O'Reilly and Ahmadinejad: We must wipe them off the map

By JC Garrett
Online Journal Contributing Writer
May 2, 2008

On Wednesday, I heard Bill O'Reilly tell actor/activist Matthew Modine that we must kill all the "Islamic fundamentalists" in the world -- wipe them off the face of the Earth -- in order to protect America.

Modine asked O'Reilly how he would win the "war on terror".

O'Reilly replied, "You use every weapon you have to kill as many Islamic fundamentalists as you can, and then bring them to their knees, the same way we won WWII."

An incredulous Modine asked O'Reilly if he was advocating something akin to the nuclear annihilation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Answering with a question, O'Reilly asked if Modine would have ordered the nuclear attacks had he been in President Harry Truman's shoes, saying, "He was fighting to protect America. And he wiped out the enemy, just as we have to wipe out the Islamic fundamentalists . . ."

How, pray tell, does that differ in any way with the words of Iranian President Ahmadinejad about Israel that have been so vehemently denounced by O'Reilly and his far-right compatriots? They have raised non-stop holy hell over a comment made in a speech by Ahmadinejad in which he purportedly called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." This translation of his words has been hotly disputed, and the consensus of linguists and experts is that what Ahmadinejad actually called for was the fall of the Israeli "Zionist" regime, and the rise of a democratic government in which Palestinians participate in free elections.

University of Michigan Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, Juan Cole, says the statement should be translated as "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem must [vanish from] the page of time."

Professor Cole explains that, "Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to 'wipe Israel off the map' because no such idiom exists in Persian". Rather, "He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse."

Cole then comes to the real point of the matter: "What is really going on here is an old trick of the warmongers. Which is that you equate hurtful statements of your enemy with an actual military threat, and make a weak and vulnerable enemy look like a strong, menacing foe. Then no one can complain when you pounce on the enemy and reduce his country to flames and rubble."

Other experts agree with Cole.

Ahmadinejad himself states that his words were misinterpreted and wildly exaggerated, saying, "There is no new policy, they created a lot of hue and cry over that. It is clear what we say: Let the Palestinians participate in free elections and they will say what they want."

So in that context, what Ahmadinejad was actually saying was that he was against the Israeli political system and the regime in power, and was stating his belief that Palestinians are suffering an injustice. That sounds an awful lot like the Bush administration's view that the elected government of Iran should be replaced with one that is friendly to U.S. interests.

But let's leave all that aside. Let's pretend that Ahmadinejad really did call for Israel to be wiped off the map. We'll even presume that he advocates the total eradication and genocide of Israeli Jews. That is inarguably despicable. What is the difference between that and the slaughter endorsed by Bill O'Reilly? In either case, the underlying cause of conflict boils down to religious and cultural differences. Israeli Jews and American Christians don't like Muslims, and Muslims don't like Jews and Christians. This is, of course a gross generalization because there are many in each religion who do not feel that way. But historically and now, religious differences are a cause, if not the main cause, of almost every war fought by mankind.

Racism and religious bigotry is alive and well in the U.S. as evidenced by this disgusting assertion made by a member of a right-wing group, which has the nerve to call itself the "Founding Fathers Party," on their website: "Once again I ask, why does the rest of the world accept this turd spewing 'religion' as valid? Wipe them off the face of the Earth. The only good mongrel muslim [sic] is a dead one."

Similar sentiments can be found on countless "conservative" sites and can be heard on talk-radio everyday. That is the unedited, extremely politically incorrect version of the views of people like Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck. It is the basic platform of politicians like Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, who revealed his true colors when he publicly advocated bombing Muslim holy sites as a "deterrent" to attacks on the United States: "If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina. That is the only thing I can think of that might deter somebody from doing what they would otherwise do."

Of course, Mecca and Medina happen to be located in Saudi Arabia, a country considered to be a U.S. ally. But all that matters to Tancredo is that Muslims live there.

O'Reilly called for wiping out an entire religious denomination -- one he labeled as "Islamic fundamentalists." We have here in the U.S. several Christian and Jewish denominations and sects whose membership includes a significant number of "fundamentalists" who endorsed and continue to support the occupation of Iraq and are now salivating over starting a war with Iran because they detest anything and everything "Muslim." We have clergy who preach that Islam is a false religion, or an evil religion, and say that it is our duty and God's purpose to rid the world of Muslims.

George W. Bush had the unspeakable arrogance to label three entire countries as an "Axis of Evil." How does one even begin to explain how ignorant and immoral that is? Whole countries proclaimed to be evil, worthless, subhuman. We're not talking about terrorists who actually come to America with an intent to harm us. We're talking about people spread out all over the world, in countless countries. And we're talking about killing them not because they represent a credible, serious threat to us, but because they don't like us. Because they don't support our "interests." Imagine another nation invading America and overthrowing our government because we don't like them. Not because we have bombed them, not because we have enslaved them, but because we don't agree with them. Where is the righteousness in that?

We are stuck in a perpetual juvenile game of "my God's better than your God." When will we realize that it's the same God? When will we accept the fact that the only difference is the wrapping paper that we artificially package Him in? And when will we come to understand that God does not belong only to certain nations, and that evil does not respect the invisible boundaries of national borders? Only when we accept that we do not own God and realize that He is not to be used as a justification for killing each other will we ever know true peace.

JC Garrett is a freelance writer and constitutional scholar from the piney-woods of East Texas. He apologizes to the entire world that the great Lone Star State could have produced the monstrosity currently occupying the Oval Office.

Israeli President: Nuclear Iran would be 'nightmare'

Israel must remain sole Mideast nuclear power
Tuesday May 06, 2008 10:11 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC News

The Israeli President, Shimon Peres, stated Monday that "Iran is a danger not only for Israel but also for the rest of the world", adding that if Iran were to get a nuclear weapon, it would be a "nightmare".

Israel's nuclear production facility in Dimona

In his talk, he tacitly acknowledged that Israel is a nuclear power - something that was long denied by the Israeli state, but has recently been discreetly mentioned by Israeli leaders on a number of occasions.


Peres has long been called the 'father of Israel's bomb', having obtained help from the French government in the 1950s to build Israel's nuclear reactor at Dimona. Since building the reactor, the Israeli government has maintained a policy of "nuclear ambiguity" and has never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Most estimates put the number of nuclear bombs in Israel's arsenal at about 100, which would make it the sixth-largest nuclear power in the world, if it were to come out of the closet and openly admit that it has nuclear weapons.


The nuclear reactor at Dimona was called a "textile factory" by the Israeli government, even after Israeli engineer Mordechai Vanunu was imprisoned for eighteen years in solidarity confinement for exposing the nuclear production facility to a British newspaper. Said Peres in 2004, "Well, textiles are out of business, people are going for high-tech today. But the textile business achieved its basic aim as a deterrent."


On Monday, he said, "Nobody is threatening Iran," he said. "On the other hand, Iran is threatening to wipe Israel off the map." Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, has never actually threatened Israel, but has stated that Israel, through its own actions, is destined to disappear.


Disarmament advocates say that it is past time for Israel to stop hiding its nuclear capability, because Israel is not uder threat, and the presence of an Israeli nuclear stockpile, real or perceived, is destabilizing because it promotes an arms race among Arab nations.


"For us it really is a matter of to be or not to be. It is not a simple scope. And everyone that knows Israel knows that Israel is so far from being aggressive," said Peres in 2004.

Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace says, "All nations that have nuclear weapons think that they are responsible and it is the other guys who are irresponsible." Cirincione advocates a "nuclear free Middle East", in which Israel would disarm, and countries like Iran and Syria would thus be discouraged from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Clinton Threatens to ‘Obliterate’ Iran

By Robert Scheer

How proud the Clintonistas must be. They have learned how to rival what Hillary once termed the “vast right-wing conspiracy” in the effort to destroy a viable Democratic leader who dares to stand in the way of their ambitions. The tactics used to kneecap Barack Obama are the same as had been turned on Bill Clinton in earlier times, from radical-baiting associates to challenging his resolve in protecting the nation from foreign enemies. Sen. Clinton’s eminently sensible and centrist—to a fault—opponent is now viewed as weak and even vaguely unpatriotic because he is thoughtful. Neither Karl Rove nor Dick Morris could have done a better job.

On primary election day in Pennsylvania, even with polls showing her well ahead in that state, Hillary went lower in her grab for votes. Seizing upon a question as to how she would respond to a nuclear attack by Iran, which doesn’t have nuclear weapons, on Israel, which does, Hillary mocked reasoned discourse by promising to “totally obliterate them,” in an apparent reference to the population of Iran. That is not a word gaffe; it is an assertion of the right of our nation to commit genocide on an unprecedented scale.

Shouldn’t the potential leader of a nation that used nuclear bombs to obliterate hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese employ extreme caution before making such a threat? Neither the Japanese then nor the Iranian people now were in a position to hold their leaders accountable, and to approve such collective punishment of innocents is to endorse terrorism. This from a candidate who attacked her opponent for suggesting targeted strikes against militants in Pakistan and derided his openness to negotiations with other national leaders as an irresponsible commitment on the part of a contender for the presidency.

Clearly the heat of a campaign is not the proper setting for consideration of a response to a threat from a nation that is a long way from developing nuclear weapons. Obviously the danger of Iran’s developing such weapons can be met with a range of alternatives, from the diplomatic to the military, that do not involve genocide and at any rate must be considered in moral and not solely political terms. Or is it base political ambition that would guide Clinton if she received that middle-of-the-night phone call?

If so, it cannot be assumed that Hillary Clinton as president would be less irrationally hawkish and more restrained in the unleashing of military force than John McCain. The latter, at least, has personal experience with the true, on-the-ground costs of militarism gone wild. Yes, I know that McCain still holds out the hope of winning the Iraq war that both he and Hillary originally endorsed, but for Clinton to raise the rhetoric against Iran in the midst of a campaign is hardly the path to Mideast peace, whether it concerns Israel or Iraq. It is bizarre that a politician who bought into the phony threat about Iraq’s nonexistent WMD arsenal now plays political games with the alleged threat posed by Iran.

The war has accomplished only one major change in the configuration of Mideast power: Iran now holds uncontested supremacy as the region’s key player. Whatever chance there is for stability in Iraq now depends on the blessings of the ayatollahs of Iran, whose surrogates were put in power in Baghdad as a consequence of the American invasion. It is totally hypocritical for Clinton or McCain to now talk about getting tough with Iran over the nuclear weapons issue, when both contributed so mightily to squandering U.S. leverage over Tehran.

To meet that potential nuclear weapons threat from Iran requires a serious, non-rhetorical, multinational response that makes clear that no nation has the right to obliterate the population of another, and that nations, even our own, that claim that right should be challenged as unacceptably barbaric. Instead, Clinton played into the thoughts of fanatics throughout the world who believe that might makes right and who take the United States—which spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined (including many billions on new sophisticated and “usable” nuclear weapons)—as both their enemy and an example to emulate.

What better argument do the ayatollahs need to justify their obtaining a nuclear “deterrent” than that the possible leader of the first nation to develop nuclear weapons, and the only one to ever use them to kill people, now threatens the people of Iran with obliteration?