Posted on 09/14/2006 7:01:17 PM PDT by STARWISE
The only thing more painful than listening to Jimmy Carter lecture President Bush on how to conduct a successful presidency was living through his disastrous attempt to turn his advice into reality.
As I noted earlier this week, Carter has channeled his hatred of non-leftists, secular and religious, into a glut of slanders in his new bestseller, Our Endangered Values.
He charges his opponents with, among other things, countenancing female circumcision, defending the murder of federal judges, torturing innocent Islamofascists, and forcing North Korea to manufacture nuclear weapons. Jimmy once again offers himself as the nation’s savior-by-acclamation, leading his errant people, like a latter-day Moses, to the Promised Land.
Every time he flashes his toothy grin before an adoring interviewer, the American people should ask why they should listen to anything he has to say.
Jimmy Carter’s presidency could be summed up by a Billy Joel couplet: “Ayatollahs in Iran/Russians in Afghanistan.”
However, this would omit so much: “malaise,” the misery index, soaring interest rates, a “helpless giant” foreign policy, stagflation, gas lines, record deficits, and killer jackrabbits. The former president doesn’t ignore his record in his book; he lies about it.
Carter provides a portal into his alternate reality in chapter one, where he insists, “As a Southern moderate and former career naval officer, I espoused a conservative fiscal policy and a strong defense.” [1]
Insert laugh track. He boasts, for instance, that he brought religious liberty to China (on p. 26), although his book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list the week Chinese Communists sentenced three Christians to a total of six-and-a-half years in prison for distributing Bibles. His tome is replete with such Carter revisionism.
Above all else, Our Endangered Values book drips with self-congratulation for his enlightened racial views and clear intimations his opponents are bigots.
Modern “fundamentalists” – especially the conservatives Carter relentlessly smears – have made “racial reconciliation” a defining priority. Evangelicals don’t need racial tolerance lectures from the man who campaigned for governor of Georgia as a self-proclaimed “redneck”; whose campaign distributed a photo of gubernatorial opponent Carl Sanders being embraced by black basketball players to a Ku Klux Klan rally; who pledged to invite George Wallace to Georgia; [2] and who said he was “proud” to have Lester Maddox as his lieutenant governor in 1970, calling him “the essence of the Democratic Party.”
As Maddox’s successor, Carter turned criminals loose as part of “a competition over who could reduce his prison population the most.” [3]
In 1972, he promised – then broke his promise – to the newly crippled George Wallace to nominate or second him at the 1972 Democratic National Convention, jumping at the opportunity to give the nomination speech for Henry “Scoop” Jackson. But Jimmy had just begun his self-promotion.
According to his son, Jack Carter, the governor had his surrogates lobby aggressively to become ultra-leftist George McGovern’s vice president. Carter had invited McGovern and fundraiser Morris Dees to the governor’s mansion, where this “Southern moderate” soon “found himself much more compatible with George McGovern than he had expected.” [4]
The peanut farmer chartered his own course to the Oval Office by hoodwinking Southern conservatives.
Twenty-five years after being chased out of the White House, Carter has discovered the perils of evangelical “marriage” to politicians. He writes such “a political marriage is in conflict with my own belief in the separation of church and state – I would feel the same even if the marriage were with Democrats.”
[5] His actions tell another story. His self-described “campaign autobiography,” Why Not the Best? – which he wrote to advance his 1976 presidential run – was published by Broadman Press, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board.
Carter admits, “They print all the Southern Baptist literature, and I had some influence with them as a member of the Baptists’ Brotherhood Commission.” During the North Carolina primary, he had his sister, Baptist evangelist Ruth Carter Stapleton, write a letter “to her extensive network of religious friends and contacts around the country” in which she declared:
My reason for writing you is to acquaint you with an important facet of Jimmy, one that couldn’t possibly be pursued with any depth by the press and television, and that is his quality of deep personal commitment to Jesus Christ and his will to serve Him in whatever capacity he finds himself…please pray for Jimmy. And if you share my feelings that he is the best candidate, I urge you to actively support him. [6]
After finding people responded positively to the term “Born Again,” Carter wore his religion on his sleeve as he snookered evangelicals into enthusiastically supporting his campaign.
Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye, and the vast majority of “fundamentalists” Carter now derides campaigned tirelessly for Carter in 1976. Carter may have conveniently forgotten; the evangelicals certainly have not. Carter belittles Robertson by name three times in his book, LaHaye once. [7] Common mythology aside, Carter actually won the Southern Baptist vote in 1976 and 1980. [8]
The Foreign Policy Fiasco
Upon his inauguration, he provided a “strong defense” by slashing defense spending $6 billion (in 2003 dollars) in the first two years of his administration, canceling the B-1 bomber, and decimating the U.S. fleet.
[9] Gerald Ford warned this would devastate military preparedness in their second debate but was instead remembered for quipping, “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.”
Carter boasts as president he set about “convincing the Soviets of our ability and resolve to respond.” [10] Unfortunately, his response was naïvete and unilateral surrender. Carter failed to consult either the Pentagon or the Kremlin before removing U.S. missiles from South Korea within hours of his inauguration, a move Brezhnev interpreted as weakness rather than conciliation. In 1979, Brezhnev refused to remove Soviet submarines and aircraft from Cuba.
Carter now frets, “A recent announcement of withdrawal of U.S. troops farther away from the demilitarized zone has caused increasing concern in South Korea that hard-line leaders in Pyongyang and Washington might precipitate the threatened conflict.”
Hard-liners “in Pyongyang and Washington,” Mr. President? [11] Beyond his reprehensible equation of President Bush with Kim Jong-il, Carter apparently forgot that he offered to remove all troops from South Korea during his presidency.
His “positive inducements” and warnings about America’s “inordinate fear of Communism” led the Soviets, and Cubans, to believe the Third World was fair game. In his book, Carter praises himself for “establishing diplomatic relations” with Cuba in 1977. [12]
That policy consisted of standing by as Castro kept Cuban soldiers fighting in Angola and sent 16,000 more to Ethiopia. He cut off aid to El Salvador, which was fighting a Communist insurgency, but gave more than $90 million in aid to the Nicaraguan Sandinistas.
He soon halted diplomatic recognition of our allies on Taiwan and recognized Beijing in their place. The man who declared “human rights is the soul of our foreign policy” showered accolades upon Tito, Ceausescu, Ortega, and Kim il-Sung (the last, after his presidency). [13]
Meanwhile, brother Billy tried to open trade relations with Libya in 1978 after depositing a generous $220,000 “loan” from Qaddafi. He registered as an agent of a foreign government two years later. (Billy exerted no influence over his brother, although Jimmuh made his teenage daughter an ad hoc nuclear advisor.)
Carter further demonstrated his mettle by surrendering the Panama Canal after a few riots. Ports at either end are now controlled by a front for the Chinese military: Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., and this month, President Bush had to plead for “equal access” to the canal.
More troubling, it now stands at risk of a potential terrorist attack. In 2001, the canal was visited by Adnan Gulshair El Shukrijumah, a 30-year-old Saudi-born al-Qaeda terrorist dubbed “the new Mohammed Atta.” Last summer, this most-wanted operative surfaced in Honduras, possibly recruiting for the strike. In response, a dozen nations participated in a simulated terror assault on the isthmus. [14]
The ex-prez now asserts he did a better job of collecting international intelligence than Bush-43. “It was quite different when I was there,” he told Tim Russert.
He called his CIA chief “Stansfield Turner, a notable man…an admirable person in every respect, and he gave me unequivocal intelligence regularly…We didn’t have any secret intelligence agencies established within the Defense Department” that already had “a commitment to go to war with Iraq.” To this day, he says, “there hasn’t been any allegation of impropriety” of his use of intelligence.
Stansfield Turner gutted the CIA, cutting 820 human intelligence positions. Without assets of its own, Langley had to rely on the intelligence agencies of foreign governments.
Thus, on New Year’s Eve 1977, Carter would toast the Shah’s Iran as “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world…[due] to the respect, admiration and love which your people give to you.”
Eight months later, the CIA issued the report Iran in the 1980s, in which Carter’s spooks surmised, “Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a ‘prerevolutionary’ situation.”
As tensions mounted, Carter withdrew U.S. support from the Shah, turning Iran into a beacon of hope for jihadists around the world. Before admitting the exiled Shah to America, he accepted Iranian guarantees they could secure our embassy, one of the costliest miscalculations in the history of American foreign policy.
If al-Qaeda was emboldened by American reversals in Beirut and Somalia, one can only imagine their glee at the 14-month-long hostage crisis.
Carter ultimately agreed to pay a ransom of $8 billion (of which, Iran netted $3 billion), [15] although Ronald Reagan’s toughness and resolution was the decisive factor in ending the crisis.
Nonetheless, in his book Carter presumes to advise George W. Bush on how to deal with Iran. [16] Without Carter’s policies, the Iran-Iraq war would not have raged for nearly a decade; the United States would not have had to form an unsavory alliance of convenience with Saddam Hussein, in order to hem in the mullahs; Hezbollah would not receive $100-$200 million a year from Tehran’s coffers; al-Qaeda would not have received training in Iran in 1992; and Iran’s nuclear ambitions, if they existed, would be of no consequence to the West whatsoever.
Jimmy Carter’s presidency was the lowest point of American prestige in modern history. The missteps he made during those critical years continue to threaten the United States and the West.
Rest of article at link
With out a shadow of a doubt, the worst President in US History.
Carter was way worse than Clinton! He was and remains a disgrace. He is not fit to be President of France!
Ping!
I have to turn the radio off when Jimmuh's PSA comes on. Red Cross blood drive, maybe?
One can hope that Carter will do for hs party what he did for our Country.
Carter was the first true liberal to take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Pray ye one and all that he be the last.
Close to 30 years have passed and we are *still* paying for his ineptitude.
My God, why won't that man just GO AWAY???
Impossible..Carter never displayed any intelligence.
It deserves a BIG BUMP and some pings for people who need to know how despicable and worthless this man really is.
He wasn't just incompetant......he was DEADLY.
The first time I ever voted I was 22 years old and I was convinced that Carter would be our greatest President ever. My brother-in-law who lives just a few miles from Plains told me not to be fooled by Carter because he was a real lowlife scumbag. He had known him all his life. I wouldn't listen because at that age I thought I knew everything. It is the only vote I ever made that I wish I could take back. I despise Carter and his whole family.
The worst 4 years, even having lived through the 8 clownish years of clinton) of any presidency in my lifetime. Clinton just continued the ignorance of islamofanatics, but Carter ushered it in.
wow..did this thread bring back memories..not good memories..but memories anyway..I was a teenager in 1976 when I worked on Ford's campaign..I really was not surprised that he lost..not his fault..just could not get over Nixon's pardon..(which was the right thing)..I so remember when Ronald Reagan whooped carter's butt in 1980..it was awesome!!
I'm from GA, and all I want to say is I'm so sorry for Carter's stain on my state.
This author forgot to mention Carter's stamp of approval for Daniel Ortega and Hugo Chavez's elections. Which were shams.
I hate Carter.
Balance redacted.
YW ... this self-serving lowlife has been and is a huge danger to this country. I'm surprised he's not dancing with Castro in Cuba with the other America haters.
Deadly enemy is right.
I hate him.
Vile, Evil person with a little heart and mind.
I can't stop hating Carter
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