GEORGETOWN, Guyana - Increasingly intense diplomacy among the Nato powers about the turmoil in Syria has been a feature of the last few weeks leading to this week’s G8 meeting hosted by Britain in Northern Ireland, once a similar scene of political-religious and military turmoil. The European powers have been pressing an apparently reluctant President Obama to join them in supplying military assistance to what are called the rebels in Syria. And just before the G8, they were joined by an American eminence, former President Bill Clinton, with his almost unprecedented criticism of Obama as unwittingly setting himself up to look like a “fool.”
The President has now conceded that what he had referred to as his “red line” not to be crossed by President Assad of Syria – the use of chemical weapons – has now been crossed; though this has looked more like a diplomatic convenience to appease the pressure coming from within the US, as well as from the British and French in particular, among the European powers.