Harold Evans’s diary: Beware Obama – he always pulls the rug out from under his allies

Days ago, I’d have bet that even the most bitterly partisan Congress in generations would jib at humiliating their commander-in-chief. More than two thirds of the population, according to the polls, demanded he go to Congress before firing Cruise missiles against the Syrian regime. Well, he did, didn’t he, but appeasing the people hasn’t cut much ice with Senators of both parties to judge from the hearings this week which have provoked Secretary Kerry to wag a schoolmasterly finger. In the hour their country calls on them to make a stand against the ‘moral obscenity’ of gassing 1,429 Syrians, 426 children among them, the querulous tribunes of the people seem to have learned their lines from Rick in Casablanca: ‘I stick my neck out for nobody.’ To which, you will recall, Captain Louis Renault responds: ‘What a wise foreign policy.’ Maybe David Cameron’s stunning defeat has unnerved them. A hawkish friend hissed: ‘You Brits have betrayed us.’