Courtesy of Salon:
Maher began by saying Medal Of Honor recipient Col. Jack Jacobs, who appeared before him on the show, should be made a general for calling out the GOP on the realities of going to war with ISIS. “You hear a lot, especially from the Republicans — just the name gets a laugh,” Maher said, as the audience howled at the GOP. “That, you know, we need to wipe them out.” He specifically called out Ted Cruz who Maher called a “chicken hawk with a law degree.”
“Just the idea that you can wipe them out. This is the old Vietnam model: body counts,” he said recalling Nixon’s war strategy. “You can’t wipe people off the map. That’s not gonna happen. What you have to do is wipe out the idea.
“It would be one thing if the terrorists did not share ideas with lots of mainstream people who follow the Islamic religion. But they do. Unfortunately, if I said to you, ‘Well, if only ISIS believed that anyone who leaves the religion should be killed,’ well, then maybe we can finally kill all of ISIS. But what if that’s 20-30-40 percent of all Muslim people in the world? You’re not going to kill all of them are you?”
I actually have great respect for both of these men, but I have to say that at points during the interview that Maher was being kind of a dick.
For one thing he seemed to think that Colbert was in real the character he played on Comedy Central, which is not true, and that he was his ideological opposite, which I also think is not really true.
On the other hand I thought Colbert did a masterful job of redirecting Maher's jabs and landing some rather nice solid hits of his own.
I am not saying that Maher did not make some very valid points, but I think he was unnecessarily combative with someone that he agrees with more than he seems to realize.
Things get a little testy between Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert on Late Night.
5:31 PM
Share to other apps