Obama n'était pas chaud pour y aller et l'opinion publique ne voulait pas non plus, donc il fallait trouver une sortie sans perdre la face. Et c'est V. Putin qui lui permet de ne pas perdre la face. Bien joué les Russes, brillant même.
Limited airstrikes with, as the president repeatedly said, "no boots on the ground" weren't going to bring down Assad. They would have meant more death in a country that has seen too much of it, with the benefits more of a longer-run variety in dissuading leaders from using chemical weapons in the future. And, a decade after the Iraq invasion, there is no political support in the United States for a longer, deeper, hands-on intervention that might actually speed up regime change in Syria, let alone for the financial and human costs it would incur.
So it's a dismal situation all around. Still, this deal gives the president the face-saving out that a congressional rejection of airstrikes wouldn't have. It's hard to know sometimes whether Obama is playing a chess game that is so sophisticated the rest of us can't tell what he's doing or simply blundering about hoping for the best. From what we know so far, this looks like the latter. But Americans, if the public opinion polls on military action are a guide, will take it.
Neil Irwin - The Washington Post Was Obama’s Syria strategy brilliant or lucky?