MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews - Transcript

MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews - Transcript

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MATTHEWS: Welcome back to Ground Zero in New York.

As the country commemorates the fifth observance of 9/11, five years ago when it was clear the country was under attack, the U.S. Capitol was evacuated and Senator John McCain continued working in a near by apartment. I recently sat down with Senator McCain, who shared his memories of that day.

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SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, (R-AZ): Here in my Senate office and I had the television set on and saw the film of the planes impacting the World Trade Center and I‘m sure that I shared the same emotions as every American, shock, disbelief, anger, grave, grave concern about what was going to happen next.

I think the biggest thing in most of our minds was, what‘s next? And clearly, one of the things that might have been next was Flight 93 coming down to either hit the Capitol or the White House. Thank God for those brave young Americans who prevented it.

MATTHEWS: Do you know in real time that it might have been headed to the Capitol?

MCCAIN: No, I did not. But it just made sense to me that if they‘re going to strike the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, that why wouldn‘t one of the targets be the Capitol or the White House.

MATTHEWS: Did you evacuate with your staff and everyone else?

MCCAIN: Yes, I couldn‘t get very far from the Capitol, so a staffer of mine has an apartment near here, and we went to her apartment because there was just no way of getting off Capitol Hill, everything was stopped. And I spent the day on the phone and in front of the television set, just like most Americans.

MATTHEWS: You‘ve been at war, grew up with the threat of a nuclear war, a Third World War, hiding under school desks, that whole thing, and then you spend all that time in the Hanoi Hilton, so you know war in a conventional sense and in a nuclear, potential sense.

What does war mean to you now?

MCCAIN: I guess the first emotion I have about this war is its complexities. And I‘m not saying the cold war was simplistic, there was many, many ramifications of the cold war. But it was pretty clear, the nature of the enemy, the threat we faced and the ideological struggle we were in.

This is far more complex, far more difficult. When you hear, as we just did in the last few days about a homegrown terrorist again, that had never been born in the Middle East but had spent the majority of their lives in London or in Paris or in Belgium, in the case of some young woman who married an extremist, that you understand that this is a very deep seated and complex and long struggle we‘re involved in.

MATTHEWS: As a political leader, what‘s your sense of how the American people in New York and around the country, how they took the impact?

MCCAIN: I think they took it very well and I think that it‘s added another chapter of heroes in America‘s history.

But I also think we passed up an opportunity after September 11th. I think we should have said, we‘re going to double the size of the Peace Corps, triple the size of Americorps, we‘re going to set up volunteer organizations all over America to ensure our security. We‘re going to give young people $18,000 in educational benefits for 18 months of military service, call Americans to serve. The country was united. We should have called them to serve, not just tell them to take a trip or go shopping.

MATTHEWS: Why is this important?

MCCAIN: Because we‘re in this together. Right now, unfortunately, but it is the history of our democracy, a small percentage of our population are bearing the brunt of this war and paying the price. In real democracies everybody contributes and everybody serves as we spread sacrifice out amongst all the people as much as we can. We‘re not doing that now.

MATTHEWS: In world war II Roosevelt sold war bonds and we had rationing and we had universal conscription?

MCCAIN: We stopped manufacturing civilian cars.

MATTHEWS: And that‘s important?

MCCAIN: I think it‘s important to ask Americans to sacrifice and I think we politicians grossly underestimate the American people‘s willingness to sacrifice when they see there is a cause and a threat and certainly most Americans see that.

MATTHEWS: You have got two young members of your family, two sons who have made the decision, in a time when there is no draft, a free decision to lead the normal course of their lives growing up, getting educations getting married, whatever, to join the military service. Connect that, if you can, they‘re young guys, five years ago was 9/11.

MCCAIN: Well, I think in the case of both of them, they have a desire to serve the country, but, and I‘d like to say that that‘s solely it, but I also think that they‘re a lot like me when I was 18 and 19 and 20 years old. They have a great spirit of adventurousness.

MATTHEWS: Action?

MCCAIN: Yes, they like the action. And, of course, when you‘re 18 or 19 or 20, you‘re totally invulnerable. So, you know, I‘d like to attribute it to their patriotism and I think that that certainly plays a role but they‘re adventurous young men and thank god there are lots of adventurous young men around America today.

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