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June 22, 2007

Kucinich and Paul Stand Alone

I'm kind of fascinated that the US House of Representatives voted 411-2 to ask the UN Security Council to charge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Genocide Convention for "incitement to commit genocide" by calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map" – and nobody in the mainstream, so far as I have seen, is really talking about it. I would have thought that would be a big deal. Two lone congressmen - Rep. Ron Paul and Rep. Dennis Kucinich - opposed the resolution, and a couple of bloggers are saying it is the result of neocon propaganda. I might disagree with the two congressmen if Ahmadinejad had actually said what has been reported and if he had the intent and ability to follow through, but he didn't say it and he doesn't intend to wipe Israel off the map - hence the propaganda accusations.

Dore Gold, Israel's former ambassador to the UN, writes about how the House's decision came to pass in the Jerusalem Post and says that the decision should "be used to create a global alliance for punishing [through divestment] those who engaged in genocide in the past as well as those declaring their intent to carry it out in the future." Vineyardsaker runs through Gold's description and traces its neocon roots, specifically the "unholy trinity" of Irwin Cotler, Alan Dershowitz and John Bolton, who are behind the now-approved House Resolution. He also shows how Gold's own words prove that the resolution is "yet another attempt to shift the attention away from the policies of Israel." Psyop says it is all about "increasing the psychological pressure on the Iranian government that chooses to remain outside of the American puppet sphere" and points out that Ahmadinejad never said the now-infamous "wiped off the map" statement.

This was a fact noted by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who joined Ron Paul in dissenting, and called for the correct translation of Ahmadinejad's words to be inserted in the resolution. Kucinich expressed my own view, that although he supported Israel's security and was concerned about Ahmadinejad's words, he objected to resolutions that laid "the groundwork for an offensive, unprovoked war." Rep. Ron Paul has published a brief article on the resolution, in which he calls it "an exercise in propaganda that serves one purpose: to move us closer to initiating a war against Iran." And Paul carries the argument one step further, saying in essence that we are like the proverbial pot calling the kettle black:

Clearly, language threatening to wipe a nation or a group of people off the map is to be condemned by all civilized people. And I do condemn any such language. But why does threatening Iran with a pre-emptive nuclear strike, as many here have done, not also deserve the same kind of condemnation? Does anyone believe that dropping nuclear weapons on Iran will not wipe a people off the map? When it is said that nothing, including a nuclear strike, is off the table on Iran, are those who say it not also threatening genocide? And we wonder why the rest of the world accuses us of behaving hypocritically, of telling the rest of the world “do as we say, not as we do.”

I hope you will read the detailed explanation of what Ahmadinejad actually said, as well as how and why it has been mistranslated and turned into a "dangerous rumor" that has been spread around the world, with "catastrophic implications." In this war of words and the accompanying manipulation of the public, the parsing and shading and interpretation of meaning is everything.

Posted by Becky at June 22, 2007 09:41 AM