Avoiding getting involved was the theme of the day yesterday on MSNBC, from Ed Schultz to Chris Matthews to Chris Hayes. The network is nothing if not ruthlessly on message from show to show. On All In, host Hayes stuck firmly to that agenda when interviewing his guests. With leading questions and choice of words, Hayes tried to push the idea that fighting ISIS where they live would be a bad idea and, what's more, is probably what they really want us to do. A silly and childish notion on it's face, made all the more laughable by the fact that nobody bit. Not even the State Department's disastrous Marie Harf!
"It seems to me that there are two ways to see them. One, as a kind of provocation to bait America into more attacks on ISIS or being sucked into an even bloodier, more protracted engagement in Iraq," begins Hayes. "The other is as warning, which is the kind of surface text of these missives." Either it's A - they want to drag America into a senseless pointless fountain of bloodshed and if we do it we'll be doing what they want and also this is the correct answer, or B - You're too stupid to read between the lines and I hate you.
It is an absurd conjecture on its face, anyway. ISIS is baiting America to attack them some more so, what, we get in a quagmire and Obama's approval ratings go down? It takes a special kind of liberal stupidity and media elite parochialism to even come up with such an outlandish theory. But to present it not only as a legitimate alternate theory of ISIS' beheading motivations, but as the superior theory of their motives, is absolutely laugh out loud buffoonery.
And on it goes like that. Chris could not make it more clear which interpretation he prefers. But confound it, NBC News correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin, Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine, ad yes, Marie Harf, all refuse to take that road. They each advocate intervention and attack. They each call ISIS a threat that must be dealt with. Crushed. Much to Hayes barely concealed incredulity.
Sorry Chris. Maybe next time use some kind of red light, green light system?
