Fox News' Shepard Smith debated with a former George Bush Ambassador for Special Political Affairs at the United Nations over Conservatives complaints about what the US isn't doing in its struggle against ISIS. Ambassador Stuart Holliday parroted the conservative line that President Obama's three-day summit meeting was like calling a fire drill in the middle of a burning house since ISIS has been carrying out brutal actions across the middle east. Shep Smith dismissed that talking point easily and asked him point blank what better solutions he had.
Holliday, like every other conservative who's been yelling at US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf for daring to say that we can't kill our way out of this war, actually agreed with the administration.
Well in the long term these issues of jobs and of alienated youth, these are things that are in fact, even President Bush talked about these things....
Holliday couldn't come up with anything different that America could be doing to fight ISIS, so Shep called him on it and gave him another shot to answer.
Smith: The facts seem to suggest that every time you ask someone, if you're complaining. Well, they're having a fire drill when there's a fire going on and yet you have no real suggestions about what they should be doing now that they're not doing now, it sounds to me like we're taking a very serious national and international issue and making it political. Suggesting that the president isn't doing something that you believe he should do yet you and others don't have any suggestion for what he should do unless I've missed it, I'll give you another shot.
Holliday praised Egypt's Sisi and said Egypt is our first line of defense out there and said there are other neighboring partners we should be working with better, but that wasn't any solution. Until he came back to the same dry line.
Holliday: There's got to be more we can do.
Smith: Like what? Everybody says there ought to be more we can do. Every single solitary American agrees with that political talking point, but no one who has that political talking point except for John McCain and Lindsey Graham and no others that I've heard has no other solution except what we're doing right now, it's just that they don't like the talking points.
After Holliday said that we can probably ramp up the air strikes, Shep shot him down by saying the military leaders have said we're striking every target available, but that ISIS is changing tactics. Finally, Shep got him to admit he wants US troops on the ground.
Smith: We're striking everything we can strike, so that leaves what exactly?
Holliday: Well Shep, I think you've lead us the the conclusion which I think is pretty obvious that here needs to be some courage and leadership and a greater commitment to putting ground troops in.
Smith: Ground troops. So American ground troops should go on in your opinion and begin fighting this war as the leaders of ISIS have begged us to do."please send your soldiers in" because then they'll have the opportunity to take an American soldier and burn him alive inside a cave...
I'd like to see the GOP push for ground troops. I wonder if some of these mercenary type corporations that make huge profits from war are hoping for an attack at home so the American people would change their minds about these endless wars.
Shep Smith did not let the Ambassador get away with the tired complaints and nasty insults that right wing politicians and pundits have been whining about over and over again. He took their complaints head on and destroyed Holliday on the merits.
This should be a lesson to all hosts who engage in this topic.
