Post #95

Subject: Ann Coulter fights the War!

… from “’Hardball’ with Chris Matthews,” Tuesday, June 26, 2007. My responses and additions – in [brackets]….

MATTHEWS: Here‘s a question e-mailed to us from James Campbell from Fort Story, Virginia. “Why do you and many other conservatives preach and demand that we stay in Iraq as long as it takes? Why not lead by example and go to your local recruiting office or perhaps send one of your loved ones as a good sergeant? P.S., in case you didn‘t know, the Army has increased the enlistment age to 42.”

COULTER: For one thing, I would like our troops to win, so no, I don‘t think me being over there holding a tiny little gun is going to help.

MATTHEWS: You‘re not Private Benjamin, eh?

COULTER: And point two, I mean, all of this taunting about, Oh, why don‘t you sign up—I don‘t think Democrats want to go down that line. Overwhelmingly, the troops are right-wingers who support the views of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, and that goes for military veterans, as well, even the older ones, who tend to get more liberal as they head towards Social Security.

[Um, what was the answer? Again, Ann, why not sign up? I’m sure that Jenna Bush would like some company! :p George W. Bush keeps asking for “sacrifice.” Who is he asking? C’mon, Ann, a little – how about helping Laura Bush tend that Victory Garden? Candy striping at Walter Reed? It’s called “Put up or shut up!”]

COULTER: I don‘t think we even need more troops. I think we need to be less worried about civilian casualties. I mean, are the terrorists—are Islamic terrorists a more frightening enemy than the Nazis war machine? I don‘t think so. Fanatics can be stopped. Japanese kamikaze bombers—you can stop them by bombing their society. We killed more people in two nights over Hamburg than we have in the entire course of the Iraq war.

MATTHEWS: Who should we bomb in Iraq?

COULTER: The insurgent forces. I mean, we did in Afghanistan last week hit Taliban. And what do we hear in “The New York Times”? Amnesty is crying because some civilians were hit. Well, that happens in a war, and I‘d rather have their civilians die than our civilians die!

MATTHEWS: Do you believe that we win the war on terrorism by killing lots of Arabs on international television? Do you think it helps the case?

COULTER: I don‘t know if it needs to be on international television.

MATTHEWS: Well, it is.

COULTER: I don‘t think it makes a difference. Look, I thought you were saying that was, like, one of the advantages. I don‘t think it needs to be on international television. But yes, you can destroy the fighting spirit of fanatics. We‘ve done it before. We know how to do it. And it‘s not by fighting a clean little hygienic war.

MATTHEWS: What do we do with teenagers now, who are, say, 15 years old now, who want to grow up to be terrorists? How do we stop them from growing up to be terrorists? How do we win the war against terrorism, in other words?

COULTER: I think I‘ve just said it. You cannot fight a clean, hygienic work. I mean, I think we either have to get rid of this secular religion of FDR, or we have to get rid of the idea of a hygienic war because that was not a clean, hygienic war, World War Two. We killed a lot of civilians, and we crushed the Nazi war machine. And the idea that Nazism, which was tied to a civilized culture, was less of a threat than the Koran, tied to a Stone Age culture, I think is preposterous! If we want to win this war, we absolutely could. And I think we‘ve been too nice so far.

MATTHEWS: Well, the Nazis—we defeated them rather well by going into Berlin, and certainly, the U.S. Army and the Soviet army did that job. Right now, we face an Islamic world of about a billion people. We face an Arab world of over 300 million people. We don‘t just face on country, we face a people. How do we convince them, the people who are open-minded about it, not to join the terrorists? How we do it?

COULTER: You destroy the will of fanatics. And it doesn‘t matter how broad it is, it can be destroyed. And yes, this is a trickier war because it‘s spread out. It‘s not just one country. ... we need to attack. But a lot of the things that we need to do, such as listening to terrorists in this country with—you know, on al Zarqawi‘s speed dial, we have liberals in this country screaming bloody murder about how we treat terrorists captured who are at Guantanamo, whether—whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is being water-boarded? … If this is a country that is worried about that—and I don‘t think it is—then we may as well give up right now.

MATTHEWS: Do you worry that killing civilians, even accidentally as part of collateral damage or by the way things happen in war, friendly fire that that‘s going to encourage more young people to become...

COULTER: No.

MATTHEWS: ... enemies of the United States?

COULTER: No, no, no, no, no!

MATTHEWS: Why not?

COULTER: No! No. Because you are destroying the society that has produced these monsters. And you win by killing the other side and not allowing your side to be killed. Withdrawal would be the worst thing we could do. We could definitely fight it a little bit harder. I mean, I understand why Rumsfeld wanted to have a small footprint. It is a little bit different since it wasn‘t a country attacking us, it is this ideology that has spread throughout the Middle East. Yes, that makes it a lot trickier. But the small footprint didn‘t really work. Americans are getting fed up. Democracies don‘t like to go to war, so we‘re going to have to wrap it up quickly and destroy the fighting spirit of the fanatics.

MATTHEWS: We‘ve been in this war, as you know, since ‘03. How many years do you think this president or any president can prosecute a war of this kind with the American people‘s support?

COULTER: Well, I mean, what‘s the alternative?

[Um, a withdrawal. Let us learn that our military is not the answer to every problem. Let us save what is left of our military and use it on missions appropriate to the military: Hunting down and destroying terrorists training camps and toppling the governments that harbor them. Let us be prepared to go back into Iraq if we have to.]

MATTHEWS: I‘m just asking a political question. How long can he stay in the field with this war? How long can he keep it up?

COULTER: I think—I don‘t—I do not get the sense that—your question—a long time because I do not think the country is burning with anti-war fervor. Except on your show,

MATTHEWS: Are you concerned that come September, when we have this report from General Petraeus out of the field in Iraq on how we‘re doing, that if it‘s not a conclusively positive report, that a lot of people like Susan Collins and Olympia Snow and John Sununu, Eastern Republicans, are going to split from the president? Are you concerned?

COULTER: I‘m not really one to add up votes or figure out who‘s going where or who‘s going to be voted out of office and become a former senator. I know Bush is going to become a former president. There‘s going to be a shakeup, and I hope it doesn‘t take another terrorist attack for Americans to realize the war on terrorism isn‘t going away just by saying, Oh, it‘s just a bumper sticker. They‘re still coming at us!

[Yes, they are. Even if we succeeded in turning Iraq into the 51st state or killing every Iraqi, would that translate into a “win” in the War on Terror? Do we need to swing bigger or smarter?]