Carter: Failed president, aspiring traitor
In 1981 Jimmy Carter left office, but only after aiding Islamist fascists in usurping power in Iran and solidifying a base for global Muslim terrorism. This act was the culmination of a failed presidency that featured four miserable years of domestic malaise, international ineptitude, and the leeching of American prestige and honor. But that wasn't enough for this embittered little man.
Since the Reagan Revolution and election landslide that sent him home to his Georgia peanut farm, Jimmy Carter has gone to great lengths to undermine the policies of every sitting president right up to present day (and yes, that includes Bill Clinton).
Anti-American invectives
This week, Carter once again did his ablest to subvert America and our leadership in the eyes of the world with his absolutely reprehensible comments in Der Spiegel, a German news daily. His latest overseas interview was filled with invectives against the United States, antipathy for Israel, and vitriol for President Bush. Here is just a sampling:
DER SPIEGEL: One main point of your book is the rather strange coalition between Christian fundamentalists and the Republican Party. How can such a coalition of the pious lead to moral catastrophes like the Iraqi prison scandal in Abu Ghraib and torture in Guantanamo?
CARTER: The fundamentalists believe they have a unique relationship with God, and that they and their ideas are God's ideas and God's premises on the particular issue. Therefore, by definition since they are speaking for God anyone who disagrees with them is inherently wrong. And the next step is: Those who disagree with them are inherently inferior, and in extreme cases -- as is the case with some fundamentalists around the world -- it makes your opponents sub-humans, so that their lives are not significant ... And, of course, fundamentalists don't believe they can make mistakes, so when we permit the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, it's just impossible for a fundamentalist to admit that a mistake was made.
DER SPIEGEL: You also mentioned the hatred for the United States throughout the Arab world which has ensued as a result of the invasion of Iraq. Given this circumstance, does it come as any surprise that Washington's call for democracy in the Middle East has been discredited?
CARTER: No, as a matter of fact, the concerns I exposed have gotten even worse now with the United States supporting and encouraging Israel in its unjustified attack on Lebanon.
DER SPIEGEL: But wasn't Israel the first to get attacked?
CARTER: I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza. I do not think that's justified, no.
Carter, to borrow a phrase coined by Lance Morrow, is known internationally as the "anti-president" and anti-American. His litany of interference in policy and denigration of country even affected Bill Clinton, as when he embarrassed Clinton on Haiti and the nukes-for-empty-promises fiasco in North Korea.
But compared to what he did behind the back of the first President Bush, Clinton's troubles seem trivial in hindsight. Prior to the Gulf War, Carter wrote members of the U.N. Security Council — including Mitterrand in France and Communist China — urging them to oppose the Bush administration's effort. Our government was made aware only when the Canadian prime minister, Brian Mulroney, called defense secretary Dick Cheney and informed him of Carter's traitorous conduct.
And what about Israel? Noted columnist William Safire reported that Cyrus Vance acknowledged that, if he had had a second term, Carter would have sold Israel down the river. In the 1990s, Carter became quite close to Yasser Arafat. After the Gulf War, Saudi Arabia was mad at Arafat, because the PLO chief had sided with Saddam Hussein. So Arafat asked Carter to fly to Riyadh to smooth things over with the princes and restore Saudi funding to him. Carter did Arafat's bidding.
Those of you who doubt any of this obviously don't remember when Carter stated, "When I was growing up, I perceived the Arab-Israeli conflict as a great civil-rights drama. The white oppressors were the Israelis, and the black sufferers and innocents were the Arabs, in particular the Palestinians. Menachem Begin, I thought, was George C. Wallace, and his defense minister, Ariel Sharon, was Bull Connor." This is beyond despicable.
Failed presidency, bitter old man
This bitter failure has incessantly, disingenuously mewled about human rights, but only when they do not reflect badly on socialist ideology. He was anti- Marcos in the Philippines, Pinochet in Chile, and apartheid in South Africa, but pro- Communist China, Communist Cuba, Communist Ethiopia, Communist Nicaragua, Communist North Korea, and soon-to-be Communist Venezuela and Communist Ecuador.
But true to his anti-American persona, Carter always saves his best for the current administration. Consider: "I don't think that George W. Bush has any particular commitment to preservation of the principles of human rights." Strategic Missle Defence (a concept now proven to work): "A ridiculous project technologically and counter to control of nuclear weapons in the world." The discredited Kyoto protocol: "I think we should carry it out, fervently."
In a future article I will chronicle the dozens of incidents where Jimmy Carter has either vilified his nation and our sitting presidents in the eyes of the world or undermined national policies and prestige. For me personally, I will never forget or forgive his craven comments during a time of great American anguish:
President Bush, while leading the nation into war after a devastating attack that murdered thousands of our fellow citizens, identified the terrorists and their enabling nations as an "axis of evil." Carter, in a display of brazen callousness, derisively pronounced the president's statement as "overly simplistic and counter-productive. I think it will take years before we can repair the damage done by that statement."
Just as with his failure in Iran, his enabling of modern terrorism, and his apathy toward its victims, by that single wrong-headed utterance Carter bared himself to the world and set his priorities in concrete. He cares more for the delicacies of murderers than the lives and families of his fellow citizens or the security of the United States.
Shameful legacy
During his four years in the White House, Carter presided over the worst economic downturn since before World War II, allowed a bunch of thugs to seize the sovereign territory of our embassy and imprison our diplomats, ineptly steered the nation to laughing stock status in the eyes of the world, fostered a sense of malaise and black despair at home, all the while hypocritically supporting a cornucopia of autocratic despots whose principal talents were their abject hatred of Jews, Israel, and human rights.
He defied U.S. law by visiting Cuba, compounding the crime by addressing the Cuban public and providing Castro with a huge propaganda coup. He oversaw the election in Haiti, against the expressed wishes of Bill Clinton. Democracy died in Haiti. He thought Yugoslav dictator Josef Tito "a man who believes in human rights." Carter found Kim Il-Sung "vigorous, intelligent, and surprisingly well-informed about technical issues — I don't see North Korea as an outlaw nation."
Recently in Venezuela, Carter was specifically asked by the thug Hugo Chavez to monitor a recall election. While two out of three Venzuelans polled before the election wanted Chavez out, when the ballots were counted Chavez was declared the winner by an almost exact opposite margin. Surprise.
As deplorable as he was, Jimmy Carter was a much better president than he is an ex-president.