Posted on 09/23/2004 5:43:23 PM PDT by The Real Indepman
It's [k]eerie, Carter's failed Iran policy seems to be the template for the Kerry Iraq plan...
"Remember Carter's human rights program, where he demanded the Shah of Iran step down and turn over power to the Ayatollah Khomeini?
No matter that Khomeini was a madman. Carter had the U.S. Pentagon tell the Shah's top military commanders about 150 of them to acquiesce to the Ayatollah and not fight him.
The Shah's military listened to Carter. All of them were murdered in one of the Ayatollah's first acts.
By allowing the Shah to fall, Carter created one of the most militant anti-American dictatorships ever.
Soon the new Iranian government was ransacking our embassy and held hostage its staff for over a year. Only President Reagan's election gave Iran the impetus to release the hostages.
I believe Carter's decision to have the Shah fall is arguably the most egregious U.S. foreign policy mistake of the last 50 years. [Former President Bush's decision to allow Saddam Hussein to stay in power is a close second.]
With the Shah gone, the whole region was destabilized. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan; no doubt a direct link to the rise of the Taliban can be traced to this invasion. Iraq also took advantage of the Shah's departure to invade Iran. A long war followed that helped make Saddam's Iraq a great Middle Eastern power.
And decades after Carter's ignominious act, Iran is still bent on destroying America. President Bush named it one of the three nations in the "axis of evil." Iran is developing both nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver these weapons to its enemies.
We can thank Jimmy Carter for all of this."
Jimmie Carter is the hero of the left.
So True. But you are only looking at the empty half of the glass.
The good news is that because Jimmy Carter was so incompetent we had the great fortune to elect Ronald Reagan who ended the Cold War. So, in his own way, the Inspector Clueso way, Carter helped end the Cold War
He was the WORST.
on the right side of the field.
as he should be.
jimmuh does yeoman's work to advance world socialism... just recently, he bailed out chavez, a.k.a. "castro - the sequel". he ranks up there with stalin in increasing the power and influence of Communism in the world.
that he would win the nobel peace prize is no accident...
I am angry all over again.
Not to mention the Panama Canal and the botched rescue.
Didn't he pardon all the draft dodgers too??
And cancel the B1 bomber?
Jimmy Carter, the first communist president.
And let us not forget his "intervention" along with that other Dem paragon of corruption, venality, insincerity and cowardice , Klintoon in North Korea in 1994 , which has led to North Korea now having nuclear weapons
Carturd is a limp wrist.
We can thank Jimmah Carturd for Robert Mugagbe and his reign of death in Zimbabwe/Rhodesia. Also, add Andrew Young to that list. And thank Jimmah Carturd for Mugabe's recent speech in the UN vilifying thr US for its action the Iraq and the world.
And he did all this in just one term. Thank goodness, Reagan beat him.
Midwife to Islamofascism.
I know the guy who Briefed Carter when he visited Korea the first time after being elected. He went to Seoul with the intention of Pulling us out UNILATERALLY. Leaving the ROK forces holding the bag.
Fortunately, after all the generals showed him what a FREAKING moronic thing it would be and what a disaster it would be, he had the sense to renege on that intention.
He is an ABSOLUTE low-grade imbecile.
Bttt
Wrong, it was not Bush I's decision, he was merely following orders from the stupid UN resolution that only called for Iraqi forces to be driven out of Kuwait.
The Hostage Rescue Attempt In Iran, April 24-25, 1980
Evidence Jimmy Carter abandoned the Shah
http://rescueattempt.tripod.com/id24.html
That Terrorist/Communist loving Psychopath should be in Prison for the rest of his life.
"Yeah but.... He's a Nobel laureate!" ( I can hear the RATs intoning that mantra now). In my estimation, Carter is one of our worst presidents ever, and in some respects he is worse than Klintoon, and that's terrible.
Carter is without question our worst Ex-President.
If there was a president in our history that was worse than Jimmy Carter, please tell me who it would be. I can't think of anyone that idiotic. If I went to the history of other countries I don't think I could find anyone that stupid.Well Maybe France or Canada!
He IS the worst.
So is their all-time super-duper superhero, Arafat.
I think Jimmy Carter is an angel from Hell!
That was shortly after Ayatollah Khomeini had seized power in Iran, riding the slogan "Death to America" - and sure enough, the attacks on Americans soon began. In November 1979, a militant Islamic mob took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran, the Iranian capital, and held 52 Americans hostage for the next 444 days.
The rescue team sent to free those hostages in April 1980 suffered eight fatalities, making them the first of militant Islam's many American casualties. Others included:
April 1983: 17 dead at the U.S. embassy in Beirut.
October 1983: 241 dead at the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.
December 1983: five dead at the U.S. embassy in Kuwait.
January 1984: the president of the American University of Beirut killed.
April 1984: 18 dead near a U.S. airbase in Spain.
September 1984: 16 dead at the U.S. embassy in Beirut (again).
December 1984: Two dead on a plane hijacked to Tehran.
June 1985: One dead on a plane hijacked to Beirut.
After a let-up, the attacks then restarted: Five and 19 dead in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996, 224 dead at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 and 17 dead on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000.
Simultaneously, the murderous assault of militant Islam also took place on U.S. soil:
July 1980: an Iranian dissident killed in the Washington, D.C. area.
August 1983: a leader of the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam killed in Canton, Mich.
August 1984: three Indians killed in a suburb of Tacoma, Wash.
September 1986: a doctor killed in Augusta, Ga.
January 1990: an Egyptian freethinker killed in Tucson, Ariz.
November 1990: a Jewish leader killed in New York.
February 1991: an Egyptian Islamist killed in New York.
January 1993: two CIA staff killed outside agency headquarters in Langley, Va.
February 1993: Six people killed at the World Trade Center.
March 1994: an Orthodox Jewish boy killed on the Brooklyn Bridge.
February 1997: a Danish tourist killed on the Empire State building.
October 1999: 217 passengers killed on an EgyptAir flight near New York City.
In all, 800 persons lost their lives in the course of attacks by militant Islam on Americans before September 2001 - more than killed by any other enemy since the Vietnam War. (Further, this listing does not include the dozens more Americans in Israel killed by militant Islamic terrorists.)
And yet, these murders hardly registered. Only with the events of a year ago did Americans finally realize that "Death to America" truly is the battle cry of this era's most dangerous foe, militant Islam.
In retrospect, the mistake began when Iranians assaulted the U.S. embassy in Tehran and met with no resistance.
Interestingly, a Marine sergeant present at the embassy that fateful day in November 1979 agrees with this assessment. As the militant Islamic mob invaded the embassy, Rodney V. Sickmann followed orders and protected neither himself nor the embassy. As a result, he was taken hostage and lived to tell the tale. (He now works for Anheuser-Busch.)
In retrospect, he believes that passivity was a mistake. The Marines should have done their assigned duty, even if it cost their lives. "Had we opened fire on them, maybe we would only have lasted an hour." But had they done that, they "could have changed history."
Standing their ground would have sent a powerful signal that the United States of America cannot be attacked with impunity. In contrast, the embassy's surrender sent the opposite signal - that it's open season on Americans. "If you look back, it started in 1979; it's just escalated," Sickmann correctly concludes.
To which one of the century's great geostrategist thinkers, Robert Strausz-Hupé, adds his assent. Just before passing away earlier this year at the age of 98, Strausz-Hupé wrote his final words, and they were about the war on terrorism: "I have lived long enough to see good repeatedly win over evil, although at a much higher cost than need have been paid. This time we have already paid the price of victory. It remains for us to win it."
Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and author of "Militant Islam Reaches America."
Hands down , the worst US president EVER...
Carter was probably the worst three presidents in US history.
And we can't forget double-digit inflation and the oil embargo leaving us with "odd/even" (first license plate digit determined what days you could buy petro) gas lines. Can you imagine the SUV soccer moms of today putting up with that under a Bush administration?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.