Left-wing talking head Katrina vanden Heuvel said Sunday on ABC’s”This Week” that ISIS is “not an immediate threat to this country,” a point later disputed in the roundtable segment by Wall Street Journal foreign affairs columnist Bret Stephens. Vanden Heuvel, the editor of the liberal news outfit The Nation, also said that America should go about combating ISIS through “regional diplomacy” or a “political solution.”
“The president articulated what I think is a pretty good foreign policy organizing principle: don’t do stupid stuff…He resisted military strikes in Syria last august. He said at West Point in May that our biggest mistakes have been willingness to rush into military adventures without thinking through the consequences.”
“I regret, I think the president has surrendered to war party in both parties, to a media that has lathered up hysteria about a threat that is not an immediate threat to this country. There is a barbarism and a gruesomeness to the video tapes that have moved the American people at this stage to support strikes, but the support for ground troops is not there. The support is very thin.”
The main problem is that too often in this country that we equate doing something with doing something militarily, when what is needed now is tough regional diplomacy, political solution. We’ve spent 13 years of military misadventure in this region. Let us find a different way. Don’t do stupid stuff.”