As you'd expect, the first challenger to this meme is Juan Cole:
the actual quote, which comes from an old speech of Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all. The second reason is that it is just an inexact translation. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that "the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time." It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem.
The Cole post goes on to detail his attempt to translate the remarks himself, and his reasons for disputing the translations that the wire services were going with.
See, Khomeini (not to be confused with Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader of Iran) is a kind of Reagan figure for Iran, and Iranian politicians like Ahmadinejad will tend to quote him. So the line in Farsi comes from an old Khomeini speech. Hell, McCain stole a line from Churchill tonight with his "end of the beginning" quip about the financial meltdown. Same idea (without, obviously any moral comparison between Churchill and Khomeini).
Cole later better expresses why the the "wiped off the map" phrasing simply cannot be accurate as a translation of Ahmadinejad's thoughts: "No such idiom exists in Persian." For anyone who speaks more than one language, you will have encountered phrases that simply do not mean anything in the other language. I hesitate to guess how poorly attempting to translate "lipstick on a pig" into farsi would go. Or "cut and run" or any one of dozens of aphorisms used in political discourse in english.
Naturally, no one who already believes Iran is itching to nuke Israel any chance it gets will be satisfied with the word of farsi speaker Juan Cole with his love of all things Iran-
I should again underline that I personally despise everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini, who had personal friends of mine killed so thoroughly that we have never recovered their bodies.
But anyway, Cole is hardly alone. Aside from this excellent analysis published in the Guardian, we also have the raging leftists in MEMRI who translated it thusly:
"'Imam [Khomeini] said: 'This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history.' [...]
Of course, if all this weren't enough, there is the little matter that Ahmadinejad has been asked to clarify this and has done so:
He also suggested that Iran would not launch any attack on Israel - America's ally in the Middle East.
"There is no need for any measures by the Iranian people" to bring about the end of the "Zionist regime" in Israel, Mr Ahmadinejad said.
And here's another (better) translation by AFP of some other Ahmadinejad remarks that same year:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has predicted that Britian, Israel and the United States would eventually disappear from the world like the Egyptian pharaonic kings.
[...]
Ahmadinejad's comments were the latest salvo by the deeply religious president against the West and Israel. He has repeatedly predicted that Israel is doomed to disappear.
The Point: McCain Lying or Just Clueless
I realize this kind of thing has been published a number of times. But McCain said it several times in the debate, and watching the post-debate analysis, no one is calling him on it. It is simply an accepted "fact" of the discourse of American politics. Much like Atrios noted today about Sarah Palin:
Her problem isn't so much that she speaks in gibberish, the problem is that she doesn't speak in Official Washington Gibberish. John McCain spouts gibberish all the time, as do all politicians, but it's often the kind of gibberish which is part of the Beltway dialect.
There is still a real chance John McCain will win this election, and knowing the truth about this remark could become very important in heading off another colossally stupid war. Further, who knows what the October surprise might be, for now it is all economy all the time, but if shit hits the fan in Iran over centrifuges or sanctions, we will be hearing a lot more of this canard. |
STATE BLOGS
