And so, the world watches and waits, unwilling witness to heinous crimes against humanity. Of course, Syria is not the sole area of the world where similar such atrocities take place, but for the time being it is the most obvious. And it represents a test, a dramatic, horrifying nightmare of a test run, a practice session, for what may yet come. A proxy, if you will, for a more far-reaching, transfixing human-designed catastrophe that has the potential of absorbing the lives and security of far more people than the Sunni population of Syria represents.

Syria and the region around it has always presented as a tinder-box of tribal animosity, sectarian violence, simmering beneath the surface of disparate groups within the geography, erupting from time to time, like a sleeping volcano. The volcano appears now primed to fully erupt. It is steadily building toward a collective cataclysmic upheaval.

And since we no longer live in a world where once regional conflicts were isolated, deplored, caused hand-wringing despair but went largely unchecked by outside intervention in the certain knowledge that 'civilized' liberal-democratic parts of the world would not be unduly adversely affected, we witness what is occurring now with foreboding for the future.

And increasingly, this has also become a unipolar world, with all eyes swivelled at the United States. Where there sits a president who was elected because he promised 'change' that could be believed in, the audacity of hope would not be misplaced in his elevation to the most powerful station on the globe, and he would ensure that hope would never disappoint. The supranatural power to avert catastrophe and pain by making the right decision.

So influential was that promise that without any time to face events and react in a manner that would effectively give witness to his promise become reality beyond the promise to support the boast, the Noble Peace Prize was awarded  him. This is not a humble man, nor a man one might suggest is entirely without hubris and tender self-regard. He obviously attempts to govern as he sees himself, a champion of the better instincts of humanity. That he fails simply reflects the reality of the complexities of human nature.

And now, faced with the reality of those complexities demonstrating fully the depths of mendacity and inhumane engagement in atrocity that human nature is capable of, he is uncertain how to move forward to fully engage in the kind of action that would support his promises and at the same time defend those who are most vulnerable, suffering the worst excesses of oppression and threats to survival.

America's old nemesis refuses to lend its support in the Security Council, abetted by another world power. While the lesser world powers normally aligned with the United States stand back, awaiting the level of response that the world's purportedly most powerful man decides upon. He is human after all, vacillating, apprehensive, uncertain and hugely unwilling now to instruct himself unequivocally to order an action that might reflect the courage of his convictions. His convictions now conflicted, because of events whose trajectory now seem clear enough, but which sane minds found unpredictable at their outset.

In the background lurks the puppet-master of the play, manipulating his proxies in their masterful game of daringly obscene action, observance of reaction, and absorbing the reassuring symbolism of inaction taking their cue leading to further actions denying their humanity and in the end, ours as well. Rehearsals that proceed well, presage the success of a final play for which there will be no end but a curtain of darkness inexorably falling.

Syrian refugees walk from Syria into the Iraqi border town of Peshkhabour, on Aug. 15, 2013. The United Nations' refugee agency said Monday that over 21,000 Syrian refugees streamed into Iraq over the past few days in a sudden influx since the beginning of the two-year Syrian conflict. (Xinhua/UNHCR/Galiya Gubaeva)