Obama Gains Time

President Obama’s speech to the nation Tuesday evening was an amazing spectacle. Intended to convince a war-weary nation to support a military strike, his speech morphed into an appeal to the American people to do the right thing.

But after the lapse committed by his secretary of state and the following Russian initiative suggesting control and subsequent destruction of Syrian chemical weapons, the relief shown by the president was unmistakable.

First of all, Obama can now avoid a congressional rebuff and he can now officially ignore the oft-repeated question of what he intends to do in this situation. To avoid looking too dumb, he can now claim to have been working with Putin for months on just such a solution. That might actually be the case, but the way things had been going for months, nothing resembled a cogent White House strategy. But no matter: If Obama can save face without having to launch missiles, the world can only be thankful.

Now it comes down to constructively using the gained time and that is true not only for the United States, France and Great Britain — all of whom have veto power in the Security Council and all of whom want to put through a resolution that will ensure Assad sticks to his promises.

Anyone following the Syrian conflict for the past 30 months must now be surprised that world interest had never reached such a high point as it did in the wake of the threat of imminent military action by the United States. As if there were no war at all until the moment the U.S. launches its missiles. That has been averted, at least for the time being. But civilians in Syria aren’t helped much by that. It was public pressure that averted the U.S. attack — and that is good because the status quo is not an option.