You can never underestimate the overzealous responses from the media that come out of terrorism and war. I love the profession of journalism, but when the supposed keepers of the flame infuse their belief systems with 1980's movie characters - I have to draw the line. Stop the insanity. I have nothing against Sylvester Stallone, but if you dropped him in the middle of a firefight with ISIS, he would probably be killed about the time he hit the ground.
MSNBC's Chris Matthewsdoesn't know how to solve the ISIS problem. But he knows who does–and he's a fictional character played by Sylvester Stallone. Here's Matthews on the February 10Hardball:
Now, this sounds pretty tough, but when are we going to stop this? I mean, we get a person over there, we all know who they are, what happens then? Do we change the rules? Do we go into it with a Rambo-style attack and do what we can to get them out?
That does sound pretty tough.
Later in the show, Matthews again advanced the idea of using a 1980s action movie hero as a response to the death of American hostage Kayla Mueller:
I just don't know how long we can take this as human beings. I just think it's a real problem. And I'm thinking of Rambo kind of stuff, because at some point you have got to go in there with what you got and do the best you can, or you're not going to be very proud of yourself.
And what could make us prouder than enlisting an imaginary person to solve our problems?
Have these types learned nothing since America attacked Afghanistan and later Iraq in 2003? We've spent more blood and treasure than even Rambo could imagine, but that isn't considered tough enough? Or Rambo-tough?
Here's a tip. The world isn't anything like a fictional revenge war movie, Chris. One man doesn't kill hundreds of terrorists by himself with a six shooter and a machete. It's this mind set that elevates men like General Petraeus, who became the anointed one after the surge. Conservatives immediately elevated Vladimir Putin to hero status because they believed he was an action figure ruler. And now since the Jordan's King Abdullah II, put on his Rambo gear, he's the new great destroyer of all things ISIS. That's all fantasy people! If Iraq doesn't want to fight for itself then nobody can.
Matthews, like most of Washington apparently, thinks movies are real. And I'm guessing he thinks that because Seal Team 6 famously executed bin Laden and the "American Sniper" could kill they can also go in and pick off the bad guys. And because he's probably seen all those Marvel movies he also thinks they can use supernatural powers to magically extricate hostages.
But then there's this:
MATTHEWS: What do we make of this? And what's it going to do to us?… I'm just wondering how long we're going to put up with this, Michael…. If we hadn't been through these wars of Afghanistan and the two Iraq wars…. We would just, all right, we're going to war, you know? All right, you're doing this to our people — like, even Jimmy Carter, who could be pretty pacifist — and I worked for him — if they had started executing our diplomats back in the '70s, I think we would have gone to war.
And I think — when do we say enough?
SHEEHAN: Well…
MATTHEWS: And just start bombing the hell out of them?
SHEEHAN: Well, we are…
MATTHEWS: Are we bombing the hell out of them?
SHEEHAN: We are…
MATTHEWS: Are we really prosecuting a real war there?
SHEEHAN: We are bombing the hell out of them, and I think we might be able to expand that bombing more into Syria, as well...
And finally:
Are we going to let this continue? This is my conundrum here…. Are we going to let them keep executing people, pouring gasoline? Wait until they get somebody over there, a nun over there, and start pouring gasoline on her.
At what point are we going to say we're going to blow that place up with anything we got, even if we don't win? When do you just explode as a country and say we're not going to take that anymore? When is that going to happen?
I guess nuclear war really is on the table. Or at least a massive bombing campaign waged out of anger and revenge that will turn the whole middle east into a burning conflagration.
So they won't pour gasoline on a nun.
Because we're good and they're evil.
It would just be another Tweety moment except he's hardly the only one who sounds like a puerile hysteric...
