Sarin vic­tims often first feel its tox­ic effects in their eyes.  They water and ache. Vision is blurred. Pupils con­tract to a pin­point. The nox­ious gas also affects the lungs, with chest tight­ness, cough and rapid breath­ing among the com­mon symp­toms. Then there are the car­dio­vas­cu­lar effects. The heart may race or sud­den­ly slow down. Blood pres­sure can spike or pre­cip­i­tous­ly drop. Nau­sea, vom­it­ing and abdom­i­nal pain are among its gas­troin­testi­nal con­se­quences. Its effects on the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem include con­fu­sion, drowsi­ness and headache.

All of this is what low to mod­er­ate dos­es of sarin can do, accord­ing to the US Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol. More exten­sive expo­sure – the kind that an attack by a tyrant against civil­ians might inflict — pro­duces con­vul­sions, paral­y­sis, loss of con­scious­ness and res­pi­ra­to­ry failure.

Sarin is among the agents that may have been used in the attack on civil­ians that occurred in the hours after mid­night last Wednes­day in rebel-held areas east of Dam­as­cus. The Assad gov­ern­ment denies respon­si­bil­i­ty for the attack. If they did it – and the ear­ly evi­dence strong­ly sug­gests that they did  – it would be the worst chem­i­cal attack since Sad­dam Hussein’s assault on Kurds and Ira­ni­ans in the late 1980s.

It occurred exact­ly one year after Pres­i­dent Oba­ma repeat­ed his call for Assad to step down and warned that the use of chem­i­cal weapons by the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment would cross a “red line.” It puts renewed pres­sure on the Pres­i­dent to act, par­tic­u­lar­ly since the US mil­i­tary con­firmed last June that the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment had already crossed his “red line” in pri­or, small­er chem­i­cal attacks. In response to those inci­dents, the Pres­i­dent promised to sup­ply rebels with arms. Months lat­er, those arms have yet to arrive.

While the Pres­i­dent pub­licly says that he will wait for UN inspec­tors to deter­mine the nature of this past week’s attacks, the inter­nal debate at the White House on how to respond already has begun. The New York Times report­ed in its Fri­day edi­tion on a lengthy meet­ing in which offi­cials split on what, if any­thing, the US should do.

The meet­ing broke up with­out any deci­sion, accord­ing to senior offi­cials, amid signs of a deep­en­ing divi­sion between those who advo­cate send­ing Mr. Assad a harsh mes­sage and those who argue that mil­i­tary action now would be reck­less and ill timed.

As his advis­ers split into rival camps, the Pres­i­dent strug­gles to make sense of it all. He thought he could over­come Islam­ic hatred of the US gov­ern­ment through a cult of per­son­al­i­ty. His Mus­lim-sound­ing name and Third World roots would give him cred­i­bil­i­ty with mod­er­ate Islamists who despised Pres­i­dent Bush. It didn’t work out that way. The very fea­tures that were thought to be assets became lia­bil­i­ties. They raised expec­ta­tions to unre­al­is­tic lev­els and made him a bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment. He was just anoth­er Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent after all, and though his style was soft­er, his meth­ods were no less harsh. He replaced troops with drones, cap­ture and inter­ro­ga­tion with assas­si­na­tion, kept Guan­tanamo open, and ordered a “surge” in Afghanistan.

The Arab Spring at first seemed a poten­tial turn­ing point, a recrude­s­cence of Pres­i­dent Bush’s ide­al of Islam­ic democ­ra­cy. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma rushed to embrace it and even to claim cred­it for some­thing that sur­prised him as much as it sur­prised every­one else. But the move­ment proved too unpre­dictable, too volatile, too unin­tel­li­gi­ble to pro­vide an ade­quate frame­work for under­stand­ing the Mus­lim world. It instead pre­sent­ed a new series of chal­lenges – in Egypt, Syr­ia, Libya, and else­where – that have left the Pres­i­dent at a loss.

He seems over­whelmed by a suc­ces­sion of events that are para­dox­i­cal­ly inter­con­nect­ed and ran­dom. He must feel pow­er­less. His warn­ings are ignored, his red lines crossed with impuni­ty. He is crit­i­cized for not act­ing and for con­tem­plat­ing action. More fun­da­men­tal­ly, he has no frame­work, no nar­ra­tive he could use to ratio­nal­ize inter­ven­tion or inaction.

Pun­dits and aca­d­e­mics have tried to make sense of it all. One of the most intrigu­ing comes from Sheri Berman, a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Barnard Col­lege.  Berman sees the tur­moil in Egypt through the eyes of Karl Marx, who famous­ly lament­ed that his­to­ry repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.

Berman reminds us that Marx made those com­ments after the failed rev­o­lu­tion of 1848. The tragedy to which Marx referred was the French Rev­o­lu­tion of 1789, which began by over­throw­ing the monar­chy, but ulti­mate­ly led to its rebirth. The farce occurred in 1848 when, after the over­throw of Louis Philippe, a frag­ile repub­lic fal­tered and result­ed in Louis Napoleon being named emper­or. In both cas­es, Berman notes, mid­dle class peo­ple (Marx might have called them bour­geosie) allied with more rad­i­cal ele­ments in pur­suit of eco­nom­ic and social change. But once in charge, those rad­i­cal ele­ments went too far, dri­ving the lib­er­al bour­geosie back into the arms of the author­i­tar­i­an monarchists.

And that his­to­ry, Berman argues, is repeat­ing itself in Egypt today:

“with lib­er­als and author­i­tar­i­ans play­ing them­selves, and Islamists play­ing the role of social­ists. Once again, an inex­pe­ri­enced and impa­tient mass move­ment has over­reached after gain­ing pow­er. Once again, lib­er­als have been fright­ened by the changes their for­mer part­ners want to enact and have come crawl­ing back to the old regime for pro­tec­tion. And, as in 1848, author­i­tar­i­ans have been hap­py to take back the reins of power.”

Egypt­ian lib­er­als, Berman argues, are repeat­ing the mis­takes of their nine­teenth cen­tu­ry French coun­ter­parts by look­ing at the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as an irre­deemably rad­i­cal and men­ac­ing force and by look­ing to the mil­i­tary for salvation.

“They see their oppo­nents as zealots deter­mined to abol­ish every­thing lib­er­als val­ue. But just as not all social­ists were pro­to-Stal­in­ists, not all Islamists want to imple­ment a theo­crat­ic regime. There are mod­er­ate Islamists today who are will­ing to play by the rules of the game, and they should be encour­aged to do so.”

Lib­er­al Egyp­tians should reach out to Islamists and build bridges to those “will­ing to play by the rules of the game.” My guess is that it’s not that sim­ple. Nine­teenth cen­tu­ry social­ists were noto­ri­ous­ly anti-cler­i­cal; they hat­ed reli­gious author­i­ty as much as they hat­ed the monar­chy. They sought to loose the bonds of throne and priest. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, by con­trast, seeks to car­ry out a reli­gious agen­da, one that is decid­ed­ly illib­er­al and brooks no com­pro­mise with the sec­u­lar world. On which points of sharia law might they bend?

More impor­tant­ly, it seems that Berman has mis­in­ter­pret­ed events in Egypt. The peo­ple didn’t over­throw Mubarak; the mil­i­tary did. The gen­er­als put him in pow­er, backed him when it coin­cid­ed with their inter­ests, and removed him when he became an incon­ve­nience. They per­mit­ted elec­tions, but Mohammed Mor­si ruled only with their suf­fer­ance. When they tired of him, they deposed him as well. And it is they, admit­ted­ly with the appar­ent sup­port of the country’s lib­er­al bourgeiousie, who are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly and bru­tal­ly sup­press­ing the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The author­i­tar­i­ans were nev­er top­pled. They have remained in con­trol through­out and will con­tin­ue to run things in Egypt for the fore­see­able future.

Which explains why Pres­i­dent Oba­ma per­sists in his ludi­crous denial of a mil­i­tary coup. If he turns against the Egypt­ian mil­i­tary, he cuts ties with the rulers of one of the region’s most pow­er­ful nations.

Pres­i­dent Obama’s reluc­tant embrace of Egypt­ian strong­men hasn’t endeared him to the Egypt­ian lib­er­als, despite their abid­ing con­tempt for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. In a pow­er­ful essay, Stan­ford University’s Fouad Aja­mi argues that Egyp­tians of all per­sua­sions see Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and the US as the source of their var­ied griev­ances. Hatred of Amer­i­ca is a fun­da­men­tal pre­cept of Islamism, so the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s anti-Amer­i­can­ism is to be expect­ed. What is unex­pect­ed is that more mod­er­ate Egyp­tians improb­a­bly blame Amer­i­ca for the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s ascen­dan­cy. Aja­mi writes:

“Young rebels who had come togeth­er to top­ple the old Mubarak dic­ta­tor­ship now con­spired with the mil­i­tary and police to over­throw the first elect­ed civil­ian ruler in Egypt­ian his­to­ry… And in their will­ful escape and eva­sion, those who cheered the mil­i­tary seizure of pow­er were will­ing to enter­tain the dark­est of con­spir­a­cies. The rise of the Broth­er­hood was an Amer­i­can plot, they main­tained, part of an Amer­i­can scheme to sub­ju­gate Egypt and deny it its place among the nations. Polit­i­cal Islam itself was dis­owned, turned into an Amer­i­can cre­ation. Mohammed Mor­si had kept the peace with Israel, bro­kered an accom­mo­da­tion between Hamas and Israel: this, too, became proof of this malig­nant Amer­i­can design.”

Aja­mi argues that we brought some of this resent­ment on ourselves.

“In this Egypt­ian dra­ma, the Unit­ed States did not give the best of itself. When the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion could not call the coup d’é­tat by its name, we put on dis­play our unwill­ing­ness to hon­or our own demo­c­ra­t­ic creed. Egypt has long been in the Amer­i­can strate­gic orbit. When our sec­re­tary of state opined that the army was ‘restor­ing democ­ra­cy,’ we gave away the moral and strate­gic inco­her­ence of an admin­is­tra­tion that has long lost its way.”

Ajami’s crit­i­cism miss­es the mark. It is unfair to accuse the Pres­i­dent of moral inco­her­ence. The Pres­i­dent would like to do the right thing; he just doesn’t know what that might be or its cost in blood and treasure.

His strate­gic inco­her­ence is unde­ni­able. It explains why, more than 2–1/2 years after protests against Assad began, White House advis­ers still can­not for­mu­late a response to this past week’s crimes against human­i­ty. Assad’s repres­sion is not news, nor would this be the first time that he has employed chem­i­cal weapons in its ser­vice.  There are reports that the US may be prepar­ing to launch cruise mis­siles against Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment forces, some­thing that would make a state­ment, but not a dif­fer­ence in the attempt to over­throw Assad, serv­ing the same sym­bol­ic pur­pose as  delay­ing the deliv­ery of F‑16s to Egypt while refus­ing to sus­pend oth­er forms of aid.

That strate­gic inco­her­ence is the fruit of intel­lec­tu­al inco­her­ence: the Pres­i­dent doesn’t know how to respond to these events because he doesn’t know what to make of them. Nor is he cer­tain that inter­ven­tion would be worth the price. Is it real­ly a bad thing for the Egypt­ian mil­i­tary to go after the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood? Are we sure that if Syr­i­an rebels were to oust Assad, the new regime would be friend­ly to the US?

The Pres­i­dent would be more than jus­ti­fied in announc­ing that the US has no inter­est in what occurs in Syr­ia and that it would con­fine its expres­sion of moral dis­ap­proval to vot­ing for UN res­o­lu­tions.  Sim­i­lar­ly, he could say that US inter­ests demand that we main­tain strong ties to the Egypt­ian mil­i­tary, regard­less of its deci­sion to depose an elect­ed leader and crush his polit­i­cal sup­port­ers. Such an announce­ment would draw crit­i­cism, of course, but every Pres­i­den­tial action does. It would at least have the virtue of accu­rate­ly describ­ing what we’ve been doing.   There is some­thing to be said for align­ing our rhetoric, which has been high-mind­ed and ide­al­is­tic, with our actions, which have been thor­ough­ly pragmatic.

For now, the Pres­i­den­t’s Mid­dle East pol­i­cy remains caught in that ten­sion between pris­tine ideals and realpoli­tik. He preach­es democ­ra­cy and human rights and threat­ens to take ret­ri­bu­tion against those who cross his “red lines.” But he shrinks from fol­low­ing through on those threats in any mean­ing­ful way. Which may not be a bad thing.

The Pres­i­dent wants to be on the side of the good guys. He just isn’t sure who the good guys are and whether stand­ing up to the bad guys is real­ly such a good idea. He is not alone. We all strug­gle to make sense of Syr­ia, Egypt and the Arab Spring.