Matthew RJ Brodsky was a guest on Secure Freedom Radio's Frank Gaffney Show where he and guest host, Jim Hanson of BlackFive.net discussed the dangers of the U.S. appearing weak-willed in response to Syria's alleged use of chemical weapons. Brodsky explains that U.S. policy at the outset of the Syrian conflict was to parrot what Bashar al-Assad said by repeating the false mantra that the uprising was due to foreign elements and al-Qaeda linked. Today's situation should have been "very predictable--since Syria was the jumping point for most foreign jihadists going into Iraq to kill coalition troops--it was obvious that jihadists would come back and money would start flowing in," Brodsky said. "So we decided to support no one. Now we have zero influence and our policy has been to do nothing. If we had no policy, we should not make any statements… It is dangerous for the U.S. to not have a response to a red line being crossed because Iran and North Korea are watching and so are our allies such as Israel. We are losing credibility in our foreign policy."
Brodsky believes that "Instead of learning lessons from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Libya and then applying them to Syria--which is a vital interest to the United States, unlike Libya--we've decided to stick our head in the sand. So we made a few pronouncements where we tell Assad he has to go but we have no concrete plan to make that happen. We declare that chemical weapons are going to be a red line as if we are saying, 'no that's okay: feel free to use fixed-wing aircraft and bomb people--that's fine--just don't use chemical weapons.' Why would we believe for a second that Assad wouldn't test our red line and our credibility when almost every red line we've set in the Middle East has been tested and we've lacked a response?"
He concluded that "we don't get to choose all of the conflicts we'd like to be involved in; sometimes conflicts choose us. We are still a leader in the world. So we are going to have to do something at some point. The problem is that we are waiting until the better options diminish and we'll have to choose between the least bad option. That is not a good position to be in." Jim Hanson pointed out that "when the world dialed 911, they got the Pentagon and the call went to voicemail. And at this point that doesn't really do the people of Syria any good."