Posted on 04/20/2006 5:41:33 AM PDT by Dark Skies
Everybody’s playing the blame game these days. The current target is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who seems to be standing in for President Bush – the man who his enemies say is responsible for everything that’s gone wrong since the Biblical flood. (“Bush lied about the need to build an ark.”)
South of our borders we have a nut job running oil-rich Venezuela and threatening to do all kinds of nasty things to us. In North Korea we have another nut job building nukes and rattling sabers, and in Iran there’s still another whacked-out leader threatening to blow Israel off the map, for starters.
Believe me, Rummy had nothing to do with any of that. Nor did George Bush. If you’re looking for someone to point the finger at, look no further than James Earl Carter. Every one of these problems can be laid at the door of the Georgia peanut farmer and self-anointed evangelist for world peace, understanding, goodwill, and promoter of universal love-ins with dictators who hate us.
Let’s begin with Iran, a boiling cauldron of hatred for everything associated with Western civilization. Recall that when Jimmah took office Iran was ruled by a strong ally of the United States, the Shah. Like most Middle Eastern potentates, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, ruled with an iron hand. Under him, Iran was not the kind of democracy we’re now promoting for the Middle East.
The Shah, however, was also the staunch friend and ally of the United States. He saw to it that the oil kept flowing in our direction, and kept his military in good-enough shape to protect our interests in the area.
But the Shah somehow offended Brother Carter’s exalted view of the inherent goodness of a mankind freed from the strictures imposed by dictatorial rules. With a wink and a nod, he arranged to have Pahlavi replaced by an exiled mullah - the Ayatollah Khomeini - who in Carter’s view would be a moderate leader who would democratize Iran.
What Carter got for us was a Muslim fanatic seething with hatred for everything Western, who without blinking an eye spat on our national sovereignty when he took over the United States embassy in Tehran and held 52 American hostages for 444 days, until the U.S. came to its senses and elected my dad Ronald Reagan to replace the hapless Jimmy Carter.
Thanks to Carter, Iran today constitutes a grave threat to the United States and to world peace. He allowed the creation of an Islamic Republic bent on imposing the most repressive form of Islam on the entire world.
Then we can turn to Venezuela, now locked in the grip of a Castro-clone and fervent communist Hugo Chavez, who is creating a heavily armed communist dictatorship on our southern doorstep. When Chavez faced a recall election Cater was on hand to monitor the election, which turned out to be rigged to elect Chavez from the very start. Despite overwhelming evidence that the Chavez victory was the result of rampant vote fraud, Mr. Carter put his stamp of approval on it, declaring it to have been fair and honest. Carter kept Chavez in office.
In 1994, when Bill Clinton was facing down North Korea’s Kim Il-Sung, father of current dictator Kim Jong-Il, he sent Carter to strike a deal on his development of nuclear technology. Speaking of the dying murderous dictator, Carter said he found him "vigorous, intelligent, surprisingly well-informed about the technical issues, and in charge of the decisions about this country," and added, “I don’t see the [North Koreans] are an outlaw nation."
The deal Carter made allowed the North Koreans to work behind the scenes to build nuclear weapons which now threaten world peace. When he came back from North Korea he told CNN’s Judy Woodruff, “I think it's all roses now.... “
I agree with Jack Kinsella who once wrote in the Omega Letter Daily Intelligence Digest that “Jimmy Carter holds the hands-down record for being the worst ex-president the United States has ever known. His post-presidential meddling in foreign affairs has cost America dearly, both in terms of international credibility and international prestige.”
Years later, I think I understood what he was trying to say although I'm not sure that I could put it into any better words.
Those countries might have been controlled by the Soviet Union, but the people did not believe that they were controlled by it. The culture was not dominated by Russia even as it was being oppressed by that nation. They were their own peoples, and they weren't going away. They wouldn't be absorbed by the domineering Soviets. At least, that's what I think the point was.
I stopped eating peanuts while Jimmy was president.
Clinton was an idiot, but he was a self-serving idiot and the damage he caused was relatively minor. Carter is an idiot, but he's a messianic idiot who thinks he can remake the world into sweetness and light. That makes him far more dangerous than Clinton.
And what puzzles me is why Ford thought that point was so important to make in a presidential debate.
You make good points. But the same can be said for Lyndon Johnson, quite an accomplishment when you consider that Johnson left office in 1968.
LBJ created those horrible, politically-correct immigration laws that we are just now seeing the cost of. He created the accounting gimmicks that took Social Security "off the budget" and enabled the government to conceal the size of its deficits. He's the one who created the rigid welfare state wtihout putting in any safeguards to prevent fraud or abuse.
We still pay the price for LBJ.
I bill arrived on September 11, 2001.
Jimmy was just projecting his own self image into the P.O.S.
The only difference was that Carter had a Democrat Congress.
Just to be fair to Peanut Brain the "55 mph speed limit" was Nixon's idea not Carter's.
Nixon was a liberal Republican.
Correct me if I am wrong but I don't believe that Ford could have run again had he beaten Carter in 1976. Ford became President in Aug of 1974. That would have still paved the way for Reagan to become President in 1980. I firmly believe that Ford would not have abandoned the Shah the way Carter did. Our world would be much better had Carter NEVER been President. ( Somebody should beat me cause I voted for that sonofabitch.)
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