Presidential Quotes: Ahmadinejad, Ben-Gurion, George Washington

Quotes from Ahmadinejad are being used to portray Iranians as fundamentally irrational - and to thus discourage attempts at initiating a dialogue between the US and Iran. However, what if other world leaders were also judged by their words?

We hear endlessly how Iranian President Ahamadinejad has supposedly called for Isreal to be "wiped out" - and how this quote (though debunked) is evidence of the "irrationality" of the Iranian government, etc. Here's what else he's said that doesn't get as much attention in the US media.

But lets remember that Iranian politicians don't have a monopoly on saying stupid things. For example, I remember what George Bush I said when the fact that the US Navy had shot down an Iranian civilian airliner inside Iranian territorial waters finally came to light:

I will never apologize for the United States - I don't care what the facts are.... I'm not an apologize-for-America kind of guy.

And what did Colin Powell say when confronted with the number of civilian Iraqis killed during Desert Storm?

It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in.

And what did US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright say say when asked about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children as and direct result of US sanctions:

"We Think the Price Is Worth It"

But while we're using quotes, perhaps there are some more usefull quotes that people should remember, particularly regarding the influence-peddling of AIPAC, and the US "Passionate Attachment" to Israel:

"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government." - George Washington

And remember how we're told that Iran represents an "existential danger" to Israel because (according to the Israelis) the Iranians want nothing more than to nuke Israel since the Iranian regime is supposedly "irrational"? Well, you have to wonder, who has explicitly threatened whom with nuclear attacks?

During an impromptu April 18 press conference, President George W. Bush was asked if his assertion that "all options are on the table" regarding Iran included the possibility of a nuclear strike. Bush reiterated, "All options are on the table. We want to solve this issue diplomatically, and we're working hard to do so." In no uncertain words, the president of the United States directly threatened Iran with a preemptive nuclear strike. It is hard to read his reply in any other way. - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist

In fact, what do the following what to the following quotes say about the "rationality" of the Israeli government?

"We must expel Arabs and take their places." -- David Ben Gurion, 1937,
Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.

"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." -- David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.

"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a
single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." -- David Ben Gurion, quoted in The Jewish Paradox, by Nahum Goldmann, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p. 99.

"Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country." -- David Ben Gurion, quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky's Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan's "Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.

"There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist." -- Golda Meir, statement to The Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969.

"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!" -- Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.

"[The Palestinian terrorists] are beasts walking on two legs." -- Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the 'Beasts,"' New Statesman, June 25, 1982.

"The past leaders of our movement left us a clear message to keep Eretz Israel from the Sea to the River Jordan for future generations, for the mass aliya (=Jewish immigration), and for the Jewish people, all of whom will be gathered into this country." -- Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declares at a Tel Aviv memorial service for former Likud leaders, November 1990. Jerusalem Domestic Radio Service.

"(The Palestinians) would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls." -- Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) Yitzhak Shamir in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988 "Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories." -- Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, speaking to students at Bar Ilan University, from the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989.

"The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more".... -- Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000

So, who is an "irrational, existential threat" to whom?

Comments

[Cyrus]

Regarding the previous comment by "Brian" - I would be interested in you providing anything to backup your claim that Ahmadinejad is "forcing a community of jewish people who live in Iran to wear bands around their arms marking them as non muslim." To my knowledge, no such thing exists in Iran.

[brain]

1 simple fact remains, they pose a great threat. George Bush is an evil man with blood on his hands and also the sole reason i will not join the army.

The president of Iran is also an evil man. He is forcing a community of jewish people who live in Iran to wear bands around their arms marking them as non muslim.
This whole thing is going to escalate to a point where nobody considered