Obama caught in a precarious balancing act

It is difficult not to empathise with President Barack Obama, who this week announced that the US would lead an expanded military campaign against Islamic State militants in Syria as well as Iraq.

One of the achievements of Obama's administration has been the withdrawal of thousands of American troops from Iraq after a lengthy and terribly bloody war started by his Republican predecessor, George W Bush.

Another was the assassination of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the man who ordered the September 11 2001 attacks that killed 3000 people.

Now, in the face of advances in both Syria and Iraq by Islamic State - a brutal breakaway faction of al-Qaeda that is committing unspeakable atrocities - the US is slowly sliding back into war.

Obama took care, in his address to the American people, to stress that the US would not be dragged into another ground war, and that he would build coalitions in the region to counter the threat posed by the jihadists.

But he did raise the possibility of the US conducting air raids against Islamic State strongholds in Syria and steps to train and equip ''moderate'' rebel groups battling the jihadists (the rebels' main fight is with Bashar al-Assad's brutal regime).

American air strikes in Iraq will also be intensified and 475 additional personnel will be deployed to advise Baghdad and support the air campaign. The deployment will bring the total American force in the country to about 1500.

Obama's announcement was welcomed in Baghdad: it would probably have fallen by now were it not for the ongoing US air strikes.

But Damascus has warned that "any action of any kind without the consent of the Syrian government would be an attack on Syria".

It is ironic that the ''moderate'' Syrian rebels Obama now seeks to support have been begging in vain for US intervention for years as Assad gained the upper hand in a conflict that has killed 170 000 people. And that Obama shied away from conducting air raids against the Syrian government a year ago after it was revealed that Damascus was behind chemical weapons attacks that killed 1400 people.