Liberal MSNBC host Chris Matthews criticized the Obama administration for treating the brutal beheading of journalist James Foley as a “criminal matter,” noting that fighters from the Islamic State are “our geopolitical enemies” and that “the group itself is culpable.”
Matthews was responding to recent comments by Attorney General Eric Holder promising criminal justice for the individual who severed Foley’s head on-camera.
“I mean it’s so interesting, first of all the way that this administration addresses these issues, like they’re criminal matters,” he told Democratic California lawmaker Adam Schiff Thursday. “These people are our geopolitical enemies, ISIS.”
“How do you go around and find the person who put the knife to the guy’s throat, or the individual, when in fact they’re part of a zealous, political, fanatical group?” Matthews asked. “Isn’t the group itself culpable? Don’t we have to make war on them, not on the individual who was the instrument of that terror, that day, that moment?”
The MSNBC host also criticized the Obama administration’s secret, unsuccessful attempt to free Foley and other journalists with a pinpoint special forces strikes on terrorists in Syria.
“It seems like it’s what a little power does,” he charged. “Big countries, it seems to me, ought to take on the other side. … When you try to do these little, you know, go in there and sneak in and sneak out — that’s what little powers do. Don’t we need to take them on?”
