Barack Obama has gone to great pains recently to explain the broad moral and policy context of his foreign policy choices for the remaining years of his presidency. Syria stands out, however, as a prominent exception to Washington’s kinder and gentler approach to foreign policy.

The US president's self-declared interest is to close the file on Afghanistan and all that it represents — an ill-considered case of mission creep marked by costly military escalation, counterinsurgency and, at best, ambiguous outcomes. He insists that he has learned something after more than a decade of war in the Middle East and Asia. 

“Since World War II,” he explained at West Point, “some of our most costly mistakes came not from our restraint but from our willingness to rush into military adventures without thinking through the consequences, without building international support and legitimacy for our action, without leveling with the American people about the sacrifices required. Tough talk often draws headlines, but war rarely conforms to slogans.”

The president’s views on Syria, however, offer a stark contrast to this hard-won lesson. If the entire thrust of Obama's remarks has been an exposition on the limits of US power, the only option Obama is offering to address Syria’s continuing descent into hopelessness is US-supported military escalation.