Steve Clemons, Washington Editor for The Atlantic, joined HuffPost Live's WorldBrief with Ahmed Shihab-Eldin Friday to discuss the situation in Syria and the United States' role in addressing the latest reports of a chemical weapons attack.
A year ago, President Obama indicated that Syria's use of chemical weapons would cross a "red line" and elicit a response from the U.S. In an interview with CNN on Friday, Obama addressed questions on U.S. strategy concerning Syria, prompting Clemons to call his response "predictable" and "cautious."
He noted that President Obama wants to create a "global spotlight ... so you see the machinery moving against all of those who are trying to protect Assad," but he has not been successful in doing so.
"The President is saying this needs to happen, but he's been absent in making it happen," Clemons said.
And while President Obama has stated that Assad must go, Clemons maintained that this is not the solution to stopping the killing of more than100,000 people since the start of the war.
Conceding that the President has not put forth a concrete strategy, Clemons said, "I think that Chuck Hagel and the defense team and some people in the National Security Council have various plans about what they can do on an ad hoc basis to react to the use if it's validated by the United Nations inspectors of chemical weapons. That said, I don't think there's a broader strategy of how to deal with this."
Watch the full interview in the clip above.
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