It looks as if we’ll be firing Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syria in the coming days, and critics are raising legitimate concerns: 
 
 President Bashar al-Assad may escalate. Hezbollah may retaliate against Western targets. Our missiles may kill civilians. We’ll own a civil war in a broken country. We’ll be distracted from nation building at home. A couple of days of missile strikes will offer merely a slap on the wrist that advertises our impotence. 
 
 There’s some truth to all that, but we also need to acknowledge something fundamental: President Obama’s policy toward Syria has failed, and it’s time to try a tougher approach. 
 
 Obama reportedly rejected a proposal from Hillary Clinton and David Petraeus to arm rebels in Syria, because he feared getting dragged into the conflict. Now we’re getting dragged in anyway, and everything we worried about has come to pass: 
 
 The war has spread and destabilized Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey. The hard-line Nusra Front rebels have gained strength, partly because we have spurned moderates. The Syrian Army has won ground. Prolonged war has deepened sectarian hatreds that will make it harder than ever to put Syria back together. 
 
 More than 100,000 Syrians have been killed. At the rate the killings have accelerated, Syria could even approach a Rwanda-size death toll by the time Obama steps down. 
 
 I tend to be wary of the military toolbox, and I strongly opposed the Iraq war and the Afghan “surge.” But in conjunction with diplomacy, military force can save lives. We saw that in Bosnia and Kosovo under Bill Clinton (who appears to favor a more forceful American approach in Syria), and we saw that just this year in Mali. 
 
 The problem is that overcommitments in Afghanistan and Iraq have left us with society-wide PTSD, so that we’re wary of engaging in Syria at all. Obama’s passivity is easy to understand: only one-fifth of the American public favors arming rebels. 
 
 But when I was last in Syria, in November, I met a grandma who had already lost her husband, her son and her daughter-in-law to the Assad regime. She was living in her fifth home that year, a leaky tent, wondering who would die next, and like everyone was desperate for international support. “We ask for God’s help in ending this, and Obama’s,” she said. 
 
 What do we tell her? That we don’t have the stomach to help her? That we’d rather wait until all her grandkids have died and the death toll has reached hundreds of thousands and embarrassed us to take firmer action? 
 
 Granted, there’s a legitimate question about whether a day or two of missile strikes against Syria (seemingly the most likely scenario) will deter Assad from further use of chemical weapons. We can’t be sure, but to me that seems plausible. 
 
 Chemical weapons are of only marginal use, simply one more way to terrorize and demoralize opponents. President Assad has carefully calibrated his actions over the last few years, testing the domestic and international response before escalating. 
 
 At first he merely arrested protesters. Then his forces began firing on them. Next his soldiers swept hostile neighborhoods. Then the Syrian Army began firing rockets and mortars at rebel positions. Assad moved on to indiscriminate bombing. Then his army apparently used chemical weapons in small attacks. Finally, his army appears to have undertaken a major assault with nerve gas. 
 
 We’ve been the frog in the beaker. 
 
 To me there’s some hope that destroying military aircraft or intelligence headquarters can persuade Assad that chemical weapons are not worth the cost and that he is better off employing more banal ways to slaughter his people. That’s unsatisfying but would still be a useful message to other leaders. It would reinforce the international norm against weapons of mass destruction. 
 
 Are we making too much of chemical weapons? Probably less than 1 percent of those killed in Syria have died of nerve gas attacks. In Syria, a principal weapon of mass destruction has been the AK—47. 
 
 Yet there is value in bolstering international norms against egregious behavior like genocide or the use of chemical weapons. Since President Obama established a “red line” about chemical weapons use, his credibility has been at stake: he can’t just whimper and back down. 
 
 Look, Syria is going to be a mess, whatever we do. The optimal window to intervene by supporting moderate rebels to achieve a quick end to the war may have closed. But if the coming clash gives us a chance to do more to arm certain rebel groups or share intelligence with them, that would still be worthwhile — all while backing the idea of a negotiated settlement. 
 
 For all the risks of hypocrisy and ineffectiveness, it’s better to stand up inconsistently to some atrocities than to acquiesce consistently in them all. ||||| All the signs are they're going to do it again. The attack on Syria now being planned by the US and its allies will be the ninth direct western military intervention in an Arab or Muslim country in 15 years. Depending how you cut the cake, the looming bombardment follows onslaughts on Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Mali, as well as a string of murderous drone assaults on Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. 
 
 The two former colonial powers that carved up the Middle East between them, Britain and France, are as ever chafing for a slice of the action as the US assembles yet another "coalition of the willing". And as in Iraq and Sudan (where President Clinton ordered an attack on a pharmaceuticals factory in retaliation for an al-Qaida bombing), intelligence about weapons of mass destruction is once again at the centre of the case being made for a western missile strike. 
 
 In both Iraq and Sudan, the intelligence was of course wrong. But once again, UN weapons inspectors are struggling to investigate WMD claims while the US and its friends have already declared them "undeniable". Once again they are planning to bypass the UN security council. Once again, they are dressing up military action as humanitarian, while failing to win the support of their own people. 
 
 The trigger for the buildup to a new intervention – what appears to have been a chemical weapons attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta – certainly has the hallmarks of a horrific atrocity. Hundreds, mostly civilians, are reported killed and many more wounded, their suffering caught on stomach-churning videos. 
 
 But so far no reliable evidence whatever has been produced to confirm even what chemical might have been used, let alone who delivered it. The western powers and their allies, including the Syrian rebels, insist the Syrian army was responsible. The Damascus government and its international backers, Russia and Iran, blame the rebels. 
 
 The regime, which has large stockpiles of chemical weapons, undoubtedly has the capability and the ruthlessness. But it's hard to see a rational motivation. Its forces have been gaining ground in recent months and the US has repeatedly stated that chemical weapons use is a "red line" for escalation. 
 
 For the same reason, the rebel camp (and its regional sponsors), which has been trying to engineer a western intervention in the Libya-Kosovo mould for the past two years to tip the military balance, clearly has an interest in that red line being crossed. 
 
 Three months ago, the UN Syria human rights commission member Carla Del Ponte said there were "strong concrete suspicions" that rebel fighters had used the nerve gas sarin, and Turkish security forces were reported soon afterwards to have seized sarin from al-Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front units heading into Syria. 
 
 The arms proliferation expert, Paul Schulte, of King's College London, believes rebel responsibility "can't be ruled out", even if the "balance of probability" points to the regime or a rogue military commander. Either way, whatever Colin Powell-style evidence is produced this week, it's highly unlikely to be definitive. 
 
 But that won't hold back the western powers from the chance to increase their leverage in Syria's grisly struggle for power. A comparison of their response to the Ghouta killings with this month's massacres of anti-coup protesters in Egypt gives a measure of how far humanitarianism rules the day. 
 
 The Syrian atrocity, where the death toll has been reported by opposition-linked sources at 322 but is likely to rise, was damned as a "moral obscenity" by US secretary of state John Kerry. The killings in Egypt, the vast majority of them of civilians, have been estimated at 1,295 over two days. But Barack Obama said the US wasn't "taking sides", while Kerry earlier claimed the army was "restoring democracy". 
 
 In reality, western and Gulf regime intervention in Syria has been growing since the early days of what began as a popular uprising against an autocratic regime but has long since morphed into a sectarian and regional proxy war, estimated to have killed over 100,000, balkanised the country and turned more than a million people into refugees. 
 
 Now covert support has become open military backing for a rebel movement split into over 1,000 groups and increasingly dominated by jihadist fighters, as atrocities have multiplied on all sides. While the focus has been on Ghouta this week, rebels have been ethnically cleansing tens of thousands of Kurds from north east Syria across the border into Iraq. 
 
 Until now, the western camp has been prepared to bleed Syria while Obama has resisted pressure for what he last week called more "difficult, costly interventions that actually breed more resentment". Now the risk to US red line credibility seems to have tipped him over to back a direct military attack. 
 
 But even if it turns out that regime forces were responsible for Ghouta, that's unlikely to hold them to account or remove the risk from chemical weapons. More effective would be an extension of the weapons inspectors' mandate to secure chemical dumps, backed by a united security council, rather than moral grandstanding by governments that have dumped depleted uranium, white phosphorus and Agent Orange around the region and beyond. 
 
 In any case, chemical weapons are far from being the greatest threat to Syria's people. That is the war itself and the death and destruction that has engulfed the country. If the US, British and French governments were genuinely interested in bringing it to an end – instead of exploiting it to weaken Iran – they would be using their leverage with the rebels and their sponsors to achieve a ceasefire and a negotiated political settlement. 
 
 Instead, they seem intent on escalating the war to save Obama's face and tighten their regional grip. It's a dangerous gamble, which British MPs have a responsibility to oppose on Thursday. 
 
 Even if the attacks are limited, they will certainly increase the death toll and escalate the war. The risk is that they will invite retaliation by Syria or its allies – including against Israel – draw the US in deeper and spread the conflict. The west can use this crisis to help bring Syria's suffering to an end – or pour yet more petrol on the flames. 
 
 Twitter: @SeumasMilne ||||| In October 1983, the United States led a military invasion of Grenada, a tiny Caribbean island nation, after a bloody coup ousted the government of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, who was assassinated. President Ronald Reagan was said to have been concerned about a 10,000-foot-long airstrip that the communist country's military was building, which he thought would enable planes loaded with arms from Cuba to reach insurgents in Central America. The administration was also concerned about the safety of 800 American medical students studying in Grenada. 
 
 Grenada: Unilateral U.S. military action In October 1983, the United States led a military invasion of Grenada, a tiny Caribbean island nation, after a bloody coup ousted the government of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, who was assassinated. President Ronald Reagan was said to have been concerned about a 10,000-foot-long airstrip that the communist country's military was building, which he thought would enable planes loaded with arms from Cuba to reach insurgents in Central America. The administration was also concerned about the safety of 800 American medical students studying in Grenada. AP 
 
 Since the Vietnam War, the United States has engaged in several military interventions. As the West looks ready to act against Syria, accused of using chemical weapons against its own citizens, here are 10 instances when America has intervened, sometimes without authorization from the United Nations. Produced by Anup Kaphle. 
 
 The Obama administration believes that U.S. intelligence has established how Syrian government forces stored, assembled and launched the chemical weapons allegedly used in last week’s attack outside Damascus, according to U.S. officials. 
 
 The administration is planning to release evidence, possibly as soon as Thursday, that it will say proves that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad bears responsibility for what U.S. officials have called an “undeniable” chemical attack that killed hundreds on the outskirts of the Syrian capital. 
 
 The report, being compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is one of the final steps that the administration is taking before President Obama makes a decision on a U.S. military strike against Syria, which now appears all but inevitable. 
 
 “We are prepared,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told the BBC on Tuesday. “We have moved assets in place to be able to fulfill and comply with whatever option the president wishes to take. We are ready to go.” The assets include four cruise-missile-armed destroyers in the Mediterranean. 
 
 The timing of such a military response is being dictated by the need not only to assemble incontrovertible evidence against Assad — an important prerequisite for the administration, and the country, given the recent memories of a war based on false claims of weapons of mass destruction — but also to allow consultation with Congress and international partners. 
 
 Timeline: Unrest in Syria Two years after the first anti-government protests, conflict in Syria rages on. See the major events in the country's tumultuous uprising. 
 
 Britain, France and Turkey have indicated willingness to contribute to military action. The administration is weighing the importance of direct international participation in an effort that U.S. forces are prepared to undertake themselves. 
 
 The safety of United Nations experts who are in Syria investigating the chemical weapons allegations is also an issue, said a senior administration official who spoke about internal deliberations on the condition of anonymity. 
 
 The U.N. experts, who on Monday conducted the first of what was to be four days of on-site inspections, postponed their Tuesday visit because of security concerns. Reports of the Aug. 21 attack in the Ghouta area outside Damascus derailed their original plans to visit three other sites in western Syria where chemical strikes allegedly occurred earlier, and the permission granted by the government for a two-week stay expires Sunday. 
 
 “We are concerned about the possibility that the Syrian government would seek to delay access and negotiate so as to seek to keep this [inspection] process going and avert the consequences,” the administration official said. Ongoing government shelling of 
 
 Ghouta and surrounding areas, the official said, “is creating more time and space for them to seek to cover things up and delay.” 
 
 One question that is unlikely to be addressed in the intelligence report is why Assad would launch such a massive chemical strike in the face of a near-certain international response. It is a question that Russia, Assad’s principal international backer, has raised repeatedly in suggesting that Syrian rebels arranged the attack to implicate the government. 
 
 Paul Danahar, author of "The New Middle East" and former BBC Middle East bureau chief, explains how the Obama administration's red line leaves it with no other option than to take action in Syria. (The Washington Post) 
 
 In a telephone call Tuesday with British Prime Minister David Cameron, Russian President Vladimir Putin said his government “did not have evidence of whether a chemical weapons attack had taken place, or who was responsible,” a statement on Cameron’s official Web site said. 
 
 The Obama administration has rejected the possibility of rebel culpability, asserting that only the government has possession of the weapons and the rockets to deliver them. But others have speculated that the lack of an international response to the earlier, much smaller alleged chemical attacks may have emboldened Assad; that government forces last week may have mistakenly mixed the chemicals to a higher concentration than intended; or that areas with a high density of civilians may have been mistakenly targeted. 
 
 As it continued to consult with other countries, the administration earned key support from the Arab League. In an emergency meeting in Cairo, the influential organization blamed Assad for last week’s alleged attack and called for the perpetrators to be brought to international justice. 
 
 The 22 league members stopped well short of endorsing outside military action, but they urged the U.N. Security Council to agree on “deterrent” measures. 
 
 Saudi Arabia’s longtime foreign minister added that a “decisive and serious” international stand is required against Syria. 
 
 Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said Tuesday that charges of chemical weapons use by the government are “categorically baseless,” according to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, and that Syria was committed to facilitating the U.N. inspection. 
 
 “We all hear the drums of war around us,” Moualem said. “If they want to attack Syria, I think that using the lie of chemical weapons is fake and not accurate, and I challenge them to show evidence.” 
 
 He said the idea of a Western military strike to change the balance of power in Syria, which has been embroiled in a vicious conflict for more than two years, is “delusional and not at all possible.” 
 
 U.S. officials have said that any strike would be limited in scope and duration and would be intended as both punishment for the use of chemical weapons and as a deterrent. Options under consideration would target military installations, avoiding Syria’s numerous and widely dispersed chemical storage sites, many of which are in civilian areas. 
 
 The administration remains reluctant to intervene directly in Syria’s civil war, raising questions about its next step after a retaliatory strike against the regime. 
 
 “The conventional wisdom is that they will launch some Tomahawks [cruise missiles] from destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean. That’s not going to dramatically change the course of events in Syria,” said Ryan C. Crocker, a retired senior U.S. diplomat and former ambassador to Syria and Iraq. 
 
 To avenge what they called the “massacre” in the Damascus suburbs, al-Qaeda-linked Islamist extremists among the rebels said Tuesday that they would strike Assad’s security branches and infrastructure, according to a statement signed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Ahar al-Sham rebel group and seven other factions. 
 
 The White House began contacting leading lawmakers for briefings that congressional officials said were to inform rather than seek permission. With Congress out of session, reaction to the crisis has been relatively muted, though a small group of House members planned to deliver a letter to Obama on Wednesday saying that Congress would reconvene, if necessary, to consider a strike beforehand. 
 
 Polls taken before last week’s alleged chemical attack consistently showed Americans opposed to U.S. intervention in Syria. Complicating the political task for Obama is that any military action, even if brief, calls into question his long-standing opposition to a new Middle East war and could anger some liberal supporters. 
 
 Preparations for military action were clear among U.S. allies. Cameron cut short a vacation to return to London and announced that he would recall Parliament on Thursday to discuss the issue. The prime minister’s office said British forces were drawing up contingency plans for a “proportionate” response. 
 
 In a televised address, French President François Hollande said it was the world’s responsibility to take action. “France is ready to punish those who took the decision to gas the innocent,” Hollande said. 
 
 Ernesto Londoño in Washington, Colum Lynch at the United Nations, Loveday Morris and Ahmed Ramadan in Beirut and Anthony Faiola and Karla Adam in London contributed to this report.
– As the US considers what to do about Syria, there's no shortage of advice on the pros and cons: Pro-strike: Nicholas Kristof is generally wary of the "military toolbox," but it's important here to "reinforce the international norm against weapons of mass destruction," he writes in the New York Times. "For all the risks of hypocrisy and ineffectiveness, it’s better to stand up inconsistently to some atrocities than to acquiesce consistently in them all." Ditto: "Deepening American involvement in yet another Middle East conflict goes against President Obama’s instincts—and ours," write the editors at the Miami Herald. "Unemployment should be his principal focus. But events have a way of intruding on presidential agendas. In this instance, it’s unavoidable. Syria’s brazen disregard for humanitarian norms cannot go unanswered." Bad idea: Just what the world needs, yet another western military intervention in an Arab or Muslim country, writes Seumas Milne at the Guardian. Too many questions persist about the alleged chemical weapons attack, he writes, adding that military strikes would only escalate the war. "The risk is that they will invite retaliation by Syria or its allies—including against Israel—draw the US in deeper and spread the conflict." Better for the West to use its leverage with the rebels to try to force cease-fire talks. Slow down: This is remarkably similar to the run-ups to both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, writes Patrick L Smith at Salon. "Make that tragically similar. History proceeds, we Americans insist on the virtue of ignorance, on learning nothing and knowing nothing. And what we are about to get is what we get, predictably and always." Give the UN investigators the time they need, he urges. Ask Congress: Whatever the final decision, President Obama must consult with Congress about it, writes Amy Davidson at the New Yorker. "Having people, representatives, raise their hands before you do something is not an empty ritual, even when they don’t vote the way you want them to," she writes. The White House can't just ignore the War Powers Act whenever it's convenient. "The Administration needs to be interrogated, sharply, about just what it thinks is going to happen after the two or maybe three days of missile strikes that leaks tell us to expect."