Bill O’Reilly Vs. ISIS: Fox News Host’s Bizarre Terror Strategy Met With Ridicule, Disbelief
Bill O’Reilly, the longtime host of the staple Fox News political talk show The O’Reilly Factor, has hit what The Washington Post called “a cable home run” this week, proposing his own bizarre strategy to defeat ISIS, the terror group that controls large portions of Iraq and Syria and that has gained worldwide infamy by the videotaped beheadings of two American journalists and a British aid worker.
The United States, along with France and a coalition of Arab countries, is currently in the midst of an intensive aerial bombardment campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, designed to, in the words of President Barack Obama, “degrade and destroy” ISIS. But the air campaign is not enough for O’Reilly, who since 1996, when Fox News first went on the air, has served as the face of the most popular show on the conservative network.
O’Reilly first outlined his plan to fight ISIS on his own O’Reilly Factor program on Monday. But despite a military expert who was a guest on O’Reilly’s own show denouncing the plan to the host’s face as both “terrible” and “immoral,” O’Reilly appeared on Tuesday’s edition of CBS This Morning to repeat the plan, and state with his signature confident swagger, “It’s gonna happen. This anti-terror army is going to happen.”
The main point of the Bill O’Reilly anti-ISIS plan is just that — an “anti-terror army” consisting not of U.S. or allied troops, but professional mercenaries, whose main qualification would be that they speak English.
“Under congressional approval and authority the United States would train, and pay well, mercenary troops from all over the world. We would select them, Special Forces would train them, a 25,000 man force to be deployed to fight on the ground against world wide terrorism. Not just ISIS. And that would be a permanent force.”
On The O’Reilly Factor Monday, U.S. Naval War College Professor Tom Nichols told the 65-year-old O’Reilly that his plan was “terrible,” and called it “a morally corrosive idea to try to outsource our national security.”
“This is something Americans are going to have to deal for themselves,” Nichols told O’Reilly. “We’re not going to solve this problem by creating an army of Marvel Avengers or the Guardians of the Galaxy.”
On Tuesday’s edition of The O’Reilly Factor, another Fox News commentator, Charles Krauthammer told O’Reilly that his idea had zero chance of success.
“On the one hand, you can have ISIS people who believe in something. On the other hand, you have people who are there just for the money. Who do you think wins?”
Twitter user also had a field day with the Bill O’Reilly plan to defeat ISIS.
CBS treating Bill O’Reilly’s fantasies like news. ht @dorseyshaw pic.twitter.com/SG3A902tGx
— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) September 23, 2014
CUSH’S PLAN TO DEFEAT ISIS -Disruptive innovation of the jihadist paradigm -dynamic branding -market-based drone strikes — Matt Christman (@cushbomb) September 23, 2014
LIBBY’S PLAN TO DEFEAT ISIS: – Kraft singles – Joe Don Baker – Convince mom to eliminate curfew – Ice bucket challenge
— bae mafia (@libbycwatson) September 23, 2014
Ed’s Plan To Defeat ISIS: -Billionaire Trained As A Ninja -Alien With Powers From Earth Sun -Strong Woman Loosely Adapted From Greek Myths
— Dr. Ed (@EdInTheICU) September 23, 2014
The United Nations outlawed the use of mercenary armies in 1989, making the Bill O’Reilly plan to defeat ISIS illegal as well as totally unworkable.
