First, then, inaction; followed by a decision to act quickly rescinded in favour of a Congressional vote he was likelier to lose than win; and with it, a delay that could only be read as hesitancy by all the regional players, both friend and foe; and finally, in the midst of the debate before the vote, a deferral to a flight of fancy, courtesy of a Russian diplomatic offer that looks more like a pretext than a solution.

 Obama has insisted that, had it not been for America's resolve to launch a strike, there would not have been a Russian initiative. But considering that the cost of Russia's proposal is that Assad stays in power and Moscow becomes the guarantor of his compliance, it is hard to see anything positive in this arrangement, especially because it will take months to negotiate and be hard to implement even in the best of circumstances.

The only thing that emerges from the last few weeks of Obama's indecision is that at every juncture of this crisis he found it easier to perform the role of  critical intellectual than that of commander-in-chief. It is as if his utterances are not statements of intent and enunciations of policy but rather the educated expression of a wish or an opinion, the implementation of which will somehow fall on other people.

So when Obama said that "Assad must go" he never apparently meant to announce a US policy; he just said, out loud, that he wished that Assad would go, much as a disgruntled football fan might wish his team's manager to quit. When he defined the use of chemical weapons as a red line, Obama must have intended, once again, not to warn of a US-initiated response but merely to express the hope that Assad would stop short of murdering his own people with chemical weapons. Now Obama has done it again. Although Assad should be punished, Obama is not going to punish him. Although he has the authority, he will not use it. Even though diplomacy has failed, it would be nice if it were to succeed. And although Assad is like Hitler, and Obama invokes Roosevelt, the American people prefer to rebuild the economy at home rather than engage in foreign wars. 

Obama almost appears not to be in charge. Rather than embarking on a course of action, he is explaining to the world what the dilemmas are, in the hope that the world will relieve him of the responsibility of actually having to choose one course of action over the other.

 With an American President in the role of lecturer rather than leader, the killing in Syria will continue.