what the lobbyists want, what wall street wants, they want etch a sketch senators. they want the ones who will clear the screen and change their minds to do whatever big money tells them to do. i guess that s trickle down politics. anyway, enough of that. up next, my colleague rachel maddow will be here in a moment. she argues in her brilliant new book drift, that it s easier to go to war in this country because they make it nicer to go to war. not for the people fighting it. you re watching hardball. is delicious, and earned this heart, for being heart healthy. feel the beat? it s amazing what soup can do.
essential about why we got to feel this way and why it feels so wrong to us. let me ask you about afghanistan because that s the case in point right now. i know it s frustrating, especially for americans with family members. the horror of that guy who was just arrested for the killing of all those civilians over there was in his fourth tour, three in iraq, one in afghanistan. it does seem whatever the courts decide about his guilt or measure of guilt, it does seem to be what s wrong, the overuse of a very small portion of our population when the rest of us are not even paying attention. when leon panetta went over there and talked to troops in afghanistan, he said, we will be challenged and we will be challenged by war itself. i don t agree with leon panetta on everything but i do agree with him on that. our reaction to afghanistan is horrifying. here horrified and it makes us
feedback i ve gotten saying i m glad you re talking from a civilian perspective. sometimes it feels like it s only us in the military who talk about military matters. it shouldn t be that way. we should get to decide how to choose. take a look at this recent poll, the new york times cbs poll. in the war on afghanistan, we should not be involved, 69%. 23%, we re doing the right thing. so we re anti-war in afghanistan. let s look at the tricky part. let s look at the iranian prospects right now. 56% support u.s. military, not israeli, action if there is evidence of a nuclear weapons program, 39% opposed. is it possible we re in the habit of getting tired of wars? there is war fatigue but not generally. certain fronts become tiring, and yet we re just as perhaps trip wired, ready to go in the next fight. that s exactly the right
about this indication nationally. of course the family did, but it didn t get a lot of national attention until people were able to heart 9s 1 911 tapes. and people are making up their minds about this and people who support zirmer man will see what they want to see and people who support trayvon martin will see what they want to see. there has to be some sort of public resolution. resolution, there s my favorite word. will we get there. thank you so much. when we return, let me finish with the important point i believe rachel maddow just made in her new book and that is that war is made too painless for most of us and too easy to start. ] get it now at red lobster s lobsterfest. 12 tempting choices like lobster lover s dream or maine lobster and shrimp. but only for a short time. now at red lobster. i m laura mclennan and i sea food differently.
she s the host of the rachel mad dow show and my beloved colleague. rachel, what you ve done here is briskly sharp and important, which a way to put it all together in a way i ve never seen done. all these pack torz making it easier for the average person out there who is non-military to say go ahead with this war. thank you, chris. that s nice of you to say and thank you for having me on to talk about it. i m not an expert on the military, i m not an expert on war. i never served. my father did but i didn t grow up on military bases or anything like that. this is a book about politics and our politics about war and about this feeling that i think a lot of the people in the country have had, whether you re left wing or right wing or even if you don t care about politics that it didn t feel like we re a country that went to war in afghanistan. we re a country that sent the military to war and let them go to work. and the military s lives have been so different in the last decade, an