Matthews Suggests Obama Should Follow Woody Harrelson's Advice on Afghanistan

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Chris Matthews, on Tuesday's "Hardball," invited on former Cheers star Woody Harrelson to promote his new movie, The Messenger, and also talk Afghanistan war policy. The Zombieland actor announced that he was opposed not only to the war in Iraq, but also to the fight in Afghanistan as he compared it to Vietnam and advised that Barack Obama should "pull those troops out," to which Matthews chimed: "It doesn't look like he's pulling out. He's not gonna follow the recommendation of Mr. Woody Harrelson it looks like...although he might be better off doing that." [audio available here]

The following is the relevant exchange between Matthews and Harrelson as it was aired on the October 27 edition of "Hardball":

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about this, the war. I mean we’ve got two wars going now, one that hopefully is settling down, we’re coming home next year from Af-, from Iraq. But the other one looks like we might be beefing up. Your feelings about it?

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WOODY HARRELSON: Well I’ve been pretty vocal about how I feel about the war which is I’m against it. I think it’s, I think the reasons that we went to war were pretty obvious and I think that, the thing that happened for me, though, during the course of the filming of this movie, I got to spend a lot of times with the people in the Army. And I really came to love the people that I met and I felt they were heroic. They’re not making any money, they’re putting their life on the line every day and they’re doing it out of the love of their country and I really was knocked out by them. And I felt like in the end I, I, I loathe the war but I love the warriors. So it was a big thing for me.

MATTHEWS: Well the great contradiction is that we keep hearing stories like General McChrystal says more troops and in a weird way, the guys out there who are risking and giving their lives under orders, are, are getting confused with the people giving the orders. I mean it seems to me the challenge is to give them the right orders. To give them the right mission, the right wars to fight. And that’s the civilian’s job. That’s the-

HARRELSON: I think there is a lot of similarity between what’s happening now and what happened with LBJ. It’s an unpopular thing that’s happening over there and I think that, I think, what I would love to see is they bring the troops home. Because I think it’s not a war they should not be fighting.

MATTHEWS: What do you make of Barack Obama’s predicament? He has, he ran and said that was the "necessary war." That, that Iraq was a mistake, that we didn’t have to do that. But this one we went into chase the Taliban so we could get rid of them because they allowed al Qaeda operate? Well? And his challenge now is the military guy over there McChrystal saying, "I need another 40,000 troops." If he doesn’t give him the 40,000, he’s not giving his guy enough to carry out the mission he gave him.

HARRELSON: Yeah I mean there are a lot of parallels between this and Vietnam and I, I just hope, you know what LBJ, I think probably what LBJ should have done was pull those troops out earlier even though it seemed like that wasn’t the move at the time. And I think that’s what should happen here. But then again I’m just an actor.

MATTHEWS: You’re also humble. Thank you. You’re right about LBJ. We will discuss the rest of this issue as the time goes on here. But you’re dead right about LBJ. I don’t think we gained anything from ‘68 and on. That war just continued and we ended up pulling out the same way we would’ve pulled out in ‘65. Anyway thank you, Woody Harrelson. Good luck with this movie. The movie is The Messenger. It’s obviously heavily freighted with importance right now as this war continues and perhaps gets escalated some time, it looks like now between the 7th and the 11th of this month the President is gonna call up for something, perhaps up to 40,000 more troops, somewhere in between. It doesn’t look like he’s pulling out. He’s not gonna follow the recommendation of Mr. Woody Harrelson it looks like. Up next, although he might be better off doing that.

—Geoffrey Dickens is the senior news analyst at the Media Research Center.


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Harrelson is an

Harrelson is an anti-American propagandist. http://www.copycatwatch.org No surprise Chris Matthews agrees with him.

___________________________________________________________
Graphical conservative commentary - animations & pictures for posting on forums: http://ubama.org/chucks-pix/

Woody is a Grade B actor...

...and no one should listen to anything he says beyond cheesy lines in a bad TV show or movie. 

How these Hollywood types come to expect others to find their opinions credible and worthy of the national stage is beyond me.

The fact that news organizations give that national stage to them on their networks or in print is simply dumbfounding.

_________________________________________

"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert A. Heinlein

Grade B actor

White Men Can't Jump is a perfect example. Every decision he made in the movie was boneheaded, and in the end, he lost everything -- his money, friends, girlfriend.  No wisdom; no skills; no ability to see the consequences of his actions or statements.

And yet, Mathews thinks he's qualified to dispense opinion on a national level. But then, Mathews also thinks Mathews is a qualified newsman. Both are pathetic..

__________
"mmm, mmm, mm. Barrack-Hussain-Øbama↓." - The liberals coolaid drinking song

Yeah, Woody is just the guy

Yeah, Woody is just the guy I want advising me in my Tactical Operations Center (TOC).  With his keen insight, and analytical skills we would now - be retreating into the Canadian mountains to fight a last stand.....

WHy do Hollywooders think they know ANYTHING?

Oh thank heavens!

Woody Harrelson is such a foreign policy genius!  Obama should get down on his knees and thank the man for such brilliant insights.

Come one people.....Woody can play dumb and pour beer!!!  He's eminently qualified to be dispensing strategic and tactical military advice. 

Thank you Chris Matthews, for  such a startling original and high minded analysis of Afghanistan.  What a journalist!!!  What great bookers on your show!!!

OK, sarc off.  I can't keep it up any longer, as much as I try.

I hope he fails, too.

 

 

I cant beleive these folks think

Anyone should take them serious. The topics they ask opinion of some folks , is simply mind blowing

 

My Gov. thinks I am dangerous, so be careful

"Television is a freak show" Bernie Goldberg

→ Give Harrelson credit

These were questions Matthews asked him, and he answered them through his own prism of understanding.

But he followed with "But then again I’m just an actor.

It's not as though Matthews asked him how he felt about his dad, Charles Harrelson, killing a Federal Judge.  Of that, I'd be interested in an opinion.

LYDSEXICS UNTIE!

Wow, CA

I didnt know that? Why,?

 

My Gov. thinks I am dangerous, so be careful

"Television is a freak show" Bernie Goldberg

→ I don't know

Maybe it was just big news in Texas back in 1979

LYDSEXICS UNTIE!

"Maximum John" and the Harrelsons

And this is also why in San Antonio, you can find a John Wood Middle School, and why the federal courthouse is the John Wood Federal Courthouse. 

Yep.  Woody spent much time trying to get his old man out of the slam for whacking a federal judge - but ultimately failed.  Charles Harrelson dies in the federal slam some years ago now.  

"CONSUMED DEMOCRACY RETURNS A SOCIALIST REGIME" - Slayer, "Fictional Reality", from Divine Intervention (1994)

GC,

Charles Harrelson killed the judge, at the orders of a drug dealer who was supposed to appear before the judge, on the day of his murder.  He was also involved in the murder of a Texas grain dealer, was convicted of that murder and sentenced to 15 years(?) and released after serving 5 years.

And, Woody probably fried his brain years ago after submerging himself in Hollywood's drug culture.  So, along with John, he served in VN, Kerry, he makes a great foreign policy advisor for the 0. 

 

Interesting

Thanks

 

My Gov. thinks I am dangerous, so be careful

"Television is a freak show" Bernie Goldberg

In all fairness to the hapless actor

The fact that his father murdered someone is not his fault.

The sins of the father do not accrue to the son. Although the son has numerous sins of his own.

I can only grant him pity for having to live with such a legacy as a murderer for a father.

His own liberal twitism is entirely on him, though.

 

I hope he fails, too.

 

 

I recall that he started a

I recall that he started a Hollywood/Media campaign to have him released, victim of an unfair trial.

Well said Blonde.  Woody's

Well said Blonde.  Woody's idiocy has nothing to do with his father.  When he first started on "Cheers" and this came out I felt badly for him.  At least he knows his limits (the I'm only an actor comment.)

No corruption of blood, but...

Yes, there is no corruption of blood, to use the phraseology from the Constitution.  However, Woody did spend an awful lot of time trying to get his old man out of the federal slam. 

I never thought Cheers was a funny show.  But I remember one night when I was watching with the family as a teenager, when Woody's name popped up in the credits, he told me about his old man.  I can't imagine there weren't many viewers in the San Antonio area who weren't reminded of what happened back in 1979 when Woody's name popped up...especially because of the efforts he put into getting his old man released from jail. 

"CONSUMED DEMOCRACY RETURNS A SOCIALIST REGIME" - Slayer, "Fictional Reality", from Divine Intervention (1994)

A real father

A real father figure.


Judge Wood's assassin

As a vegan, raw-foodist,

As a vegan, raw-foodist, activist enviro-wacko, he'd probably come up with something brilliant like, "Hey, it's no worse than getting paid to kill animals in a meat factory every day." 

"Beauty is only skin deep, but liberal's to the bone." - me

My favorite Woody Harrelson

My favorite Woody Harrelson Dad's trivia/myth was that Killer Harrelson was one of the tramps rounded up from a freight car, arrested/brought in, and questioned the day JFK was arrested. 

The lengths people will go to fill a data vacuum with wildhare conspiracies is amazing, including this goofy junior CSI wannabe's "evidence".

As all too often happens, things are not always as people make them.

That's correct, stratman, he

That's correct, stratman, he was featured, if memory serves me, on the documentary "The Men Who Killed Kennedy." Which has been broadcast on A&E/History channel from time to time.  

Facts are like kryptonite to the liberal.

"...documentary "The Men

"...documentary "The Men Who Killed Kennedy."

Was it Oliver Stone or Michael Moore that made this "documentary"?  ;-)

(Spoofing the movie, not you rockyracoon.  No offense meant to you)

geez, getting predictable

I guess Chrissy was moved by his brilliant performance in Zombieland and previous movies that didn't do that well in the box office.  Most liberals are like that.

-Jon

'Doubling down on stupid is

'Doubling down on stupid is not a particularly good idea'~Breitbart

I'm sorry, was this on

I'm sorry, was this on Hardball or Entertainment Tonight?  I get them so confused.

Mathews has a woody for Woody!

All I can say is, "Woody Harrelson is a DUNCE!" But then again, so is Sissy Chrissy.

"You’re also

"You’re also humble."

Yeh right. This is the same angry Woody Harrelson who I saw chase and corner a male flight attendent for not getting him a drink fast enough on a flight to L.A. This is the same son of a contract killer who died in prison. This is the same guy who wants to legalize marijuana.

Didn't know Harrelson was x military.

OH, HE ISN"T!! 

 but he played a murderous

 but he played a murderous rapist bastard ex-military prisoner in a movie once.

 

WWW.GS2AC.COM. 2nd Amendment Grass Roots Action in the Bay Area, CA. We're not all "Breakfast Cereal" folks here! :)

Woody????

Woody Harrelson is so dumb that on the TV series 'Cheers'  his name had to be 'Woody', because otherwise he would forget what it was and miss his lines. From this man we should take advice on the war in Afghanistan?

Levin just said

Matthews was speech writer for Carter,,,does anyone ever remember any speeches from Carter? It was funny,,,and true.

 

My Gov. thinks I am dangerous, so be careful

"Television is a freak show" Bernie Goldberg

I only remember the one

I only remember the one about the old peanut head lusting in his heart for other women, other than his delightful Rosalyn.

She had to be a saint being married to that sanctimonious jackass.

Don't forget... you can't spell OBAMA without the support of A MOB 

Jack... Lol... I remember

Jack...

Lol... I remember that as well...wasn't that an interview he gave Playboy?

Only other thing was of course the "bundle up, turn the thermostat down like we have here in the WH" drivel.

Iran goes without saying.

'Doubling down on stupid is not a particularly good idea'~Breitbart

bt -- share your shower

bt -- share your shower with a homeless person.

I'm sure he said that -- or maybe I made it up!

Don't forget... you can't spell OBAMA without the support of A MOB 

gc... You've got me

gc...

You've got me chuckling here...I sure don't recall anything memorable as far as Carter's blather went...you hit the nail on the head.

'Doubling down on stupid is not a particularly good idea'~Breitbart

Yea, I was laughing

Pretty good when Mark said it

 

My Gov. thinks I am dangerous, so be careful

"Television is a freak show" Bernie Goldberg

I like how he always "acts"

I like how he always "acts" stupid in the roles he plays.

I understand why now.

matthews respects harrelsons opinon because they have similar credentials and occupations. Harrelson pretends to be other people for a living and matthews pretends to be a journalist.

 

Harrelson's a joke, just like Matthews

Perfect fit here to demonstrate the Democrat-Media Complex at its worst.

Meanwhile, actual thinkers like Charles Krauthammer are ripping Barack Obama for his "disgusting" attacks on George W. Bush:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4xmPJ0xIzc

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Helping to spread the truth

http://www.youtube.com/user/ConservativeNewMedia

Pass the blunt Pres and lets play make believe

Holeinthehull

Woody Harrelson is an idiot without even trying and probably carries a card in his pocket that says so.  The guy is a certified burned out "head." For Chris Matthews to say the POTUS should follow Woodhead's advice is laughable unless Woodhead's advice is "roll me another one  Pres."  Another day and another time the Pres. might have accomodated Woodhead

holeinthehull.com

 

Woody and Kumar go to

Woody and Kumar go to Afghanistan... when PBO hires Kal Penn, Woody can't be far behind.

Furbies!

You know, I remember this from the 90s, the way woody and chrissy seem to talk with each other, they remind me of the furbies, how they react to certain stimuli, and if you get two of those things together, it's almost like they are trying to talk to each other and make absolutely NO sense!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furby

Anyone remember those goofy toys?  My nephew had one and it drove my family NUTS!(he was also into Pokemon for a while too and the Power Rangers, OY!)

That's what these two jokers remind me of.

-Jon

            Are

            Are you serious? Woody Harrelson? When did we elect this idiot?  If we need someone to be in a movie, I can see asking his opinion. What is his opinion? Has he been hired as a czar? It wouldn't surprise me. Doesn't anyone know that Hollywood is all fake?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

You can't compare it to Vietnam. Just stop it.

Memories of Vietnam Haunt War, but Scarcely Apply
By GERALD F. SEIB

The comparisons roll off tongues easily in Washington these days: Vietnam and Afghanistan, both home to far-away, maddeningly intractable struggles. The former became a quagmire that devoured a presidency; might the latter as well?

Every significant foreign conflict since the mid-1970s has, almost inevitably, been compared to Vietnam. In Ronald Reagan's first term, for example, Washington buzzed with speculation that El Salvador might turn out to be "his Vietnam."


Despite some obvious parallels, the U.S. war in Afghanistan is nothing like the failed effort in Vietnam some three decades ago, WSJ's Gerald Seib explains.
There are some surface similarities between the Vietnam War and the conflict in Afghanistan. But the list of differences is far longer, and more profound. Those differences suggest that while it is certainly possible that Afghanistan could consume the Obama presidency as Vietnam did Lyndon Johnson's, that outcome is likely only if there is some massive expansion of the Afghan problem in coming years, and a massive mishandling of it by the Obama administration.

In each place, the U.S. has had the misfortune to pick -- or, more correctly, to have history pick for it -- a confrontation in a land with a long history of beating back foreign forces.

In both Vietnam and Afghanistan, the U.S. has been trying to help allied governments widely seen as weak and corrupt. In both countries, the insurgents the U.S. is trying to quell often have proved adept at both fighting and governing at the grassroots level.

But then the comparison breaks down. The differences start with the rationale for fighting in the first place. There was never an attack on the continental U.S. launched from Vietnam, or by people trying to take over the Vietnamese government. The "domino theory" that Communists would slowly spread influence if Vietnam fell was an abstraction to many Americans.

"In the case of Afghanistan, the memory of 9/11 remains a powerful rationale for most Americans to support the war," says Mark Moyar, a historian at the U.S. Marine Corps University who has written books on both Vietnam and counterinsurgency operations.

The level of American commitment in Vietnam was simply an order of magnitude greater than any commitment either made or contemplated in Afghanistan. At the end of 1968, the height of the American military commitment in Vietnam, the U.S. had about 540,000 troops in the country. Even now, after eight years in Afghanistan, the number of troops there or headed there is about 68,000. Even if President Barack Obama grants the full wish of the American Afghan commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for more troops, the American contingent in Afghanistan won't reach even a quarter of the level in Vietnam.

Staffing that war required a military draft, which leads to a related and important difference: Today there is no military draft, which did as much as anything to drive up domestic resistance to the struggle in Vietnam.

Nor is the violence American forces face comparable. A total of 866 American troops have died in Afghanistan in the eight years of American action there, according to the Brookings Institution's Afghanistan Index. By contrast, there were 58,193 American deaths in the long Vietnam conflict, over almost two decades of American involvement, according to the National Archives database.

"The enemy armed forces are not nearly as powerful," says Mr. Moyar. "By the biggest estimate, the Afghan insurgents have something like 25,000 people, and they are operating in small packets here and there. It's a big deal if they can get 100 people together at a time."


The U.S. and its South Vietnamese allies were fighting not just the Viet Cong insurgency -- the force often compared to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan -- but also a large and well-equipped regular army from North Vietnam.

"From a military perspective and a counterinsurgency perspective, the most important difference is that there is no North Vietnam in this equation," says Fred Kagan, an Afghanistan analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. "Yes, it's true that Pakistan provides some sanctuary and support. But the thing that brought down South Vietnam in the end was the North Vietnamese army."

All of that, in turn, leads to perhaps the most significant difference: Vietnam was a proxy fight in a superpower struggle, with both the Soviet Union and China giving massive aid to America's foes. Neither the Taliban nor al Qaeda in Afghanistan has that advantage.

Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com
 

Sincerely,

a Veteran of a 1000 psychic wars.

why is it?

This squirrel without nuts and many other liberals whined and cried and hollered for 8 years about Bush's war.......now oblahma has two of them going, where are all the whiners now?  or should that be weiners?    stinking hypocrites!   I agree now...get out, isolate America, take care of ourselves, stop sending billions and billions of dollars to countries that hate our guts, develop our own oil reserves and if the rest of the world doesn't like seeing our prosperity and wants to attack us........then we can politely make a parking lot of their pitiful existance!!!  imho!!

"Woody Harrelson "attended

"Woody Harrelson "attended Hanover College in Indiana, majoring in theater arts and English. He never graduated but was later given honorary degrees."

Oh, yeah.  Let's consult some college dropout, whose majors were theater arts and English, about military strategy.  You know with his coursework he would just have to be an expert in just about everything, especially geopolitics and military strategy.

"A communist is someone who reads Marx.  An anti-communist is someone who understands Marx."  Ronald Reagan

Woody Needs a History Lesson

LBJ did not pull us out of Vietnam. Richard Nixion did in 1973-74.

This ain't "Wag the Dog" Woody. so STFU

 I was startin' ta like ya again after Zombieland but you had to open your mouth and start talking from your insulated ivory tower Hollywood herd mentality.

 White Men Can't Jump, and Hollywood Needs To Shut Up About Policy.

 

WWW.GS2AC.COM. 2nd Amendment Grass Roots Action in the Bay Area, CA. We're not all "Breakfast Cereal" folks here! :)

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