What the commentators said

“Obama tells every interviewer that he is anguished over Syria,” said Richard Cohen in The Washington Post, as he should be. Aleppo is not just a “place of carnage”, it is also a “symbol of US weakness”. The president’s failure to intervene has emboldened America’s enemies across the world to challenge its authority. China feels free to push unfounded claims to control sea lanes in the Pacific; North Korea presses ahead with plans for nuclear missiles capable of hitting the US mainland; and Russia is keeping hold of Crimea, as well as a “hunk of Ukraine”. And it’s Putin who has emerged as the big winner, said Natalie Nougayrède in The Guardian. Who cares if his country is in deep recession – Russia’s economy is no larger than Australia’s – or that he has shown utter indifference to the atrocities committed by Assad’s forces? What matters to his admirers is that he has “outmanoeuvred” the Americans. Obama leaves a “festering crisis to his successor”.

Alas, neither presidential candidate can offer a credible solution, said Paul Wood in The Spectator. Trump once claimed to have a “foolproof plan”, but now says only that he’d give the US army 30 days to devise a new strategy. Clinton supports the idea of a no-fly zone in northern Syria, though any such safe haven might also provide shelter for America’s jihadi enemies. But when did Washington ever have a coherent strategy, asked Anshel Pfeffer in Haaretz (Tel Aviv). Its policy on Syria has always been marked by “retreats, adaptations and reversals”. At the very start of the conflict, it might have forced Assad to back down by imposing a no-fly zone. Yet it ignored the “beseeching” of the rebels. As for its policy on arming the opposition, this switched from “a total veto on supplies, to non-lethal assistance, to weapons only for ‘vetted’ organisations”. Such confusion has only allowed the bloodbath to continue. Syria’s suffering “will be an indelible stain” on Obama’s legacy.