U.S. President Barack Obama faces a dilemma over Syria as he has to choose whether to use military force after the reported use of chemical weapons in that country. Yet, none of the choices seems free of pitfalls.
Obama is definitely preparing for a military showdown. He called a National Security Council meeting Saturday via satellite link, to that end. The participants included Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Brennan, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey and other senior officials.
According to the White House, Obama "received a detailed review of a range of potential options he had requested be prepared for the United States and the international community to respond to the use of chemical weapons."
U.S. officials said the options ranged from precision strikes using cruise missiles to a sustained air campaign. Hagel, who was visiting Asia, also told reporters that Defense Department had prepared options for all contingencies as requested by Obama.
"We are prepared to exercise whatever options" that Obama decides to employ, said Hagel at a press conference after meeting his Malaysian counterpart Hishammuddin Hussein on Sunday.
The U.S. military, meanwhile, is doing its part in the gunboat diplomacy. Media reports on Saturday quoted unidentified defense officials as saying that the U.S. Navy had sent a fourth warship, which is armed with cruise missiles, into the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
Obama also did some coalition building as his military busied themselves. He called British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande respectively on Saturday and Sunday to discuss Syria, and "possible responses by the international community."
All these moves point to a military intervention. But Obama himself remained cautious. He told CNN in a recent interview that before deciding what to do next, the United Nations must formally conclude that Assad had in fact ordered the chemical weapons attack that is said to have killed hundreds or thousands of people, including women and children.
And even then, the U.S. could only move ahead with some kind of military action if it had the approval of the U.N. or a broad international consensus, Obama said.
"There are rules of international law," he said. "If the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a UN mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it, do we have the coalition to make it work, and, you know, those are considerations that we have to take into account."
That proof and UN authorization may never come through. The Obama administration announced Sunday morning, via a senior administration official, that reports Assad will allow United Nations inspectors into the country - days after a reported attack - can't possibly lead to proof that the regime isn't using or harboring chemical weapons.
"At this juncture, the belated decision by the regime to grant access to the UN team is too late to be credible, including because the evidence available has been significantly corrupted as a result of the regime's persistent shelling and other intentional actions over the last five days," the official said, while the administration sees "very little doubt" that Syrian government used chemical weapons.
Moreover, there are more to the picture than just Syria. Iran and Russia both urged the United States to use restraint, and never make the mistake of unilateral military intervention in the case of Syria.
These complications aside, Aaron David Miller, vice president for new initiatives at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, wrote in a recent article that Obama is not in the mood for Syria right now.
"There's no doubt he'd rather be remembered as a president who tried to repair America's broken house than one who chased around the world on a quixotic quest to fix somebody else's," wrote Miller.
"Immigration reform, the budget, making Obama care work, continuing to focus on infrastructure, education -- these are things that are important to the American people and to the legacy of a president who is of one of only 17 elected to a second term. Time's running out. Why squander it on problems he cannot fix, like Syria?"
There's also the curious case of Syrian opposition. As General Dempsey pointed out in a letter last week to Representative Eliot Engel, top democrat in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the United States can tip the military balance toward the Syrian opposition, but it has refused to do so mainly because the rebels may not back U.S. interests once they seize power.
That, explained Miller, is to say that "in Syria, the danger isn't the false Afghanistan/Iraq analogy of boots on the ground; it's the more apt lesson about using U.S. military power in a situation where the political objectives are unclear and the costs truly unknown."
But that doesn't mean Obama is unlikely to take any action toward Syria. In the CNN interview, Obama said "core national interests" of the U.S. are now involved in Syria's civil war, "both in terms of us making sure that weapons of mass destruction are not proliferating, as well as needing to protect our allies, our bases in the region," as chemical weapons are now in the equation.
Yet, how to deal with the situation, it is really a nut for Obama.
