So utterly predictable. Yet people wonder why the approval of Congress is approaching single digits.
Congress recently passed a resolution calling on the UN to bring charges of “genocide” against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Now, I hold no brief for the Iranian ranter – whose jeremiads against the West are in the category of Borat-like humor – but this seems like yet another example of political pandering and congressional grandstanding that bears little, if any, relationship to reality.
To begin with, the resolution is motivated by a mistranslation of a speech given by Senor Ahmadinejad, in which he cited the Ayatollah Khomeini and seemed to call for Israel to be “wiped off the map.” Yet, as this piece by Jonathan Steele, and this comment by Farsi-speaker and Middle East expert Prof. Juan Cole make very clear, that is not what the Iranian President said, or intended to say. Ahmadinejad didn’t say Israel must be “wiped off the map,” he said the current regime in Tel Aviv will be “wiped off the page of time.” It was a call for “regime change” not genocide – but, never mind.
Like most war propaganda, which is almost never related to reality except in the most tenuous sense, the point is not to tell the truth but to characterize the Enemy in a particular way. With Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Washington to ramp up the Lobby’s ferocious campaign to get the US to attack Iran – or at least credibly threaten to – the pro-Israel forces on Capitol Hill were out in full force, herding their congressional supporters into a massive display of obedience with a whopping 411-2 vote in the House.
It’s not a big surprise. Congress has little regard for Iran, Israel or anything else for that matter; only power and money. Still, the Jerusalem Post revealed that even by Neocon standards it is truly the worst of the worst which are behind HR21. This entire exercise was commissioned by the Israeli spin-doctors who are concerned about the worldwide outrage at Israeli policies and who ironically are themselves openly advocating genocidal policies against the Iranian people.
But still – Dershowitz? Don’t these “representatives” in Congress have any sense of “moral hygiene” or something?!