No passion, no new arguments as Barack Obama restates unpopular case for Syria strike Unfortunately for Mr Obama, America and Congress has made clear it does not agree. Opinion polls show that 80 per cent of Americans accept that the Assad regime used gas on his people, but even so they do not want to risk entanglement in another foreign war. And so Mr Obama was reduced to delivering the rhetorical equivalent of a shrug: there were no new arguments, no conspicuous display of passion. Instead the president, sounding both hurt and baffled, requested members of Congress examine their consciences as to why, after he had dignified their offices with consultations and explanations, they had decided to leave him so embarrassed. "To my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America's military might with a failure to act when a cause is so plainly just," he said. To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor, for sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right Mr Obama seemed to be saying, and me stuck in the middle trying to persuade a war-weary public whose minds (he had already admitted in a meeting with Congressman yesterday) were very unlikely to be changed by this speech. Against this background, Mr Obama set out the Russian proposal to put Syria's chemical weapons beyond use, citing the "credible threat of US military action" for bringing Assad to the table, even as he chided members of Congress for failing to back his decision to use that force. "I've ordered our military to maintain their current posture," Mr Obama said, "to keep the pressure on Assad and to be in a position to respond if diplomacy fails." But with Congress having already made clear once that it will not back strikes, such threats now echo with emptiness - and the commander-in-chief, by his words and his demeanour, was unable to conceal that uncomfortable fact.