Syria: Barack Obama's lack of action has had predicted consequences As Mr Obama has made in painfully language clear to anyone that would listen, in his view, there are really no solutions in Syria - and certainly not ones that can be helped by US military action. But the chemical weapons strikes in Damascus, which William Hague has said were almost certainly carried out by the Assad regime, presents Mr Obama with a direct challenge to his authority that is more difficult - perhaps impossible - to ignore. The truth is, the President of the United States has a major credibility problem, and everyone from Middle Eastern tyrants to the lowliest White House intern knows it. Almost exactly a year ago he promised "enormous consequences" if Mr Assad crossed the "red line" and used chemical weapons, but then spent a year trying to dodge or redefine that pledge. Only after Wednesday's apparently barefaced challenge by Mr Assad has Mr Obama, after three days of thumb-sucking, ordered several cruise missile destroyers to close their ranges on Syria. But the choreography of events this week in Washington demonstrated just how weak is the position of the man who now threatens gunboat diplomacy after more than two years of conducting a policy of deliberate inaction. For much of this week, Mr Obama was still doing his absolute best not to confront the abominable events in Damascus in terms of the war crime that it was - think Srebrenica or Halabja - but to play them down. While opposition activists were broadcasting from the Damascus suburbs, demanding to know why the world was doing nothing as the children died, for 72 hours there came no answer from Washington, only the diplomatic equivalent of the sound of shuffling feet, and now, it seems, shuffling ships. For two days after the attacks Mr Obama - the master of the bully pulpit when it suits him - was nowhere to be seen. Instead Mr Obama sent a man rejoicing in the title of "Principal Deputy Press Secretary" to express how "deeply concerned" the White House was about the attacks - delivering those sentiments many hours after the event, via email. The US television networks, sensitive to that war-weary public, largely followed Mr Obama's decision not to lead. The White House press corps did its best to point out just how yawing has become the gap between Mr Obama's promises and his actions, but they were batted away with a lame joke by the Principal Deputy Press Secretary who declined to discuss the "red lines": "I didn't bring my red pen out with me today," he said. It was not until Friday morning - two full days after the attacks - that Mr Obama finally spoke in person, and then in markedly less urgent tones than the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, who - to his great credit - has refused to cover for Mr Obama and said he believed the Assad regime was responsible. As in the past, Mr Obama ignored the counsel of his allies and soft-pedalled. It was a matter of "grave concern" that would indeed "require America's attention" if investigations proved what others had been saying, he intoned with lawyerly dispassion to CNN. "The notion that the US can somehow solve what is a sectarian, complex problem inside of Syria sometimes is overstated," Mr Obama added wearily. It was his usual rhetorical trick - framing any call to act or lead as a demand to wave a magic wand that he does not have. But this isn't about solutions any more - that moment seems long passed - it is about the credibility of Mr Obama and what its loss means when it comes to dealing with others states, like Egypt or Iran. As both British and American generals have made clear, the window for game-changing Western military intervention is shut, but when the US president threatens "consequences," something must happen - or as the Assad regime apparently demonstrated with unutterable cruelty this week, he will simply be ignored. Mr Obama likes to contend - as he did after the massacre in Cairo earlier this month - that America cannot "determine the future" of countries like Egypt or Syria. As things stand, he says, the world's most powerful nation is impotent. But objectively speaking, that isn't true. Mr Obama could have acted. He could have armed the rebels, as they begged him to, and before Islamist rebels flooded the country. He could have ordered a no-fly zone be thrown up over Syria, as many people also argued for in the early days of this conflict. Even today, Mr Obama still has options, even if they are less palatable and more complex than they would have been two years ago. He could, as a Washington Post editorial suggested last week, order direct punitive retaliation against the Assad forces and put up a new no-fly zone over southern Syria. The truth is that Mr Obama has actively chosen not to do these things, against the advice of several of his most senior advisers, with consequences that many predicted. The political sleight of hand, with which America's war-weary public happily acquiesces, is that the president really had no choice at all. But he did. And he still does.