Georgian Off His Mind: Jimmy Carter Strikes Again

There are so many sad things to write about today but we all need the cathartic diversion of a true laughingstock, so let us talk about Jimmy Carter. Carter, by all biological indications, is still alive, so we may speak of him ill. Very, very, incurably ill.

From Jan. 20, 1977, through Jan. 20, 1981, our nation endured an unpleasant, aberrant, tragicomic episode. In the somewhat confused political atmosphere subsequent to the resignation of Richard Nixon, the electorate succumbed to the blandishments of a folksy Georgia governor who espoused a form of bland centrism. The theory, presumably, was that boredom was preferable to the rather disorienting excitement of daily following the antics of such eccentrics as G. Gordon Liddy, Martha Mitchell and Sam Ervin. The new President, James Earl Carter, was said to be a man of great learning who would repair the fracture of our body politic: a polymath for the aftermath.

This cleverly packaged (supposedly by Democrat pollster/consultant Pat Caddell) program turned out to be a load of hooey, bunkum, trash, poppycock and baloney, not to mention hogwash. In short order it was clear to have been cooked up. First and foremost, the man wouldn’t recognize the center if it was as tall as Kareem Abdul Jabbar. He was further left than Snow White. No electron was safe around such a free radical as he, nor for that matter was the rest of the country. He presided over an era unique in our national history for economic failure and military impotence.

Not even the most elemental of his assigned tasks did he accomplish; namely, that of normalizing White House life. He brought along a cast of characters that made Erskine Caldwell’s creations seem patrician by comparison. To really identify a comparable set of flakes in fiction one would have to reach for the works of Dr. Seuss. There was a banker named Bert Lance who directed the Office of Management and Budget until his corrupt tenure as Chairman of the Calhoun Bank in Georgia came to light and he betook his portly figure back into the backwoods.

An adviser named Hamilton Jordan sported a sort of John-Ritter-with-a-leer charm that he took to be irresistible. All too frequently tales of the resistance surfaced to regale newspaper readers. He responded to one such rebuff by pouring his drink down the woman’s dress. There was also a beer-swilling brother named Billy who was desperately trying to cash in on his fraternal status. Two novel ways: he contracted with a beer company to manufacture a brand named Billy and he registered as a lobbyist for Libya and Moammar Qaddafi.

This collection of boobs, kooks and crooks took us down a garden path that led into a swamp. The prime lending rate rose higher than 15%, making it virtually impossible to acquire a home. Unemployment hovered near ten percent, leaving one tenth of our citizens skulking in alleyways, looking either for trouble or despair. No solution was offered by the President and his resident geniuses beyond the recommendation to come to terms with America’s newly abbreviated capacities.

The military capacity of this country shrank to a nullity. When sixty-six Americans were held hostage at our embassy in Teheran for 444 days by mobs affiliated with the Islamic revolt in Iran, we stood by helpless and humiliated. When a rescue was finally attempted by landing eight helicopters in a nearby desert, a few of the helicopters became incapacitated by the landing and the project was hastily aborted. All of this came after the Carter administration had essentially stood by while the Muslim rebels deposed the Shah, last in a 2,500-year line of Persian monarchs.

This is the Jimmy Carter who today writes books and gives interviews in derogation of the policies of President Bush in prosecuting the war against Islamic terror. His recent remarks to Der Spiegel do not reflect new trends in his thought; he told the American Prospect in the month after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq that it was done by Bush for his own aggrandizement.

The man is a fool at best and a menace at worst. He does have strong book learning and, were he finally to close his mouth, we might respect him in that regard. Instead he has undertaken to provide regularly for the benefit of our society an object lesson on the potential distortion of good education by bad judgment. I opened by suggesting that we laugh. But perhaps I erred; it only hurts when I laugh at this spectacular buffoon who incredibly is our former commander-in-chief.

Mr. Homnick, a regular contributor to Human Events, is a well-known commentator and humorist. He also writes for The American Spectator.

Nuke Iran? That would have made us as bad as them.
Reagan's error was arming and $upporting Sadaam Hussein against Iran. He should have done nothing. Hussein WOULD NOT have invaded Iran. He KNEW he could not have won.
So WHAT if Iran went ultra-Muslim? Who gives a rat's what they do? It's THEIR country and they can do what they want. If anyone TOLD US that we could or could not change governments or not build nuclear power, or whatever, we wouldn't listen to them and would greatly resent being told what to do by them or anyone else. Why should it be different for them?
They became ultra-Muslim anyway, in spite of all our efforts and TRILLIONS arming Iraq.

Israel can defend itself, as it should, especially with $5 billion foreign aid from us every year. And, not one penny of that aid is for anything else but weapons and spy stuff. With our training and resources, their defense is second to none on the planet in all of human history.

EVERYONE in the Arab world KNEW what a PROVEN monster Hussein was, even the most humble, ignorant Arab.

Everyone KNEW that Iran had and has triple the population and quadruple the brains and education of the Iraqis. The USSR helped Iran. We helped Iraq. We picked the loser. We picked the worse monster.

Not only that, we picked the country with the least brains and the MOST problems....a triangle of civil war for centuries between the Shi'ias, Sunnis and Kurds.
There WAS intel on that, since it WAS Iraqi history for centuries. We stepped right into it, full force, with eyes firmly shut against reality. We were SO pissed at Iran that we ignored the bigger pile of shit.

Instead, Reagan and Congress gave Hussein all the money and weapons in the world to wage NINE years of fruitless war, all for nothing but a stalemate.
THEN Hussein, turning away from the north, looked WEST at the Turks. No one is stupid enough to invade Turkey, so Hussein looked EAST for conquest. He invaded Kuwait and brought us into the entire horrible mess that we are STILL in today.

His next target, after Kuwait? South, Saudi Arabia.

Granted, Hussein is gone, but this whole thing might have been prevented if America had listened to the ENTIRE ARAB WORLD about Hussein, instead of the idiotic, stupid, moronic intel that told him to ARM one of the more malicious, malevolent monsters on the planet.

***Speculation:
1. Without U.S. aid, Hussein would probably NOT have waged war against Iran. He knew he hadn't the manpower or brains to defeat Iran.
Iran wasn't into conquest of other lands, but Hussein was. He made that clear throughout his reign of terror. He wanted to "restore" Iraq to its "former" glory of Sumeria. What an enormous joke.
So, Iran would have been fundamentalist Muslim. It is anyway, in spite of the war with Iraq. Nothing is different with them, except all those years of making us worse enemies.

2. If Reagan had listened to the ENTIRE ARAB WORLD about the "Butcher of Baghdad," (his nickname since the early 70's) and NOT ARMED him, what would Hussein have done?
He wanted conquest. To whom might he have turned? The USSR? Maybe. China? Maybe.
But Reagan wanted to punish Iran for what they did to our 44 kidnapped victims. Too bad he couldn't think of a better way to have done it.

3. Who knows what might have NOT happened.
a. We might not have needed any military bases in Saudi Arabia. Without military bases in Saudi Arabia, ONE Saudi monster, Usama bin Laden, would not have been so enraged about military infidels in the holy land of Islam.

b. Without an enraged UbL (having military infidels in the Muslim holy land), 9/11 might not have ever happened. He might have just fumed and fussed over Israel, as the entire Muslim world has done since 1947. No Afghanistan or Muhajadeen, no Gulf Wars.

Sure, it's hindsight, but it's the REASON why we are STILL in that mess called Iraq and Afghanistan.
Israel and the Palestinians really are a separate issue and they will be duking it out forever....well, until God ends time and Jesus comes back to sort things out. THEN the hostilities between them will cease, for good.
Until then...the Holy Land is the land of ~~milk and honey~~ hatred and death.

Reagan was on the money with communism but he wasn't when it came to middle-east politics.
Thank you for listening, goldenstategop. I lived in Saudi Arabia for five years in the early 80's and saw it all first-hand. I have stayed interested in the goings-on over there.
Logic never got a visa to ANY Arab country. I had to learn their own brand of it to even begin to understand the goings-on then and now. It helped.

After 4 years of Jimmah Cahtah, my son's piggy bank had just over $100 in coins and paper money. Our bank would write a one year CD for 20 percent interest but only for a minimum $500.
I checked the Savings and Loan where we had our mortgage and was offered 20 percent for a $100 minimum. One year later, son Jeremy had $120 from his $100. Of course, the American dollar had devalued to about $.25 in those years. Thanks, Jimmah.

Lol. 20%?? Wow.
What a SHAME you all didn't have MUCH more to invest at 20%. The $20.00 extra bucks wasn't worth it in the end, was it?

Oil was cheap, about $10.00/barrel and gold was $850/oz. I DO remember the gold because I was buying gold jewelry in the KSA. Not much else to do there.

Btw, in the KSA gasoline was $.35/gallon and water (bottled, of course) was $.65/qt. Booze was illegal but a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label was available from our hidden, top-secret military bases at $100/bottle. My ex bought four bottles--$400 was chump change to us then. At the time, he was TAKING HOME, tax free, $5000/month.
It was quite an....adventure living "over there," the dark side of the moon.

I don't see it as Reagans mistake at all. I see it as Carter's mistake for not nuking them when they took the hostages.
We should have lobbed one in the desert just outside of Tehran, and said "The next one is going to be much closer unless the hostages are on airplanes to the USA in one hour."
I served in the US Navy while Carter was president. We did our best with what we had, and I am sure that if anything had come up, we would have aquitted ourselves well. But money was tight. We were in the North Atlantic, and we didn't have enough foul weather jackets to go around. We had to share them. Someone came down off the flight deck and surrendered their jacket to someone going up. And they weren't real cold weather jackets. We would stuff cleaning rags inside our clothes to make them warmer. Kind of funny now, when you think about it.
But, what a pathetic POS Carter was, and is. Democrats have done their level best to destroy the presidency. It used to be a custom for ex-presidents to never criticize the current office holder. You would think that would be an easy thing to live up to, given that they have walked in their shoes and should understand.
But then, the Democrats like Carter and Clinton never DID walk in the shoes of a president like Reagan or the Bushes. Carter and Clinton simply never did the job.

Carter SHOULD have bombed Iran, but not a nuke, though, ANYWHERE. He should have bombed some very special, out-of-the-way facilities, though, out in the desert. You are right. That would have sent the correct message. That would have been speaking their language, the language of force, no mercy.

JUST THINK of what that would have accomplished and prevented.

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