Tag Archives: Marie Harf

national news

Ted Cruz: Exaggerator in chief

Ted Cruz’s mother must have told him when he was a boy: “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times, don’t exaggerate.”

Or perhaps words to that effect.

Well, the Texas Republican freshman U.S. senator, is exaggerating in the extreme — once again — while criticizing the Obama administration’s approach to fighting the war on terror.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/ted-cruz-obama-radical-islamic-terrorists-115312.html?hp=l2_4

He can’t stop blasting President Obama for declining to use the words “Islamic terrorism.” He also ripped Obama a new one for the White House’s failure to acknowledge that the 21 Egyptians who were beheaded by Islamic State terrorists were Christians.

Oh, and then he was critical — naturally — for State Department flack Marie Harf’s statement that we need to work toward ending poverty in the nations that breed the terrorists. Cruz said this: “Now, with respect, that is idiocy. The solution here is not expanded Medicaid. The solution is the full force of U.S. military power to destroy the leaders of ISIS. They have declared war … jihad on the United States. Jihad is another word the president doesn’t say.”

I understand what the young man is seeking to do here. He’s trying to make a point by embellishing what Harf said, or meant. Medicaid? Come on.

As for the president being an “apologist for radical Islamic terrorists,” Sen. Cruz needs — once again — to examine the record. We’re killing these individuals every single day. We’re doing precisely what we’ve been doing since President George W. Bush sent us to war right after 9/11.

No, I don’t expect this kind of rhetoric to stop. After all, we’ve got a presidential campaign to wage and I expect fully to hear a lot more of it from other potential candidates for the White House. I’m just spewing my own frustration at what I keep hearing.

Bear with me, please. I’ll get over it — eventually.

 

International news

Fighting a war by fighting poverty

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Having already criticized a State Department spokeswoman for suggesting that job creation should be a strategy in fighting the Islamic State, I am struck by the amazing outrage by right-wing media over her comments.

I hope I stipulated clearly that I wouldn’t join the right-wing hysteria in questioning President Obama’s commitment to destroying ISIL. Others have done enough of that already. Some of the comments are contained in the link attached to this blog post. Take a look. They’re pretty wild.

http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/02/17/right-wing-media-attack-obama-for-tying-terror/202548

Media Matters, a left-wing media watchdog website, has produced a most interesting video showing President Bush offering strikingly similar advice in 2002, at a conference in Monterrey, Mexico.

While the comments of State Department flack Marie Harf have drawn considerable condemnation, it fascinates me that President Bush said more than a dozen years ago, “We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror. We fight against poverty because opportunity is a fundamental right to human dignity.”

Perhaps Harf’s comments got blown out of proportion, and weren’t viewed in the totality of the message she sought to deliver on MSNBC’s “Hardball” show with Chris Matthews. I regret not digesting fully all of what she said, which included comments about the administration’s intention to keep killing terrorists as the war on terror rages on.

I just caution, though, that war remains the dirtiest business that humankind ever conducts. It must be fought hard and it must be fought with the intent to defeat the enemy. There can be no doubt about our enemy’s intentions on the current battlefield — and there should be no doubt about our own intentions.

If working quietly with nations that produce terror cells to alleviate the root cause of people taking up arms against the United States and our allies is part of an overall strategy that includes waging all-out war, then by all means let’s proceed.

Let’s never lose sight of the undeniable fact that we’re dealing with a nasty enemy, as Presidents Bush and Obama both have understood.

 

International news, national news

That's the ticket: Find jobs for ISIL terrorists

What in the world is the State Department thinking?

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told Chris Matthews on MSBNC’s “Hardball” talk show that the United States cannot win the war against the Islamic State by killing them, that we need to help them find jobs.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/02/17/state-department-spokeswoman-floats-jobs-as-answer-to-isis/

Holy crap!

Here’s how FoxNews.com reported it: “‘We’re killing a lot of them, and we’re going to keep killing more of them. … But we cannot win this war by killing them,’ department spokeswoman Marie Harf said on MSNBC’s “Hardball.” “We need … to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs, whether –‘

“At that point, Harf was interrupted by host Chris Matthews, who pointed out, ‘There’s always going to be poor people. There’s always going to be poor Muslims.'”

I’m not going to buy the notion that some critics of the Obama administration say about the president going soft on terrorists.

However …

This idea that we need to focus on job creation while waging war against these monsters is nuts in the extreme.

Harf did add that there’s “no easy solution.” She said American military operations would continue to kill ISIL leaders. But she said, “If we can help countries work at the root causes of this — what makes these 17-year-old kids pick up an AK-47 instead of trying to start a business?”

How about, Ms. Harf, we soft-pedal the job creation and push the pedal to the metal on our efforts at killing the bad guys?

War is a supremely unpleasant endeavor, but we’d better continue fighting it as if we intend to win it.