Days after multiple head-scratching statements from State Department spokesperson Marie Harf on the fight against ISIS, Fox News’s George Will and the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel mocked Harf and the fight against the terror group in the Middle East.
Strassel, a WSJ columnist, told “Fox News Sunday” guest host John Roberts that it’s “hard to have an economic message in a war zone,” taking direct aim at Harf’s remarks last week. Harf told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that the U.S. must combat the “root causes” of terrorism rather than trying to “kill our way” out against ISIS.
“Is the White House missing the big picture here? Is this about economic opportunity or is this about fighting a terrorist religious ideology?” asked Roberts.
“It is hard to have an economic message in a war zone,” Strassel said. “Most of the Syrians and Iraqis who are getting up every day, they just want to get through the day without being beheaded or burnt alive, and this is the problem is that yeah, both of those have to matter.”
“You want functioning society and we do know that having successful economies does reduce violence,” Strassel admitted. “But there’s a priority question here. You are going to have to go in and get rid of the terror threat first.”
Meanwhile, Will attempted to make mincemeat of the State Department’s current offensive against ISIS. The syndicated columnist echoed his Friday column, saying that the department’s plan to bombard ISIS with tweets is “surreal.”
“We are going to cope with the radical ideology by bombarding them with tweets using 350 State Department Twitter accounts,” Will said. “The problem with that is that there is an old axiom you cannot reason someone out of position they have not been reasoned into, and the idea that people who say we would rather behead people and crucify them and burn them alive and you are going use, at most, 140 characters to say ‘that’s really not very nice.’ The whole thing is surreal.”