Commentary: Signs the war camp is losing ground

John Kerry expects that by announcing that the US has now identified Sarin as the toxic agent used by Assad’s forces in the devastating attack last August 21, he will galvanise opinion to support military action against Syria.

Sarin is a highly toxic nerve agent, developed by Nazi forces and used most notably by the Aum Shinrikyo terrorists on the Tokyo subway system in March 1995.

But there are signs that the war camp in Washington led most stridently by Kerry is losing ground. This why Barack Obama, below, is being cautious. The churn of events in the Middle East strengthen rather than weaken the positions now being taken by Mr Obama and David Cameron for that matter.

First, they know that a single set of strikes is unlikely to succeed, and if anything will prolong the civil war in Syria. Needlessly, it might tip the advantage to the more militant insurgents, with the al Qaeda elements in the lead. Second, a strike must be matched by some diplomatic plan to involve as many parties as possible to try to end the fighting across the region. The use of Sarin is egregious. But the world, led by the UN still doesn’t know how to respond to such outrageous.

And it might be instructive for those waving the war banner to look at the occasions when the US and its allies did not respond to the use of chemical weapons and outrages by Middle East dictators against their own people.

In 1982 Assad’s father ordered a brutal attack by his brother’s forces against Sunni Muslim Brotherhood insurgents in Hama – and tens of thousands were massacred. In March 1988 Saddam Hussein’s forces gassed more than 5000 Kurds in Halabja. On both occasions the US said very little and did nothing. They sat on their hands because in 1988 Saddam’s Iraq was fighting a war with Ayatollah Khomeini. Washington wanted neither side to win. One suspects the same is beginning to happen now.