Chris Matthews thinks this fictional character might be the key to dealing with the ISIS movement.
MSNBC‘s Chris Matthews doesn’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 10 Hardball:
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?
If a 1980s action movie hero can’t solve the ISIS problem, perhaps a more traditional means of killing large numbers of people will be more satisfying. (cc photo: Andy Dunaway/US Army)
Of course, Rambo doesn’t actually exist, which Matthews understands on some level, so he offers an alternative response to the ISIS crisis that involves killing large numbers of people in a more realistic way. Here he’s talking to former assistant secretary of Defense and MSNBC “terrorist analyst” Michael Sheehan:
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.
In response to Matthews’ call for “bombing the hell out of them,” Sheehan does make an important point about ISIS’s well-publicized display of violence, which is “they did this for a purpose.” The purpose he proposes—”They’re doing this to try to intimidate us so that we go home”—is implausible, since ISIS surely knows that the United States, like most countries, generally responds to violence with more violence. It’s much more likely that ISIS, like the Al-Qaeda movement it springs from, believes spectacular acts of terror will draw a military response from the United States that will help it to build its movement (Extra!, 7/11). But at least Sheehan is thinking of violence as being part of a political strategy rather than as a form of emotional release, as Matthews seems to see it:
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?
To his credit, MSNBC analyst (and Mother Jones Washington bureau chief) David Corn pointed out to Matthews that “acting out of anger and revenge, while it would feel good, would probably not get us the policy ends we want.” One might also note that as horrible as it is to set fire to a hypothetical nun, “blow[ing] that place up with anything we got” would actually be more horrible and cause more human suffering, much of it involving people being burnt alive.
Thinking the unthinkable: What if Taylor Swift were kidnapped by ISIS?
One could also point out, as Raed Jarrar did on CounterSpin (9/19/14), that there are effective ways to respond to ISIS atrocities that don’t involve either escalating the violence (the option ISIS likely hopes the US will choose) or ignoring them in the hopes that they will go away.
But whatever was said at that point would be unlike to dissuade Matthews from his need to express himself through violence: “Do you think we’re going to sit? Suppose they grab somebody we know over there, maybe a journalist we know, maybe a celebrity.”
Worse than incinerating a nun, apparently, ISIS might kidnap a celebrity. Then we would have no choice but to send in a fictional character.
The photo of Taylor Swift was inappropriate.
Matthews might want to ask another fictional character, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, about how to deal with monsters of one’s one creation.
Y’know … the ones given life by the policies he’s pimped for decades.
How about a complete news show on each individual Iraqi who has been killed.
Apparently, CM has lost his mind. ISIL has gone a step too far and burned a Muslim alive on a propaganda shot heard round the Muslim world. They have been killing Muslims en mass since they started this wave across Iraq. One would think CM was wishing for them to kill a nun so that we could (put boots on the ground).
As if those boots aren’t filled with someone’s sons and daughters.
If we do get involved on the ground, we give ISIL and ever other Muslim a new enemy, one they can all rally together to fight, the infidel.
I remember a Russell Baker column from back when in which he imagined the designated evil leaders of the day (Soviet? Iranian? can’t remember) watching a Rambo movie and saying they had to get their hands on the wonderful oil that Rambo rubs on his chest to make himself bulletproof. “The oil! The oil!” Like the baddies of satire, Chris Matthews knows a super weapon when he sees one.
Please ask Chris Matthews how Pakistanis and other victims of U.S. drones should strike back against these brutal attacks.
Matthews ought to offer himself as a substitute for the next US citizen threatened by ISIL. The swap is made and then we send in a Rambo rescue team to get him back. Chris’d be doing his part in the War, getting the story of his life and giving Brian Williams another opportunity to conflate. Win-Win!
WE SHOULD HAVE NEVER GONE INTO IRAQ FIRST BUT NOW THAT THE PLACE IS UNSTABLE, CONVERT OPERATIONS, FORWARD ASSAULTS, IF SADDAM WERE NOT DEAD WHAT WOULD HE DO
When I heard Matthews make that perpetual genocidal war proposal I nearly feel off my chair. Matthews is a egotist, talking head for the millionaires and billionaires. His view of the world is that of a sociopath. His support for neo con establishment perpetual warrior Clinton causes vomitation.
Is Chris Matthews really 5 years old?
Poor Matthews, the product of good Catholic schools invoking his inner Manichean strawmen, imaginary martyred nuns versus evil ISIS sadists, in hopes of resurrecting the long dead calls for war we saw and heard on CNN and Fox over a decade ago that blamed Iraq for the 9-11 attack. Except that this. time. we. send. in…”Rambo!”
As El Cid posted, perhaps Matthews is indeed “5 years old.”
Be well.
Perhaps I am wrong, but isn’t Rambo a fictionalized character based on a real person with a very similar, that is, only slightly fictionalized name, who was a veteran of the Viet Nam conflict? How did that work out, in the real world? And, is that what CM believes we need more of?
“Do you think we’re going to sit? Suppose they grab somebody we know over there, maybe a journalist we know, maybe a celebrity.”
Wait a holy minute here. Am I to believe someone who thinks we all know a journalist, or a celebrity?
Someone I DO know might change my attitude, for a while at least; but journalists and celebrities? They can just drop off, for all I care. I’m never going to notice their absence.
My God, Matthews is easily excited, isn’t he? This clown was bragging about Bush’s manly bulge back in 2003 when the whole insane and criminal enterprise that spawned ISIS got underway. That he’s actually still being handsomely paid for his drivel on a “liberal” network shows how well things are going here. Mathews’ stupid, paranoid rants are one of the hallmarks of Washington’s current imbecile neoliberal consensus. We’re in big trouble.