It's too generous to say President Obama is "leading from behind" on Syria. A better description might be that he's getting dragged in by the ear. Yet bit by bit, pressured mainly by France but also by shifting opinion in Washington, the administration is sending signals that it knows it can't avoid involvement in the Syrian civil war forever/.../
A CIA assessment concluded that a recent administration proposal to arm the rebels with small-scale weapons the only kind that U.S. officials feel they could responsibly send to the rebels would not be enough to tip the balance of the conflict. U.S. and Israeli officials fear delivering anything larger or more lethal, such as anti-tank or surface-to-air missiles, could be used on U.S., Israeli, or commercial targets if they fell into terrorist hands. Chris Dougherty, an expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, said the "ideal" weapons to arm the Syrian opposition groups, such as man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) that could counter the Syrian Air Force's control of the skies, anti-tank guided munitions such as the FGM-148 Javelin, and GPS- or laser-guided mortar rounds, are also the weapons that "have the most potential for blowback."