There is a certain irony in having Jimmy Carter vouch for Obama’s foreign policy bona fides.
There is more irony to Bill Kristol and all of the NeoCons vouching for Obama's foreign policy.
When Obama finally agreed to intervene in Libya, Kristol proclaimed Obama to be a "Born Again NeoCon".
The NeoCons were quite pleased with Obama for intervening, though they did criticise him for not going in earlier and leading from behind. Some of the hard core NeoCons like John Bolton said Obama should have put boots on the ground in Libya.
Now, the NeoCons are frothing at the mouth trying to get Obama to intervene in Syria. They will have to wait until they get their boy Romney into the presidency.
It was one thing not to understand the depth of the antipathy the militant Islamic jihadists had for anything or anybody who was not Muslim in 1978, it is another thing altogether to profess that the differences between Islam and other religions are of style, not of substance, in 2012.
Islam is an ideology. Not content to deal only with man’s relation to a supernatural force, a whole set of rules comes with it about how man is to deal with fellow man. And not a simple set, taking up only a part of ten basic rules, with limitations spelled out and a sense of basic decency included.
The complex Islamic interpretation of how man should deal with fellow man begins with dividing the world of all mankind into three basic groups. One is the Noble Islamic Gentleman, a classification which includes the scholars and rulers, their acolytes, and their entourage. Note that females are SPECIFICALLY excluded from this classification. The second are those that owe allegiance to the Noble Islamic Gentlemen, and serve at their pleasure, paying tribute to the blessed paragons of Islam through either unforced labor or forced compliance, in the form of a compulsary tax levied on the head of household. A third classification, the accursed unbelievers who would defy the rightness of the order of having the supreme moral authority of the Noble Islamic Gentleman as the natural rulers of mankind, by demanding such things as a representative republic and some kind of democratic vote in decisions affecting the daily lives and actions of the greater number of all people, are subject to being imprisoned or summarily executed without any other process than being identified as an “enemy” to the Noble Islamic Gentlemen.
In other words, setting up a totally structured autocratic rule, and doing it in the name of some divinity. This did not work when it was tried in Europe while it was under the feudal system of kings, nobles and serfs, which led to endless wars and cruel grasping suppression of those not in the favored class. It did not work in China, or Japan, with a ruling class of war lords, who exerted their might through frequent quarrels with neighboring war lords, and subjugation of the unfortunates who happened to be in the territory they controlled.
The Islamic interpretation of this order gives the Noble Islamic Gentlemen the ABSOLUTE power of dominion over those unfortunates who are located in their territory, and the territory of the Noble Islamic Gentlemen extends to wherever a Muslim foot has trod. Once claimed in the name of Islam, the territory may never be surrendered. For to surrender or withdraw, id to submit to subjugation to another, and that is completely against the will of the divinity which is to guide all their actions.
It becomes obvious, rather quickly, that this intransigence comes up against a considerable obstacle when it meets an equal or greater obstinacy in another. Given that there is no option for negotiating a peaceable solution, only one alternative remains - a fight to the death.
Last Man Standing is a crappy way to run any enterprise. But it is the only one that the ideology of Islam permits to be used. Very well, if that is the gist of their rules of engagement, then so be it. Self defense is a categorical imperative that is in our very genetic structure, and it has served well in the long road of evolution. Surrender, not so much.
Scorpions and vipers know this principle well.