In June of 2014, Fouad Ajami, one the most eloquent writers I've ever read wrote, "Today, with his unwillingness to use U.S. military force to save Syrian children...the erstwhile leader of the Free World (Obama) is choosing, yet again, to look the other way."
Yesterday came confirmations of chlorine gas used by the Assad regime and by "Save the Children warning that aid workers and medical professionals in eastern Aleppo were reporting the widespread use of cluster bombs, which are banned under international law." (BBC.com).
The West's (especially the US') dithering has allowed Putin's Russia to inveigle its way onto the centre of the mid-east checkerboard making any concrete intervention by the West impossibly dangerous.
More than two years after Ajami's indictment of Obama's failure to act, the UN's Human Rights Council has asked "the existing UN commission of inquiry to "conduct a comprehensive independent special inquiry into the events in Aleppo in order to identify those responsible for alleged violations and to ensure that perpetrators are held accountable." (swissinfo.ch).
A comprehensive independent special inquiry! It took two years for confirmations of chlorine gas attacks by Assad on his own people to finally become official. It's not hard to imagine the glacial pace with which the UN's Human Rights Council will be moving. And unfortunately, the report will probably come out only after many more civilian deaths have occurred.
Encircled as Aleppo is, it will take a month or two for the noose to do its work. By then, all the rebel fighters will have died or faded away saving themselves to fight another day, and the civilian deaths will will be counted in the thousands. And then, the U.S. and others will point out the reason for their neglect of their ethical obligations as the presence of Russia.
