Was Obama's Syrian Arms Decision Meaningless?

One of the trite truisms current in international politics is that America and Russia do not agree about Syria. But today at the G8 meeting in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, the two countries met at the chief executive level to try to find common ground. Russia continues to supply arms to the al-Assad regime and Russian President Vladimir Putin told President Barack Obama on Monday that the United States and Russian positions on Syria do not "coincide." But the two leaders said during the G-8 summit that they have a shared interest in stopping the violence that has ravaged the Middle Eastern country during a two-year-old civil war. Putin also said that both leaders wanted to address the fighting and wanted to secure chemical weapons in the country. The US president said both sides would work to develop talks in Geneva aimed at ending the country's bloody civil war. "We do have differing perspectives on the problem but we share an interest in reducing the violence, securing chemical weapons and ensuring that they're neither used nor are they subject to proliferation," Obama said. "We want to try to resolve the issue through political means if possible." Putin said "of course our opinions do not coincide, but all of us have the intention to stop the violence in Syria and to stop the growth of victims and to solve the situation peacefully, including by bringing the parties to the negotiations table in Geneva. We agreed to push the parties to the negotiations table." Putin said he has not urged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to leave power, and he remains one of Assad's strongest political and military allies. The White House did not expect any breakthrough with Putin on Syria during the meeting of the G8 Summit at an Irish lakeside golf resort and the meeting further highlighted the rift between the two countries on how to address the fighting in the country. Britain and France feared that any additional introduction of firepower might end up helping anti-democratic extremists linked to Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah militia. Putin has defended Russia's continuing supply of weapons to al-Assad's military. In an interview with the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Runschau published Monday, al-Assad dismissed the Obama administration's contention that the Syrian army used chemical weapons against the rebels. British Prime Minister David Cameron met with Putin on Sunday and later said that the West needs to unite behind a diplomatic push that transitions al-Assad from power. ~~~~~ Dear readers, it appears that we have traded the end of indecision by President Obama about supplying arms to the rebels for another round of international ruminations over the disagreement between Russia and America about the legitimacy of the al-Assad regime. Obama and the West are still not focused on the fundamental problem in Syria - millions of Syrians are being forced into refugee status and almost 100,000 Syrians have been killed in a vicious civil war. Will anyone take the lead in forcefully and rapidly ending this completely unacceptable situation???