Sitting in his sumptuous palace, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad can almost certainly hear the drip, drip, drip, like a leaky faucet, of his life dribbling away.

The world is finally closing in on him, and he realizes that to remain alive, or at least a free man, he must continue killing his own people. He knows that the minute he stops and withdraws his forces to their barracks, as almost the entire world is demanding, one of two things will happen: One of the rebel armies will capture and kill him, or Western forces will seize him and send him to the Hague to be tried for genocide.

That dripping sound is the incremental increase in pressure. It took great leaps in the last week as Washington began at least talking about military action to stop the slaughter. That’s not likely to happen anytime soon, but President Obama did order the Pentagon to prepare a contingency battle plan. Still, every day the pressure increases. Washington now says it will offer the rebels non-lethal aid.

United Nations humanitarian chief Valerie Amos briefly visited the battered Baba Amr neighborhood, the first outside official allowed in. Syrian troops first rounded up any militant stragglers and tried to clean up the place. It didn’t work. Amos reported shock and revulsion. “I was horrified,” she said.

Meantime, Canada closed its embassy in Damascus, the latest among dozens to leave. Air France ended air service there. Jordanians marched on the Syrian embassy in Amman. China pulled its workers out of the state. Syria’s deputy oil minister defected, joined the opposition and warned other government officials to “abandon this sinking ship.”

Drip, drip, drip.

The Syrian uprising is now one year old, and by most estimates, nearly 9,000 people have been killed. Assad’s Alawite sect is part of a small Shiite minority, while about 75 percent of the population, almost everyone he has killed, is Sunni. That makes Assad guilty of genocide, the systematic killing of another national, racial, political or ethnic group.

In fact the Islamic world’s reaction to the carnage has broken down along ethnic lines. Hezbollah, the Shiite terror group in southern Lebanon, boisterously defends Assad and is sending fighters to help him. But Hamas, the Sunni terror group in Gaza, says it doesn’t want to get involved. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, also a Sunni group, is sending fighters to Syria. But they’re fighting alongside the rebels.

When Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican, called for military action against Syria last week, that seemed to jar the world to take notice at last.

Obama called the indiscriminate artillery attack on Homs “heartbreaking and outrageous.” The United Nations and Arab League appointed former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan as their special envoy to Syria. He met with Assad twice over the weekend, trying convince him to stop “the killing and the misery,” he said. But he came away with nothing. In fact, during his fruitless visit, Assad’s forces killed more than 100 people.

Navi Pillay, the U.N.’s top human-rights official, said Assad was guilty of “unspeakable violations that take place every moment” and should be referred to the International Criminal Court.

And German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle declared, “the process of disintegration of the Assad regime has begun.”

The problem is, on the day Westerwelle spoke, Assad’s military killed 62 more. And the atrocities continue: Wounded hospital patients tortured with whips and electric shocks. Mass graves discovered outside Homs, one holding children whose throats had been slit.

Meantime, seven more Syrian military officers defected, bringing to 10 the number of generals who have left. Iraq, a Shiite-governed nation that had been a cautious Assad ally, announced that Syria is disinvited from an Arab League summit in Baghdad later this month. Japan announced new economic sanctions. On Monday, Turkey suspended bus service to Syria.

Drip, drip, drip.

But all of this amounts to little more than talk while the mass murder continues. No, the U.S. and Europe are not anxious to start still another Middle East war. Nonetheless, they could do more. What about a naval blockade so Russian merchant vessels can’t deliver more military supplies for Assad? (A Russian ship delivered a boatload of ammunition in January.)

How about creating protected humanitarian corridors for food and medical-supply deliveries to Assad’s victims? If the foreign forces threatened Assad, he probably wouldn’t interfere.

As U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it: Yes, Assad’s days are numbered, but “I wish it could be sooner so that more lives could be saved.”

By Joel Brinkley

Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times. ― Ed.

(Tribune Media Services)