George Packer: The U.N."s Report on Chemical Weapons in Syria: The New Yorker Every year, the United Nations issues hundreds of solemn documents, written in the clotted prose of international bureaucracy, and they disappear without a trace, while horrors continue unabated. Last week's "Report on the Alleged Use of Chemical Weapons in the Ghouta Area of Damascus on 21 August 2013" might prove the exception. Its language is studiedly neutral, its conclusions deliberately limited, but its findings are devastating and could mark a turning point in Syria's civil war. Under severe time constraints, due to the fighting, U.N. investigators interviewed and examined thirty-six survivors in two locations. The oldest was sixty-eight; the youngest was seven. Many had lost at least two family members; a pair of brothers were the only survivors among forty relatives who all lived in the same building. The warheads contained sarin nerve gas, which is twenty-six times as deadly as cyanide, at a capacity of more than fifty litres - much greater than expected. "Chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in the Syrian Arab Republic, also against civilians, including children, on a relatively large scale," the report's authors concluded, in the passive voice. Then they allowed themselves a single expression of feeling: "This result leaves us with the deepest concern." By prior agreement, the report assigns no responsibility. But an appendix on munitions provides hard evidence on two of the warheads used - ballistics, angles of trajectory, compass bearings, artillery ranges - which turns the passive voice active and leads to one culprit. Independent calculations by C. J. Chivers, of the Times, and Josh Lyons, of Human Rights Watch, conclude that those warheads were launched from the government stronghold above Damascus, almost certainly by loyalist forces. In plain language, President Bashar al-Assad, along with other members of his regime, is a war criminal. His patron, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, has been exposed as a liar. Putin's recent Times Op-Ed, while pledging allegiance to the U.N., asserted that "there is every reason to believe" that poison gas "was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces." This has been the Russian line from the first hours after the attacks, and, as soon as the U.N. report was released, Russian officials tried to repudiate its findings, though they have yet to offer any contrary proof. In the dominant Washington view, President Obama has been outmaneuvered into complying with Syria and Russia by his own bumbling. There's plenty to criticize in the Administration's confusion and indecision throughout the war. Still, the United States has strategized or lucked its way into the most auspicious moment to negotiate a political solution since the war began. As a result of U.S.-Russian talks, Assad will be obliged to rid himself of chemical weapons in the coming months (the first deadlines are coming up fast), and, if he dissembles or delays, a U.N. resolution, with Russia's approval, will mandate punitive consequences, though not likely military ones. Americans who wanted missile strikes now argue that dealing with Assad legitimatizes and perpetuates him. History offers a different view: when diplomacy, supported by sanctions and force, or the threat of it, persuades tyrants to back down, they have a way of growing weaker, sometimes terminally. Ask Slobodan Milosevic or Muammar Qaddafi. Meanwhile, Iran's new President, Hassan Rouhani, has a new policy of engagement. On the eve of his visit to New York, for the opening session of the U.N. General Assembly, he published an op-ed of his own, in the Washington Post. Unlike Putin's, it was straightforward as well as shrewd. "I announce my government's readiness to help facilitate dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition," Rouhani wrote. Iran is deeply implicated in the war, and its participation in talks would be an essential condition for any settlement. Where the piece criticizes unilateralism ("Security is pursued at the expense of the insecurity of others, with disastrous consequences"), most readers will assume that Rouhani is complaining about American wars, but the shot may also have been aimed at his own country's military hard-liners. Without naming names, he also strongly condemned the use of chemical weapons in Syria. During the Iran-Iraq War, some hundred thousand Iranians were gassed by Saddam Hussein's forces, with the connivance of the U.S., and moral outrage at poison gas runs deep in Iran. Negotiations over Syria would test Rouhani's commitment to the latest dictator to use it. A political solution leading to a new Syrian government has always been the Administration's official policy, but Obama has shown little energy in pursuing it. To envision such a thing at this late hour raises a thousand vexing questions. The war began as a popular uprising against an oppressive government, but it has devolved into an existential struggle involving ethnic groups, religious sects, and foreign fighters, and some of the rebel commanders have committed war crimes, too. The fighting will go on for a long time, inflaming the whole neighborhood, and any tenable solution will require Syria's Sunnis, Alawis, Christians, and Kurds to believe that there will be a safe and fair place for them in a new order. Those groups, along with their regional backers, will have to give up the dream of victory, perhaps recognizing that a common enemy - the Sunni extremists in the rebels" midst - may pose the greatest threat of all. It's much harder to imagine this outcome after years of slaughter. Obama might be tempted to regard the past few weeks in Syria as a crisis averted. But, without making some sort of deeper commitment - negotiating corridors for humanitarian aid, appointing a high-level envoy - it will be difficult to bring leverage to the negotiating table. In recent days, the more pragmatic rebels have fought extremists near the Turkish border, and the opposition coalition has condemned the brutality of jihadi groups. These conflicts might suggest to some a way for the U.S. to provide arms and training to the moderates, yet further entanglement of that sort would be fraught with risk, and the public has shown no more appetite for it than the President has. What the authors of the U.N. report call "the deepest concern" lies at the heart of a generation-long debate in foreign affairs. Do the strong have a responsibility to protect the weak? The mass murder in Ghouta raised the question again. This time, Obama answered in the affirmative, but he also answered as the leader of a democracy, and the people told him no: they were tired, they had their own troubles, they didn't want to take on anyone else's. Americans are living in the long shadow of Iraq, where the light of international concern seems unable to get in. Even Obama's yes offered little comfort to Syrians: he would fire missiles ("unbelievably small" but not "pinpricks"); America would uphold an "international norm"; and then the real killing would continue. The latest debate over the use of force has passed, while the war goes on. What remains on the table is the use of politics. ♦