The interventionist liberals of the Obama administration were a doleful bunch last week. It was the 20th anniversary of the siege of Sarajevo, when a Bosnian Serb army battered a city full of civilians with artillery while the United States issued ineffective cries of alarm. The comparison with this year's massacres in Syria was painfully apt.

 

Now, as then, the United Nations Security Council has asked both sides to stop shooting, to no great effect. Now, as then, the United States and its allies are rejecting the idea of military intervention as too difficult, too risky, too likely to add to the violence instead of ending it.

 

In Bosnia, it took the United States more than three years and many massacres to decide that diplomatic measures and sanctions weren't enough. But finally, in August 1995, then-President Clinton ordered airstrikes against the Bosnian Serbs; that turned the tide of the war and led to peace negotiations within weeks.

 

But there's one big difference between the situation in Bosnia and that in Syria: This time, the clock is moving faster...