His comment piece in the Times today is vintage Tony Blair: "Western policy is at a crossroads: commentary or action; shaping events or reacting to them." In other words, we must stop wringing our hands from the sidelines, it's time for action. Cue some macho sabre-rattling and the firing up of jet engines in Cyprus. Yet the prospect of bombing Bashar al-Assad's army is entirely reactive. Simply an escalation of tit-for-tat that changes none of the fundamental political geography. It is all about the urgent need to do something – or worse, the need to be seen to do something.
What politicians hate most is the perception that they are ineffective and that they are being led by events rather than in control of them. Yet this is precisely what an attack on Syria would represent.
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