From Bush's latest presentation in Cleveland on Monday to sell his disastrous Iraq War to a public most of whom have long since realized they got sold a seriously defective product.
But now that I'm on Iran, the threat to Iran, of course - (applause) - the threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel. That's a threat, a serious threat. It's a threat to world peace; it's a threat, in essence, to a strong alliance. I made it clear, I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally, Israel, and - (applause.) (my emphasis)
Why is he saying this? Iran is not massing troops on Israel's border. Israel has 100 or more nuclear weapons. They're far and away the most effective army in the Middle East. And the US does not have a defense treaty with Israel. Israel has always refused American suggestions for one because they were concerned that such a treaty would involved specifying specific boundaries that they may want to change unilaterally.
(Bush's "the threat to Iran" is a real Freudian slip,too.)
The "Iran hawks" have been working Iranian President Ahmadinejad's statement that Israel should be "wiped off the map" for all it's worth. In fact, it seems to have become a standard reference even for critics of the Iran hawks.
Trouble is, according to Juan Cole at least, that's not really an accurate translation of what he said.
President Ahmadinejad, it should be freely admitted, has, through his lack of diplomatic skills and his maladroitness, given his enemies important propaganda tools. Unlike his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier. He went to an anti-Zionist conference and quoted Ayatollah Khomeini, saying that the "Occupation regime" must "vanish." This statement about Israel does not necessarily imply violence. After all, Ariel Sharon made the occupation regime in the Gaza Strip vanish. The quote was translated in the international press, however, as a wish that "Israel be wiped off the map," and this inaccurate translation has now become a tag line for all newspaper articles written about Iran in Western newspapers.
In another speech, Ahmadinejad argued that Germans rather than Palestinians should have suffered a loss of territory for the establishment of a Jewish state, if the Germans perpetrated the Holocaust. This argument is an old one in the Middle East, but it was immediately alleged that Ahmadinejad was advocating the shipping of Israelis to Europe. That was not what he said.
It is often alleged that since Iran harbors the desire to "destroy" Israel, it must not be allowed to have the bomb. Ahmadinejad has gone blue in the face denouncing the immorality of any mass extermination of innocent civilians, but has been unable to get a hearing in the English-language press. Moreover, the presidency is a very weak post in Iran, and the president is not commander of the armed forces and has no control over nuclear policy. Ahmadinejad's election is not relevant to the nuclear issue, and neither is the question of whether he is, as Liz Cheney is reported to have said, "a madman." Iran has not behaved in a militarily aggressive way since its 1979 revolution, having invaded no other countries, unlike Iraq, Israel or the U.S. Washington has nevertheless succeeded in depicting Iran as a rogue state.
Based on Cole's impressive track record on such things over the last three years, I'm willing to take his word on the Persian translations. I don't speak Persian and I haven't seen anyone else comment on Cole's translation. But Cole is normally 100 times more reliable than the Bush administration's spokespeople on such things.
Of course, that's not saying much at all, since 100 times 0 is 0.
There are lots of reasons why it becomes necessary to go to war. A bad translation should never be one of them.
Also, check out the context of Bush's statement I quoted above. It was in response to the first question after the speech, a question that sounds like it came from a real live citizen:
My question is that author and former Nixon administration official Kevin Phillips, in his latest book, American Theocracy, discusses what has been called radical Christianity and its growing involvement into government and politics. He makes the point that members of your administration have reached out to prophetic Christians who see the war in Iraq and the rise of terrorism as signs of the apocalypse. Do you believe this, that the war in Iraq and the rise of terrorism are signs of the apocalypse? And if not, why not?
Obviously not used to such sensible questions, Bush did a real song-and-dance to avoid answering the question. He seemed pretty flustered, at least from the transcript.
Also, in the transcript at any rate, this looks like it could have been another "let me finish" moment, like Bush had in one of his debates with Kerry. Was his offstage assistant feeding him reminders through the earphone too fast?
There's kind of a - maybe there are some in the world that aren't capable, say the skeptics. I strongly disagree with that. I believe there's - hold on a second - I believe there's a great desire for people to be free. I believe that. And history has proven that democracies don't war with each other. (my emphasis)
I know Bush's fans find his rambling near-incoherence charming. But stuff like this sounds pretty ditzy to me:
And the fundamental question that I know people ask is whether or not democracy, one, can take hold in Iraq, and two, will it change people's attitude about the future? And I believe it will. History has proven that democracies can change societies. The classic case I like to cite is Japan. Prime Minister Koizumi is one of my best buddies in the international arena, and when we sit down, we talk the peace. I find it interesting that he is a peacemaker with me on a variety of issues, and yet my Dad fought the Japanese. And I'm sure many of your relatives did, as well.
Sixty years ago, Japan was the sworn enemy of the United States. Today, they're an ally in peace. And what took place? Well, what took place was a Japanese-style democracy. I can't say I promise you this, but I suspect that if somebody were standing up at the City Club of Cleveland talking about, don't worry some day Japan is going to be peaceful with the United States and the 43rd President is going to be designing how keep the peace - they'd say, get him off the stage. (Laughter.) What's he thinking? They're the sworn enemy. And now they're our ally. So I have faith in the capacity of democracies to help change societies.
Well, maybe it's not totally ditzy. I mean somebody saying that "the 43rd President [Dubya] is going to be designing how keep the peace" could be taken as reason to hoot somebody off the stage. (Yes, the White House transcript has "how keep the peace".)
