After Shoebat.com and others posted the comments of State Department spokesman Marie Harf, she found herself having to respond. During an appearance with Wolf Blitzer, Harf insisted that her position is simply ‘too nuanced for some’ to understand.
Perhaps the best and most telling part of this exchange comes at the end. After Harf admits that there is a lot of ‘buzz’ about her comments from a day earlier, which included a recommendation that 17 year-old jihadists start businesses instead of pick up an AK-47 and an assertion that the way to defeat ISIS is not by killing them, Blitzer asks her if what she thinks of the ‘buzz’.
Harf responded that she doesn’t ‘read it’. That claim is belied by her admission that the ‘buzz’ exists. At a minimum, someone else read it and then read it to her.
Now, that’s nuance!
In the same interview with Blitzer, Harf decided to plow new, absurd ground as well. When asked about the issue of what motivates Islamic terrorists, Harf essentially admits that they are Islamic terrorists but doesn’t call them that because it would give them ‘religious credibility’. Harf then says the administration doesn’t want to give the Islamic terrorists that credibility because she ‘do(esn’t) think they have it’.
Lost on Harf is that the leader of ISIS has a PhD in Islamic Studies.
A classic in this exchange is an attempt by Blitzer to get Harf to admit that all the terrorists ‘are Muslims’. Harf responds with, ‘well, many of them are’.
Is that nuance too, Marie?
In that exchange, you heard Harf refer to Eric Holder’s comments about the terminology when referring to the religion practiced by ISIS. Here are the comments she was referring to. Note that Holder is outwardly angrier with Fox News than he is with ISIS.
Fox News Channel’s Kimberly Guilfoyle makes an interesting comment at the end too: