Posted on 10/12/2002 5:15:54 AM PDT by rickmichaels
By winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Jimmy Carter has confirmed his legacy as arguably America's worst president and most successful ex-president.
The award also confirms that the Peace Prize is as much political as it is humanitarian -- awarded by those who think Yasser Arafat is a man of peace and goodwill.
Carter is often described as a "good" man -- said in the way that people use "nice" to describe someone ineffective and hopelessly bland.
The Nobel committee chose him over hugely brave people of "peace" like Afghanistan's President Karzai, the Tiananmen Mothers, the Salvation Army, even Rudy Giuliani, partly to make a hostile statement about President George W. Bush.
Nobel Committee chairman Gunnar Berge came right out and said the award "should be interpreted as criticism of the line that the current (Bush) administration has taken."
In other words, standing up to terrorism instead of negotiating with terrorists, is what wins Peace awards.
The irony of Carter getting the award -- $1 million and enormous prestige -- is that more than any other U.S. president he contributed to war, insecurity, danger and tyranny.
Under Carter's flaccid foreign policy that stressed human rights, the Soviet Union rampaged through Africa, in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, using Cuban troops as a proxy. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan, subverted Central America.
Carter abandoned the Shah of Iran, giving encouragement to the homicidal theocrat, the Ayatollah Khomenei, who made hostages of 66 American embassy staff for over a year -- releasing them only when Ronald Reagan replaced Carter as president. Jimmy Carter's rescue attempt of the hostages was calamity -- for the rescuers and America.
Carter sought to unilaterally pull American troops out of South Korea, averted only when a gallant soldier, Maj.-Gen. Jack Singlaub, inadvertently exposed the ploy, saving South Korea and winning the lasting enmity of Carter.
In other words, as a leader for freedom, Carter was a disaster. His achievement of the Camp David accords -- peace between Israel and Egypt -- had less to do with him than the personalities of Egypt's Sadat and Israel's Begin.
Jimmy Carter is a modern version of the peace-at-any-price mentality that has led to great 20th century wars and finds resonance today among those who don't believe in standing up to tyranny on behalf of freedom. Despite Sept. 11, too many still don't realize that peace, like power, comes from the barrel of a gun. Without a functioning military, backed by resolve, peace is elusive.
It may sound harsh, but Carter tends to be a pawn of tyrants. China has invited him to visit Tibet and make recommendations to resolve differences with the Dalai Lama. Can anything be more transparent? Does anyone think the Chinese want any objective scrutineer in Tibet? Returning Tibet to Tibetans would restore harmony with the Dalai Lama.
Castro inviting Carter to address Cubans served only to advertise Castro. Carter's cautious endorsements of free speech were raindrops in a waterfall.
Jimmy Carter these days roves the world for "peace," but achieves little: Bosnia, Nigeria, Taiwan, Ecuador, Jamaica, etc. To what effect? Nigeria still sentences adulterous women to be stoned to death; Bosnia without foreign troops is civil war waiting to happen.
The road to peace isn't easy. It wasn't easy for Churchill, when he opposed disarmament in the 1930s and was vilified. But he was right. The world was grateful in the end. Jimmy Carter's way, when he had power, nearly destroyed freedom in the world. Today, with little influence and no power, Jimmy Carter has chosen to be the world's Jiminy Cricket.
Hopefully, the Peace Prize to Carter won't deter President Bush from promoting "real" peace by a change of leaders in Iraq, and making the world unsafe for terrorists. Persuasion backed by force.
He means it exactly in reverse: Negotiating with terrorists, instead of standing up to them, is what wins Peace awards.
regards
No, not quite the worst.
regards
This entire article is right on, but IMHO, the above sentence says it all.
Jimmuh's award is pyrrhic..........He'll know it, we'll know it and the Press will know it.
This is where and when the current Islamakazi Hatred of America got started. Carter enabled the Islamakazi Terrorists then and has helped them since then. (How Carter Sold out the People of Iran while he was president)
Besahds, if I really wanted to promote peace durin' mah presidency, ah would have busted a piece of fahwood ovah Arahfats hehd at Cahmp Dahviid...."
Until recently, physicists thought of the particles that comprize the atomic nuclei as elementary, that is, without structure. The most recent framework posits a srtucture, comprized of more elementary particles, called quarks.
You know of properties such as mass and charge of particles. With more properties being discovered, the theorists started to run out of mundane words to name them, and they resorted to affectionate, yet simple terms. So we can talk about properties such as charm of the particle.
In the quark model, when naming the constituents, two of them got names "top" and "bottom."
If I recall correctly, it was Murray Gell-Mann that gave them such names (he was quite good at catchy names, as well as the rest of physics; after retiring from CalTech, whereto he had arrived and worked together with Richard Feynman, he settled in Santa Fe).
A number of years ago, for certain reasons, I wanted to register the domain TopQark.com. It was taken. I later learned that it was Murray who had beaten me to it. There is justice in this world after all: his creation belongs to him, as it should.
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