Backed up by two liberal journalists and moderate Republican Michael Steele, MSNBC's Chris Matthews set about on his January 8 Hardball program to bash Sen. Lindsey Graham (R), former Amb. John Bolton, and talk-show host Rush Limbaugh for their criticism of President Obama's handling of the war on terrorism in light of the deadly terroristic shooting spree at the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo yesterday.
Perhaps the most absurd part of the discussion, however, was when both Matthews and Steele utterly failed to understand Limbaugh's argument. Both protested that they were at a loss to understand the logic of the conservative talker's monologue, wherein Limbaugh raised President Obama's -- and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's -- strenuous insistence that a short, obscure YouTube video was the precipitating factor in the Benghazi attack:
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, here's Rush Limbaugh. He says the Paris shootings are the result of Benghazi. Figure that one out. Michael, you got to do this one too, make this connection.
MICHAEL STEELE: Heh. Great. [chuckles]
RUSH LIMBAUGH: By going to the UN, and saying that a video was responsible for the death of a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, when it wasn't. By sending Susan Rice on five Sunday morning talk shows to spread that lie, to run ads in Afghanistan or Pakistan, starring Obama and Hillary, continuing this lie that a video-- these actions have consequences, ladies and gentlemen.
My point is, this country's leadership has fed the beast. This country's leadership has fed the rage.
MATTHEWS: You know, I can't follow him. Because clearly the people who killed the satirists in Paris were angered by their satire. There is a connection between those two. Absolutely no justification for doing it, but there was a connection. Is he saying that we shouldn't point to connections when we find them? What is he arguing? Again, the causality, how is Obama responsible for what happened?
STEELE: It sounded really-- Chris, I was going to say, it sounded a lot like sort of the talking points that we're going to hear for the presidential campaign, laying out these arguments early to sort of lay down the predicate against both the administration and a future Hillary Clinton campaign.
The reference to Hillary Clinton in this context to me makes no sense. The reference to Benghazi makes no sense. You know, this is about what Paris and in particular, the president of Paris has been -- of France has been doing, globally engaging, along with the United States in fighting terrorism. This was a direct response to that.
And the fact of the matter is, again, the President of the United States is, is not the president of the world. As much as we sometimes want to make the argument, even the president sometimes may come off as that, if you want to say. These realities are here for us right now.
We are engaged in a global war on terror. All of our partners and allies are fighting this battle. And as has already been noted, we've got to stick together. We cannot, you know, pretend that, oh, you know, we talk about Benghazi and we connect it to Paris that everybody's going to sit there and go, yeah, that works. It doesn't. That's not how this playing out, I don't think.
Of course the comparison is apt because the attack on Charlie Hebdo was predicated on the group's satire of Muhammad, the founder of the Islamic faith, and after Benghazi, the Obama administration failed to signal strong support for the notion that it was beyond the pale to use satirical attacks on Islam as a justification for violence. Indeed, the Obama-Holder DOJ's subsequent arrest of the filmmaker in question -- albeit on legitimate criminal charges unrelated to the movie itself -- arguably sent the wrong message to a watching world.
What's more, as Obama himself said to the United Nations, "The future MUST (emphasis mine) belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam" and, moments later, quoting Gandhi, "Intolerance is itself a form of violence and the obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit."
Certainly defenders of Islamism would argue that the sort of no-holds-barred mockery that Charlie Hebdo publishes, including of Muhammad, is a form of such "intolerance" which "is itself a form of violence." Islamists could easily shoot back that it is rational to use actual physical violence to respond to the "form of violence" that is "intolerant" mockery of a religious figure.
That neither Matthews nor Steele nor the other panelists on the set seemed to grasp this, says quite a bit about their ability to critically engage the issue.
