Phyllis Bennis is a defender of Iran and its nuclear ambitions, and wants Israel wiped off the map, to be replaced by a single Palestinian state. So naturally she's a Melissa Harris-Perry fave.
Appearing yet again today on Harris-Perry's MSNBC show, Bennis put her radical views on display, arguing that many US soldiers aren't truly volunteers, but are "forced in by poverty and lack of other opportunities." "That's absolutely ridiculous," responded Iraq war veteran Earl Catagnus Jr.
Catagnus himself had made a controversial statement a bit earlier. An adjunct history professor at Valley Forge Military Academy, Catagnus claimed that ISIS fighters are "not Muslims, not jihadists, not mujahadeen."
EARL CATAGNUS JR.: ISIS is a bunch of thugs. It's a bunch of killers that they couch themselves in terms. As I said before, they're not Muslims, they're not jihadists, they're not mujahadeen. These are people that are doing it on their own for their own power's sake. If the president did come up with the opportunity, which I don't think is advisable, to put boots on the ground in a conventional sense, but if he did, he would have no worry that the infantrymen, the ones who are actually going to do the fighting, that they will want to be there and want to be the tip of the spear. Because they see themselves as an instrument of national policy.
MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: As I read that, and I kept thinking in a certain way that particular idealism and that sense of intervening on behalf of those who are incapable of protecting themselves against evil, and again, using language of hyperbole, and it is a little bit of that, but it is also a very deeply American way of thinking about our role in the world. So when a president is trying to inform us, you know, you can either tap into that or try to completely alter and change that. And it seems very hard.
PHYLLIS BENNIS: But the problem is what that is leaving out, and I'm sorry, I understand Earl is giving his own opinion here and from his own experience.
CATAGNUS: Well no, from my scholarly experience.
BENNIS: From both, but my point is not all infantrymen believe that.
CATAGNUS: That's not true.
BENNIS: I work a lot with Iraq Veterans Against the War, an organization --
CATAGNUS: There's a difference, and I have the scholarly evidence to prove it.
BENNIS: I work with a lot of Iraq veterans who have a very different view than you do about number one, did they actually volunteer or were they forced in? --
CATAGNUS: That's absolutely ridiculous.
BENNIS: -- by reasons of poverty and lack of opportunities.
CATAGNUS: That's ridiculous.
