Carter: U.S. perceived as 'too arrogant'

CNN ^

[weegee]

The headline should read:

Carter: U.S. Not Wimpy Enough

Remember back to the Bush campaign of 1988 and how the press was buzzing about "the wimp factor"? Now our nation is considered "too strong". When the Soviet Union fell, that left us as the top dog. The left never has liked the fall of communism.

[Enough_Deceit]

I, also, was a young adult when he was president. One of my favorite memories was when I was driving to Florida in 1979. We were driving through Georgia and there was a gigantic billboard that said something like, "We the Farmers of Georgia apologize to the United States of America for putting Jimmy Carter in office." LOL! I loved it. Still laugh about it till this day. Take care and God bless.

[Ol' Sparky]

How many more billions of taxpayers' dollars do we have to give before the rest of the world likes us? Who cares? The US does more than any nation to help the poor in the rest of the world. The real resentment is nothing more than jealousy.

[pankot]

Note to Jimmy: Better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you're an a__hole, than to open your mouth and prove it!

[SeeRushToldU_So]

Does this man ever shutup? He was almost the worst President in history, and he will not be happy until he finishes ruining the country.

[jd777]

Can you imagine a fomer president saying this during WWII? Why doesn't he just say we deserve to be attacked?

[lavaroise]

Perception is a problem, but the stench of an hypocrit and arrogant newly nobel piece of sh!t Carter will sober up any perception out there.

[LiteKeeper]

This man is senile.

[Toskrin]

Yes, the USA supplies 60 percent of world food aid.

We do not like to provide cash - it is like flushing it down the toilet. Some of it gets used for nonproductive projects rather than building lasting infrastructure, and the rest ends up in the bank accounts of Robert Mugabe and Saddam Hussein.

Like most liberals, Carter hates America. The USA has become the most prosperous and successful nation in the world through freedom and capitalism. Carter's vision of the world - socialism and dictatorship - consisently fails. Liberals (and four-year-old children) would rather be angry at being proved wrong than change their ideas to reflect what is right.

[sheik yerbouty]

Proof that Miz Lillian had the biggest pair of boobs in Georgia!

[Wonder Warthog]

"Uh....It wasn't applied under Al Gore's initiative to convert former Soviet military industry to commercial applications. That was at least a $10B fraud!"

I believe that the reference I saw was talking about the International Monetary Fund putting such regulations in place. I doubt the Clinton administration would have implemented such, but I would hope that the Bush2 administration does.

[Wonder Warthog]

"One more from me on this thread: Has anyone noticed if there's a pattern to the press-worthy distribution of the Wisdom of the Formerlies? Is it Gore, Carter, Clinton, and then two weeks of silence, then repeat?"

Also note that such "Formerlies" are restricted to DEMOCRAT "Formerlies". I notice that no one is asking or quoting anything from either Bush1 or Gerald Ford (not that dumb-bunny Ford is much better than "dear ole Jimmuh").

[editto]

I've found figures that back Carter's statements. I find them ridiculous in their accusation, but I thought a fair presentation of his figures would be productive in combating his line of thinking.

The "one one-thousandth" figure

United States' Gross National Product (GNP) for 2001 was $9.9 trillion (*1). Of that, $10.884 billion was spent on foreign aid (*2), a percentage of 0.11% -- or 1/1000th.

The "four times as much" figure

Here is a table of foreign aid as a percentage of Gross National Product.

United States - $10.884 billion ODA (0.11% of GNP)
United Kingdom - $4.659 billion ODA (0.32% of GNP)
France - $4.293 billion ODA (0.34% of GNP)
Germany - $4.879 billion ODA (0.27% of GNP)
Norway - $1.346 billion ODA (0.83% of GNP) Japan - $9.678 billion ODA (0.23% of GNP)

Source (*2)

The "Norway $17" figure

The United States' foreign aid contribution for 2001 was $10.884 billion (*2). Norway's foreign aid contribution for the same year was $1.346 billion (*2).

This is where my math and Mr. Carter's diverge.

$10,884 million divided by 284 million people (*1) equals $38.32 of foreign aid provided by every man, woman, and child in the U.S. in the year 2001.

$1,346 million divided by 4.5 million people (*1) equals $299.11 of foreign aid provided by every man, woman, and child in Norway in the year 2001.

Norway's $299.11 figure is 7.8 times the United States' $38.32 -- not 17 times as Mr. Carter claims.

This would still seem to be a significant margin, but there is still no denying that the United States is the largest single contributer of foreign aid in the world. My assumption is that these figures don't include various United Nations contributions, nor do they include American support in the form of our military or open trade agreements.

(*1) - World Development Indicators database, April 2002 (All figures are 2001 data.)
(*2) - Figure is the 2001 Official Development Assistance (ODA) figure from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Actual information found in HTML format online at globalissues.org

[cynicom]

It is interesting that this "retraction" came after the cutoff of oil and foodstuffs. Amazing how a country could make a small error as to whether they have nukes or not. Mistake by some secretary typist maybe.