Scripting “A World of Hurt”: Who benefits from provocative presidential speechwriting?
Nima Shirazi has written a great piece on the inhumanity of the Iran threat rhetoric. Referring to President Obama’s recent interview with former Israeli prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg, Shirazi observes:
Despite admitting that “Iran does not yet have a nuclear weapon and is not yet in a position to obtain a nuclear weapon without us having a pretty long lead time in which we will know that they are making that attempt,” Obama nevertheless was proud of inflicting such economic, diplomatic and political hardship on Iran that, in his words, have put the Iranian government in “a world of hurt.”
Such nonchalant talk and campaign trail knee-slappers about the “annihilation” and “obliteration,” of murder and war crimes, of tightened nooses – the execution of a death sentence – and of deliberately hurting a nation of 74 million human beings, along with chest-thumping boasts about destroying the internationally safeguarded nuclear facilities of a sovereign country, would be unequivocally condemned were it directed toward the United States or its allies.
After thirty years of warmongering, threats, and propaganda, it’s clear that American and Israeli discourse about Iran is starving for humanity.
We now know that Israel partisan David Frum scripted Bush’s provocative “axis of evil” phrase. Was it the well-connected Ben Rhodes who came up with Obama’s inflammatory “a world of hurt”?
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