Matthews Responds to ‘Perspective’ Quote
Recently, I posted on the amazingly dumb (apparent) statement of Chris Matthews regarding terrorists not being evil, but merely having a different perspective. This was taken from a story at TorontoSun.com.
Matthews has responded to the directors at Red State, where the remark was also blogged by our good friend Academic Elephant. Here’s his response:
I told the students that my way to deal with terrorists was to do what Golda Meir did after the killing of Israeli athletes at the Olympics: track them down and kill them one by one and be rough about it.
I don’t know why the reporter chose to ignore my clear statement was the appropriate response to terorism [sic], why he chose to skip to my strong belief that we need to get behind this massive hatred we’re facing in the Muslim world.
Check with the University for confirmation. I was invited by the political science students. I’m pretty sure they taped it because that had an audi-visual [sic] person there putting on my microphone.
Anyway there were many witnesses who can recall what I said if somebody asks.
Well, I have neither the time nor inclination to do the legwork, but I’ll take Matthews at his word. One interpretation discussed in the comments at Red State, and one that I’ve seen elsewhere, is perhaps Matthews was talking about conservatives when he spoke of the other side not being evil, but having a different perspective. If that’s so, it could be a case of a sloppy juxtaposition of quotes giving the wrong impression.
In any event, though I doubt Matthews reads this blog (really going out on a limb, aren’t I?), I stand corrected and applaud him for his stated stance.
“I told the students that my way to deal with terrorists was to do what Golda Meir did after the killing of Israeli athletes at the Olympics: track them down and kill them one by one and be rough about it.”
So Chris Matthews of the Democratic party is in favor of American Death Squads travelling the world assassinating alleged terrorists. I can just see the New York Times editorial page commenting on this one. Perhaps with something along the lines of “20 whacked in France this month, but only 5 in Germany. What’s gone wrong?”
Do these people have any idea what their talking about?
Well, you had to foul things up by throwing that ‘alleged’ in there…
If I remember accurately the last time that anything like what Matthews is suggesting happened, the Israelis went after someone in Sweden. Of course, he looked a little different after the passage of so many years and, of course, he had a different name but he looked an awful lot like the guy in their picture. So they killed him and were rough about it (whatever that means). Anyway, as you can guess they got the wrong man and they got caught. It was a major international incident and it involved only one terrorist. Now just imagine this multiplied one hundred, two hundred or a thousand times.
Ahh…thus, the ‘alleged’…of course, you’re quite right…
I’m with Fred on this one–I thought the whole death squad thing was rather creepy “tough guy” talk and that that pose was undermined with that “we need to get behind the massive hatred of us in the Muslim world” line, which is a reprise of the “different perspective” comment from the Toronto speech which was and is so objectionable.
“I told the students that my way to deal with terrorists was to do what Golda Meir did after the killing of Israeli athletes at the Olympics: track them down and kill them one by one and be rough about it. ”
Fred-Same quote jumped out at me-
Does this mean torture? If you ‘rough’ them up before you kill them…
(as a very ‘unofficial’ report of what transpires at the Black Prisons-
Heroin-they string these guys out, and then cut them off from it…pain is amplified a thousand fold due to increased sensitivity)