For Barack Obama, Syria is best forgotten this election year

Why can’t this president simply state the truth, that the Syrian people are rising out of decades of servitude and fear to bid for a new political life? On my recent visit to Syrian refugee camps in Turkey, ordinary Syrians asked me why the U.S. was not more concerned with their fate. But they ask and anguish less and less over Obama, knowing that their sorrows have not stirred his conscience. The Obama policy rests on a blissful belief that Syria will burn out without damage to American interests, and that the president himself can stay aloof from this crisis. By his lights, he has kept his compact with his progressive base – he liquidated the war in Iraq and has kept out of the conflict next door in Syria. It suffices that Osama bin Laden was killed, and drone attacks on Al-Qaeda continue apace.