War on Terrorism

Is television too graphic? That’s an argument that could be discussed ad nauseam, but this week’s decision by some networks to delay explicit television episodes, proves that even Hollywood knows how closely it can mirror a violent reality.

If Mike Barnicle were around at the beginning of WWII, perhaps he would have written "we better not fight back. It might make Hitler mad."      On today's Morning Joe, the cringing former Boston Globe columnist, second-guessing a united front against terrorism, worried "wouldn't . . . creating a NATO force just add fuel to the recruiting fever that ISIS employs within Europe?" Maybe Mike should…

Would John Heilemann have called Francois Hollande "shameless" and "un-French" if a few months back he had halted the immigration of Syrian immigrants into France, thus stopping two of the Paris terrorists—who reportedly posed as refugees—from entering the country? The question arises because on today's With All Due Respect, Heilemann condemned as "shameless" and "un-American" the dozen or so…

Many on the left have accused conservatives of exploiting the Paris terrorist attacks for political gain. On Monday, Daily Kos founder and publisher Markos Moulitsas jumped on the pile, alleging that the right’s main reaction to the attacks was not sadness or outrage, but “excitement” over the prospect of stirring up Islamophobia -- perhaps to the point of getting the Middle East war that they…

On Monday, CNN's Christiane Amanpour and two of her network's analysts blasted President Obama moments after he ended a press conference where he defended his anti-ISIS strategy. Amanpour underlined that Obama "something that was pretty incredible...that our strategy is working. People do not believe that to be the case. The only strategy that's working is the strategy that he tends to dismiss —…

Monday’s The View featured a segment with Richard Clarke, an ABC News consultant and former Clinton and Bush national security staffer. Clarke iterated that “We are a country of refugees. The people we're allowing in are the victims of terrorism. We shouldn't punish victims of terrorism.” When Paula Faris brought up that Marco Rubio said “you can't do a background check on a lot of these refugees…

The obvious pull quote of the day from President Obama's contentious press conference in Antalya, Turkey is this statement: "What I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with ..." Obama then claimed that any ideas coming from those who believe in such a notion have "no relationship to what is…

Following a press conference in which President Obama stubbornly refused to admit any failures in his strategy to fight ISIS, reporters on NBC and ABC were stunned by the commander-in-chief’s dismissive attitude toward the legitimate tough questioning he received.    

In a recap of the November 14 Democratic presidential debate, Sunday’s Nightly News avoided awkward moments, such as the candidates refusing to use the term “radical Islam” or Bernie Sanders doubling down on climate change being the greatest national security threat.

Monday’s Morning Joe began with an evaluation of the actions of the White House prior to and after the attack on Paris Friday night. Joe Scarborough began by demanding to know if the roundtable thought the President actually looked involved and engaged in understanding “the level of threat.” When Mike Barnicle tried to claim the President “looks fully engaged,” Scarborough felt it necessary to…

In an interview with former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Monday’s NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie was incredulous of his criticism of President Obama’s strategy against ISIS: “You wrote in The Washington Post that the President should wage war to defeat ISIS, quote, ‘not merely to harass it.’ That is pretty tough language. Let me be direct with you, are you saying the…

In the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks, many shows have postponed or replaced episodes this week that have terrorism storylines. But the main plot of ABC’s Quantico is a terrorist bombing at Grand Central Station in New York City and the flashback of the events leading up to that day. To acknowledge the terror attacks (kind of) without having to completely cancel their show, this message…

Appearing as a guest during Sunday's MSNBC live coverage of the Paris terrorist attacks, Daily Beast Foreign Editor Christopher Dickey declared that "I'm afraid" that the right wing in Europe "will continue to be on the rise" in the aftermath of the attacks.

The terrorist shootings and bombings that murdered over 100 people in Paris on Friday were carried out by the group known as ISIS (Islamic State), but there was little discussion of Islam in the front-page coverage of the massacres in Saturday's New York Times. The paper demonstrated an unseemly reluctance to talk seriously about the probable identification of the terrorists, despite their own…