As President Obama’s second term kicks off, the conflict in Syria spirals into its third year. In that there is so much at stake for the United States and the region as a whole, and in that the humanitarian consequences in Syria have been beyond catastrophic, the events in Syria will pose the toughest decisions on the second Obama administration’s foreign policy agenda. To be precise, what President Obama does or fails to do in Syria will define the state of the Middle East for decades to come.

The conflict in Syria has claimed over 60,000 lives and has displaced more than 2 million Syrians. Over 600,000 Syrians are refugees in neighboring countries. As the armed opposition to the Syrian government, the Free Syrian Army, attempts to solidify its control over parts of northern, eastern and central Syria, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad continues to authorize attacks on innocent civilians, as highlighted by the recent bombing of the University of Aleppo. The Syrian army and gangs loyal to Assad have had no shortage of means to inflict terror and suffering on the Syrian people. The world has watched idly, and Western powers have continued to deliver condemnation upon condemnation of Assad and have continued to point to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s support of the Syrian regime as the principal enabler of Assad’s war crimes. The reality is that the responsibility of what happens in Syria falls upon American leadership.

Our leadership has adopted the policy of “leading from behind,” recklessly attaching itself to futile diplomatic means to bring Assad down after Assad has continuously indicated that he is not to be reasoned with. His latest public speech was the rhetorical equivalent of giving the middle finger to the U.S. and U.N. Meanwhile, our allies neighboring Syria, including Turkey and Israel, continually experience conflict leaking across their borders, and Iranian leadership remains empowered as Assad, Iran’s only Arab ally, thwarts the West with his noncompliance and massacring of his own people.

During his first term, President Obama arguably treated the conflict with caution to avoid a potential prolonged military entanglement that would burden American taxpayers with another Middle Eastern war and ultimately cost him his reelection. Whatever his motives for inaction were, he ignored the calls of Secretary Clinton, Secretary Panetta and CIA Director Petraeus for active engagement in Syria. This caution is reflected in the fact that the Obama administration has drawn the red line for Assad at the use of his large chemical weapons stockpile. In other words, Assad can continue to slaughter innocent civilians with any weapons at his disposal without any reaction from the United States. That is the Obama Syria policy: no policy at all.  

As the civil war continues to uproot Syrian lives and send the entire country a year back for every month it ensues, Assad and his Russian advisers know very well that Obama’s red lines are nothing but rhetoric. This reinforces to Assad that U.S. leadership is impotent in asserting its relevance and influence in the region. President Obama made it clear that the use of chemical weapons would change his “calculus” and would force him to act. As much as some Syrian political and military opposition groups state otherwise, the Syrian opposition needs U.S. leadership to end this conflict. But as of now, the Syrian people have found a U.S. president too paralyzed to be counted on.

As a Syrian-American who used to spend his summers in Syria, I haven’t the heart to speak to my grandparents while their neighbors are murdered, their house in Homs is quartered by the Syrian Army, their grandchildren are traumatized and their golden years are lost to the destruction of their beloved country, all while my president and my country do nothing. While former President George W. Bush’s reckless interventions cost America blood and treasure and damaged the United States’ image and partnerships with the Muslim world, President Obama’s weak leadership is costing us even more. U.N. envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi warned that as many as 100,000 Syrians could be killed by the end of 2013. As Syria burns and threatens to engulf the entire region, the United States will face a Syrian generation and Arab people disillusioned with American influence and reliability and a world distrustful of America’s resolve to act when it matters the most.

Adham Sahloul, sophomore in LAS and previously served as a policy fellow at the Syrian Emergency Task Force in Washington