President Obama deserves some credit for using strong language to condemn the Syrian regime’s massacre of peaceful protestors over the weekend in Hama, Deraa, Idlib and other cities in the pre-Ramadan onslaught. With reports still coming in, the most conservative assessment estimates that 145 were killed.

In the wake of the bloodshed, Obama now promises to work with world leaders to isolate Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. That would suggest the president is returning to the policy of his predecessor, George W. Bush, who removed the U.S. ambassador from Damascus after the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.