I don't like Obama. I would be happy to see him removed from office for incompetence, arrogance and hubris. He has been a terrible President because he seems capable only of speaking (and jogging to the podium to do so).

However, I'm not most worried about the scandals circling around the administration, which are admittedly serious. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a few more come out in the same vein. It's less that I think he's an evil genius and more that I think, to quote Jon Stewart, that he's Mr. Magoo.

I'm most worried about the wholesale slaughter that is going on in Syria. At a purely humanitarian level, it's hideous. I've watched the videos and seen the rebels walking into houses in the Damascus suburbs, filming dead people shot at point-blank range in mass executions, including innocent children. The massacres that have taken place in town after town by a bloodthirsty dictator are simply horrific. I'm not sure how anyone could claim to have any right to govern a nation in any way if it takes the senseless murders of thousands of children and innocent adult civilians to do so.

We could have stopped this long ago. Last summer, a no-fly zone, or adequate military aid to the rebels, would have caused the wavering forces of Assad to crumble. Obama had a chance to do so. The grown-ups in his administration, Clinton and Gates, urged him vehemently to do so.

However, Obama said "no". He had no problems pulling the rug out from under US ally Hosni Mubarak, who compared to Assad looks like an angel, but he had to be dragged kicking and screaming into supporting the effort to overthrow Qaddhafi and when it came to Assad, he was more averse to military action than France (which by itself should be troubling).

In the interim, the lack of Western assistance has pushed many secular fighters into the ranks of al-Qaida, and the persistence of Assad has now emboldened the major adversaries of the US in the region - Hezbollah and Iran - to provide direct military assistance. Anywhere between 4,000 and 6,000 Hezbollah fighters are now pushing the rebels back, and Iranian Revolutionary Guards are appearing in greater numbers.

This should trouble us, because it strengthens an Iran that we are at least theoretically trying to keep from acquiring nuclear weapons. However, Obama's inability to take any strong stands (I don't believe for an instant we would have even gone after bin Laden if Clinton and Gates were gone at the time) makes it clear that, if he's not willing to even put a no-fly zone over Syria, he certainly isn't serious about military action against Iran.

Now Russia is sending S-300 anti-air missiles, and Hezbollah may end up with even more missiles than it already has, as well as chemical weapons. If Assad stays, it would be a major catastrophe for the Middle East because it would extend Iranian influence over the entire region and likely see the fall of Iraq's coalition government, creating Iranian dominance in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Because Obama is a miserable leader, we now have a choice of either arming rebels who may in some places be al-Qaida, or seeing Iran dominate the region. As awful as it may sound, we need to arm the rebels even if some of that goes to al-Qaida, and work with the post-Assad regime to get rid of them after the fact. The alternative is too directly dangerous for the US. And yet we do nothing. Our government is truly run by the inept.