Juan Cole takes Obama to the woodshed again — pander alert

This time, it’s over Iran, specifically President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and not Afghanistan.

But, it sounds just as deserved as Cole’s criticism of Obama for wanting to put more troops in Afghanistan.

Specifically, Obama criticized Ahmadinejad’s UN General Assembly speech, and Obama criticized that, calling Ahmadinejad anti-Semitic, among other things.

Cole rightly notes that Ahmadinejad made anti-Zionist statements, not anti-Semitic ones.

And, he suggests Obama should have watched Larry King, to hear Ahmadinejad say this:

”We don’t have a problem with the Jewish people.”

Beyond that, Ahmadinejad explained his oft-mistranslated quote where he allegedly said he wanted to wipe Israel off the face of the earth:

Ahmadinejad was forced again to explain that when he quoted Ayatollah Khomeini to the effect that “this occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time,” he did not mean that “Israel must be wiped off the face of the map” (as the quotation was mistranslated). He told King Tuesday night that he meant that the Israeli state’s policies of committing crimes against the Palestinians and killing them and occupying them must vanish. He added, “Our solution is in fact a completely humane and democratic one. What we’re saying is that throughout the Palestinian territories [i.e., including Israel and the occupied territories], people should gather and determine the type of government they would like to have.” In other words, he says he means by the vanishing of the regime a single democratically elected state in Israel and Palestine.

But, there’s plenty of Jewish votes in Florida and elsewhere to be pandered for. And, Obama will pander for them.

And, of course, Cynthia McKinney faced some controversy in the past over Zionist versus Jewish issues. If she were riding higher in the polls (alas) I’m sure she’d be getting smeared.