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Obama mulling the least bad option

Cnn Online
Among the most enduring urban legends about high-level policy-making in the US government is the proverbial memo with three options: 1. do nothing; 2. do everything; 3. find a middle ground and muddle through.
And yet in truth, Barack Obama really does have only three options in Syria. It appears that the president, rightly the avoider-in-chief when it comes to Syria, has chosen option three, the least bad alternative. And here's why.
Do nothing
This isn't really an option. Forget the fact that the president a year ago drew his own red line against Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons. Disregard the reality that this is reportedly the largest single deployment of chemical weapons since Saddam Hussein used them against the Kurds in 19 88; dismiss the fact that 100,000 Syrians have died in this civil conflict; and the president is accused of fiddling, Nero-like, while Syria burns.
Just focus on the events of the past five days in Washington. What has been emanating from administration officials both on and off the record is the most well-advertised and telegraphed military action in the history of modern warfare. All indicators rules out this option.
Do everything
From the beginning, senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham and a whole host of liberal interventionists and neoconservatives outside the government have repeatedly called for a more robust policy on Syria, even suggesting that the president, by not acting sooner, enabled all of this misery to unfold.
They have not called for boots on the ground but for extensive use of no-fly zones, the use of US air and missile power to degrade the regime and military support for the opposition.
President Obama has wisely and willfully avoided this approach.
Syria is in the throes of a brutal civil war. The opposition is composed of more than 1,000 disparate rebel groups, the most effective allied with al-Qaeda and other Sunni extremists. A victory of the latter would be a blow to US interests. Ousting al-Assad won't be cheap or easy. It took eight months to get rid of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, and he had no weapons of mass destruction, no serious air defenses or military capacity and no credible allies.
Muddle through
The option the US is likely to undertake -focused more narrowly on trying to deter the Syrians from using chemical weapons again and degrading al-Assad's military capacity in the process - is far from ideal. Although I think the administration's military actions will be far more devastating
than the limited strikes being talked about, it is unlikely to change the arc of the battlefield balance.
There are other downsides, too. After the attack, sooner or later, al-Assad will commit some other horror that may require lengthy LIS response.
To be sure, there are real risks in acting on option three, and Obama most assuredly is a reluctant warrior. Indeed, in view of the parliamentary opposition to British Prime Minister David Cameron's willingness to join the US, he may be a lonely warrior, too. But he's going to war with Syria nonetheless. Al-Assad’s apparent use of chemical weapons, the president's own words and those of others in his administration leave him no other choice.