I told the students that the way to deal with terrorists is the way Golda Meir did after the attack on the Israeli Olympic athletes: hunt them down and kill them one at a time and be rough about it.
Every person in that room heard my say this. I don't know why the reporter chose to conflate my remarks about our need to get behind the forces in the Muslim world into my approach on how to deal with terrorists.
Feel free to check with the University of Toronto students who invited me to speak.
Here's an excerpt from the original article:
In a speech to political science students at the University of Toronto yesterday, the host of the CNBC current affairs show Hardball had plenty of harsh words for U.S. President George W. Bush, as well as the political climate that has characterized his country for the past few years.
“The period between 9/11 and Iraq was not a good time for America. There wasn’t a robust discussion of what we were doing,” Matthews said.
“If we stop trying to figure out the other side, we’ve given up. The person on the other side is not evil — they just have a different perspective.”
To me, Matthews' clarification confirms one thing: That the comments quoted by the article were about America's international enemies and not domestic political opponents as some were saying in the comments to my original post on this subject.
That aside, though, this doesn't really clear anything up for Matthews. I still have a hard time accepting that Osama bin Laden and Abu al Zarqawi aren't so much evil as misunderstood.