MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript: Islamic State

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MATTHEWS: Senator King, we just heard the president there. And I was wondering, if we had had a vote tonight in the U.S. Senate on whether to authorize the air strikes, the actual combat by the United States, would it have passed anywhere near 78 to 22, like the other -- the measure did on arming the opposition groups?

SEN. ANGUS KING (I), MAINE: Well, my first thought was ISIL did the impossible. It generated 78 votes on anything in the United States Senate. That ought to strike fear, just that there`s that kind of almost unanimity.

I don`t know. I think the important phrase the president used, Tim, was -- the important phrase he used was...

MATTHEWS: Chris. That`s all right.

KING: I`m sorry, Chris. Going back in time. The important phrase he used was "an element of my strategy." The rest of the strategy, I think, is going to come before the Congress sometime after the elections in November or December, when we have to talk about an authorization for the larger air strikes, the whole strategy in Iraq and in Syria. That could be a different discussion, a different debate. I think it will still be a favorable one, but I think Congress has a role to play there, and we`re going to have to step up.

MATTHEWS: Let`s talk about the vote you made tonight. Do you have a sense -- and I`m not being unfair here, I don`t think, but maybe I am. Do you have a sense of the politics of Syria, the various factions that we`re talking about aiding and arming, giving arms to and training and sending them back -- perhaps even paying them? Do we know these people that we`re giving guns to?

KING: Well, there is an effort to -- the so-called -- the term they use is "vet," to find out who they are, to check them out, to talk to contacts that we have in Syria. So there is that process.

I don`t think anybody can make any guarantees about these people. Syria is one of the most complicated places on earth right now. There are something like 1,200 different opposition groups. So I mean, just imagine trying to sort that out.

But that`s certainly one of the tasks that we`re going to have as we go through this process because the last thing we want to do is arm people who are going to turn around and use them -- use those arms against us. So that is the first step in this process. And I think we do know how to do it. I don`t think it`s going to be fool-proof, but I think there`s a reasonable chance that we`re going to be able to do that successfully.

MATTHEWS: What do you think of this historically? Here`s the United States, which won its independence by beating the Hessians, the hired army, the Germans who were fighting for the British for pay. And now we`re going off in this odd situation of basically declaring war on ISIS, but not having an army of our own willing to go in because the American people don`t support it and they don`t want us there -- to have to go out and scramble and recruit, muster really, an army of people we really don`t know and hope that after we`ve trained them, that they will fight the war we want to fight but are unable to.

Isn`t that an odd situation?

KING: Well, don`t...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: ... same esprit de corps and desire to fight that war?

KING: Well, there`s a difference between Syria and Iraq. In Iraq, there is an army. There is the Iraqi army and there`s the Peshmerga, the Kurdish army, and they are fighting for their own country. And these people that we`re talking about in Syria are Syrians.

And I don`t think it`s being -- we`re approaching this way because of domestic politics, although I suspect, you know, that`s in the back of the president`s mind. But the real reason is trying to do it ourselves isn`t going to work. We know that. We`ve learned that. It`s got to be -- this has got to be a war involving the local population of that region, particularly Sunnis.

This can`t be viewed as a Western war on Islam. If it is, that`s exactly what ISIS wants. And that`s why the crucial element of this -- there are two crucial pieces. One is that it`s got to be a real coalition. We got to have people who are going to be in there fighting, that it`s not -- they`re just not holding our coat while we do the fighting.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

KING: And the second piece is the government in Baghdad has to be inclusive and give the Sunnis in northern and western Iraq some loyalty to Baghdad, instead of to these guys in ISIS.

MATTHEWS: Do you see any evidence -- and again, I don`t want to be too tough here, but it is HARDBALL. Do you see any evidence that the Jordanians, who are right on the border with ISIS now, being threatened by them, or the Saudis, or ultimately to be threatened, or the Emirates, any of the Sunni powers that are normally with us -- do you see any evidence they want to get in this fight on the ground and take the ground campaign to ISIS, we`re looking at now?

KING: I don`t know about the ground part. I do think that there`s evidence that there`s going to be air support from those countries. But I think that`s what`s going to be developed over the next few days.

And that`s why this vote today in the Congress was so important. If we had backed off of this, then I think forming a real coalition would have been almost impossible. They`d have said, you know, What do you expect us to do when you`re not going to step up?

So I think the vote today is a big plus for the president and Secretary Kerry to go to those countries and say, OK, we`re committed. And now where are you going to be?

And my sense is, Chris, that it`s starting to build, that some momentum on this coalition is going to build. But that`s -- that`s an absolute necessity. If it doesn`t -- if that doesn`t happen, it`s a fool`s errand. We`re not going to be able to dislodge these guys. We`ve got to have a coalition and we`ve got to have the support of those people on the ground in those two countries.

MATTHEWS: We keep hearing around the edges from this administration, from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dempsey, and from the vice president yesterday backing it up, that if worse comes to worst and we`re not able to win through the air that we will go in on the ground, that that comes to that urgent situation -- what do you think about the American people -- they see we can`t beat ISIS from the air, and air campaigns rarely complete the job...

KING: Right.

MATTHEWS: Would you see the American people say, Well, darn it, we
got to go in again? Would we go into Syria?

KING: I don`t think so. I don`t think so. Now, I was in that hearing where General Dempsey said, I would recommend some additional U.S. troops. I don`t think the president would accept that recommendation, to tell you the truth, and I don`t think the American people are there.But my ultimate reasoning on that is, it won`t work. It`s not going to be successful. We can`t police this area of the world. We`ve spent the last dozen years learning that, and I don`t think we need to relearn it.

So yes, General Dempsey sort of opened that door yesterday, but -- and I do think we need a plan B. What if it doesn`t work? Because you`re absolutely right. There`s no such thing as a surgical war. There`s no such thing as solving this with just air power. It`s going to take boots on the ground, but they shouldn`t be our boots. They ought to be -- they`ve got to be the boots of the Kurds and the Iraqis and the Syrians.

MATTHEWS: Well, we got to make somebody else want to hate them as much as we hate ISIS. Anyway, thank you very much, Senator Angus King of Maine.

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