With the announcement that all the laboratories the Assad regime admitted to, which were used to make the poisons for their chemical weapon arsenal, have now been destroyed, attention turns to the stockpile of poison gasses. By the middle of this month, Damascus must come up with a plan for their destruction in the course of next year.

The inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are saying that their work is far from done. However from one point of view, their mission has been accomplished. What they have done is to ensure that chemical weapons have been removed from the battlefield. There ought to be no more poison gas shells raining down on innocent civilians, as happened this summer in Damascus, where 1,400 people, mostly women and children, were massacred.

If the deadly chemical arsenal is no longer an element in the fighting, then the international community can once again turn to the real issues, where its intervention is go grievously needed. Syria is in a state of collapse. Refugees continue to pour away from conflict areas, to the shrinking number of places in their homeland where they can find safety. Hundreds of thousands more are still seeking refuge in neighboring countries. The official refugee count is now over four million. Anecdotal evidence suggests it could be up to a million higher. If this is correct, it means almost a quarter of the Syrian population has now become displaced.

The World Health Organization is warning that because of the almost total breakdown of the medical system and the failure of inoculation programs, there is a polio outbreak among children which is spreading fast. Coupled with the deprivation, to say nothing of the depression and the rising sense of hopelessness in the major refugees camps in Jordan and Turkey, the physical and mental health of significant proportion of Syrians is now being jeopardized.

And meanwhile the fighting goes on, with the Free Syria Army not only having to confront Assad’s still well-armed and well-supplied forces — thanks to the Russians — but also a no-less ruthless enemy in the form of Al-Qaeda-liked terrorist groups. The Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have risen from the chaos, thanks to the refusal of the international community, not least the United States, to intervene at early stage.

This delay permitted the drawing out of the rebellion. It created a vacuum into which these fanatical terrorists have moved. Washington might almost have wished this development. To the despair of its allies, the Obama administration has always been searching for excuses to do nothing. It dressed up its refusal to become involved by drawing a line in the sand, which was Assad’s use of chemical weapons. If he did that Washington was coming after him.. It did not matter that the Americans already had good evidence of previous poison gas assaults, albeit in remote areas, away from international gaze. So Obama drew the line and almost immediately Assad stepped over it.

While the world waited for the US administration to deliver on its promised retribution, Obama turned to the Russians to stitch up an urgent deal over the poison gas attack. That deal got Obama off the hook in terms of intervention. It also focused world attention on the poison gas question, rather than the real issue of the continuing savage fighting and the new tactic from the regime, which is to starve out rebel communities that it cannot overrun.

Now the first and arguably, most important step in the destruction of Assad’s poison gas arsenal has been achieved, will Washington simply resume its hand-wringing and plangent protests from the sidelines? Or will it finally decide to become engaged to resolve this terrible conflict?

The presence of Al-Nusra Front and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is of course another excuse for America’s non-intervention. Destroying Assad’s war machine will make it easier for the terrorists to take on the Free Syrian Army and any moderate opinion that stands in their way. Therefore the Americans will continue to avoid involvement and Syria will continue to bleed slowly, to death.

And could it be that Washington has a surprise up its sleeve? It has been notable that US officials have been referring to all the poison gas plants that Assad has “admitted to”. Do they know of more? And if so, will they reveal their information when it is next necessary to divert international attention away from their own passivity?