Who Will Stand Up to Ahmadinejad?
With the MSM in an orgiastic frenzy over the prospect of an Obama rising it barely has the strength to report the news of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threat to wipe out Israel.
Iran’s hard-line president said Tuesday that Israel will one day be “wiped out” as the Soviet Union was, drawing applause from participants in a conference casting doubt on the Holocaust.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s comments were likely to further fuel the outcry prompted by the two-day gathering, which has gathered some of Europe’s and the United States’ best-known Holocaust deniers.
Anger over the conference could further isolate Iran as the West considers sanctions in the standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program.
But Ahmadinejad appeared to revel in his meeting Tuesday with conference delegates, shaking hands with American participants and sitting near six anti-Israel Jewish participants, dressed in black ultra-Orthodox coats and hats.
“The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom,” Ahmadinejad said during Tuesday’s meeting in his offices, according to the official IRNA news agency.
The Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, let slip recently that Israel has nuclear weapons. Was this slip of tongue a warning to Iran? Is there any American resolve to defend its ally against Iran? Is there any understanding in Washington D.C. of the threat Ahmadinejad poses?
Hugh Hewitt writes…..
Article 51 of the United Nations charter expressly contemplayes self-defense after an attack, but when the threat is an existential one, that right must exist prior to the delivery of the destroying blow. The Security Council has not acted. Doesn’t this empower Israel to do so?
Anne Applebaum is troubled by these developments……
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that this particular brand of historical revisionism is no joke, and we shouldn’t be tempted to treat it that way. Yes, we think we know this story already; we think we’ve institutionalized this memory; we think this particular European horror has been put to rest, and it is time to move on. I’ve sometimes thought that myself. There is so much other history to learn, after all. The 20th century was not lacking in tragedy.
Now that the 2008 Presidential season is upon us it would be prudent to take a look at the possible candidates and how they might be expected to handle the “Ahmadinejad problem.”
If Ahmadinejad agrees to broadcast Gore’s global warming slide show to all of Iran will Gore discontinue America’s support of Israel?
Will Hillary include Ahmadinejad in her village?
Will Obama invite Ahmadinejad to the White House to watch Da Bears?
Will Ahmadinejad pass Kerry’s global test?
Will Kucinich send Ahmadinejad a pie chart dividing up Israel and if so, will Ahmadinejad be satisfied with his piece?
When will Rudy attack? Rich Brookhiser writes……Rudy Giuliani saved a city with a larger population than Arizona, Massachusetts or Virginia - the states of John McCain, Mitt Romney and George Allen. He helped city and country take a harder blow than Pearl Harbor. These are two serious public achievements, which are two more than anyone else in the 2008 race, Republican or Democrat, can show.
Will Romney have the same attitude towards Ahmadinejad as he did with former president Mohammad Khatami of Iran when he was in Boston? (he denied police protection to Khatami)
McCain dismissed the ISG report when it came out. Will he show the same guts when confronting Ahmadinejad? This report suggests he will.
Will Newt stop writing books long enough to order a bombing?
Will Jeb Bush run? He has the leadership abilities.
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The "wipe Israel off the map" and subsequent reiterations is mistranslated and taken out of context. Come on, "wipe off map" is clearly an American idiom.
A discussion:
The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."
Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.
Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.
See Informed Comment, http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html (May 3, 2006).
Why would anyone want to take this quote and mistranslate it and then out of context? Oh right, this is from the same people who brought you "Iraq Quagmire" version 4.0. The same thugs and villains -- and their media accomplices want to bring you "Iran Disaster" version 1.0. Don't believe the hype.
December 13th, 2006 | #
Oh puh-leeze. The man has never made a secret of his intentions - to destroy Israel and then OUR COUNTRY. You can rationalize and play semantic games all you like - the fact is that this nutbar, unless assassinated by his own people, will try to do precisely what he says he intends to do - and the left and the liberals aren't even listening! What a bunch of self-deluding cowards.
We need someone with heart, brains and courage to occupy the White House. There are no Dems who even come close and only Rudy and (maybe) McCain appear to have any spine whatsoever - and I'm not really very sure about McCain, since I have long suspected that he is more impaired by his Vietnam captivity than he has ever let ANYONE know.
December 13th, 2006 | #
Thanks Gayle. Anyone who quotes Juan Cole is self deluded.
December 14th, 2006 | #