. Only the French are likely to go into combat.

What Obama has found with his attempts to respect the nuances of his allies’ concerns, is that, given a chance to choose between competing evils most people prefer to climb on the fence. The air war being planned against Syria might push Assad toward negotiations, or it might worsen the already horrific situation on the ground. Inaction, on the other hand, gives the Syrian tyrant carte blanche to use weapons of mass destruction that will annihilate his enemies while driving millions more innocents out of their homes and off their lands. He might just save his regime, even if he rules little more than a wasteland filled with corpses.