After Friday prayers the people come onto the streets to demonstrate about their repression. And government forces get on with their job of beating them up, arresting them and killing them. This is a regime that uses tank fire against civilian populations and which uses mass arrests, beatings and torture as a collective punishment against peaceful protesters who only want their basic human rights.

Already the situation is far worse in Syria than it was in Libya at the time of the UN resolution. So what is the newly pro democratic America going to do about it?