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Friday, September 10, 2004
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THOUGHTS ON JIMMY CARTER
Several observers felt that awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Yasser Arafat in 1994 was the most egregous political use of that award by Oslo in its history. Others feel that way about Henry Kissinger recieving that award in 1973.
However loathsome Arafat is, and he gets more so as he gets older, one can- and several do- argue that he has served his people's interests for decades. This is mitigated by his endorsement of terrorism and his continued support of it. However, this overlooks that the independence of Israel was, at least in part, founded in terrorism. The Stern Gang, led by future Prime Minister Manachem Begin, used terrorist attacks, most famously against the King David Hotel, to end the British Mandate in Palestine. With the signing of the Oslo Accords, it was widely believed that Arafat and the PLO had renounced terrorism as a political tool. Perhaps it was niave, but I can understand the arguments for Arafat to recieve the award when he did, regardless of how much I disagree with it.
It should also be noted that, even the wake of 9/11, another Nobel alumni, Nelson Mandela, has never renounced terrorism either. In fact, he observed that terrorists are often "freedom fighters."
While several people vehemntly disagree with the policies of Henry Kissinger and the Nixon administration, few doubt that they acted in what they believed were the genuine national security interests of the United States. While Democrats bemoan the Paris Peace Accords even today, they should be reminded that they had eight years to end the Vietnam War and could not. Instead, they escalated the war and turned on it as soon as they were no longer responsible for its conduct. Viewed through this prism, Kissinger should be viewed as a model of virtue.
The 2002 recipient of the prize, former President James Earl Carter, has lived in the service of no one other than himself. Carter's presidency was the most horrible failure in modern history. His four years consisted of two mildly impressive achievements, the Camp David agreements and the Afghanistan policy that led to the dissoloution of the Soviet Union.
Camp David wasn't as much a peace treaty as it was the most expensive bribe in world history. Many people, liberals in particular, believe that Israel is the largest benficiary of US foreign aid. It isn't, Egypt is. Egypt recieves somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2 billion dollars annually with only one condition attached, do not attack Israel. That Egypt is nothing even approaching a democracy doesn't seem to matter. Nor is it relevant that Egypt, through its political abuses and massive corruption, creates more terrorists that it prevents. It's noteworthy that al-Qeada is an amalgomation of diverse terrorist groups. The largest of these groups is Egytian Islamic Jihad. Osama bin Laden's chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri is the former head of EIJ and was radicalized by.....the Camp David Agreement. This says something about the law of unintended consequences.
Democratic partisans, in search of cheap political points, blame the creation of Islamist terrorism on the Reagan administrations policy of aiding the Mujahadeen resistence to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The problem with this accusation is that it targets the wrong administration. The policy was instituted by a National Intelligence Estimate signed by President Carter. While President Reagan indeed broadly widened the scope of the aid, it should be remembered that his doing so only expanded an existing Carter policy. Oddly, Republicans have never pointed out that if 9/11 was a case of "blowback", the fault can be laid on the door of Presidents Carter AND Reagan.
In virtually every policy area, Carter's presidency was a failure of almost epic proportions. Carter abdanoned the Nixon/Ford policy of detente with the Soviet Union and established a policy of outright accomodation. When the United States was faced with an energy crisis, the President of the United States went on television and blamed the American people for it. Throughout his entire term of office, both unemployment and inflation were in the double digits. Carter's one military excursion, the "Desert One" rescue mission of the American hostages in Iran, was a humiliating exercise that showed terrorists that they could act against an ineffective United States with impunity.
Much too much is made of Carter's political skills. True, he did win election to the presidency. But few look at the circumstances surrounding the man he defeated. President Ford was dealing with the worst economy since the Dreat Depression. American forces had been forced to evacuate South Vietnam. An American ship was forcibly detained in Cambodia. Ford denied in public that Poland was under "Soviet domination." This is to say nothing of Ford's wildly unpopular pardon of Richard Nixon for any and all crimes committed during his presidency. Even with all of this adversity Ford still came within the state of Mississippi of defeating Carter. When waging his own re-election battle, Carter was humilated, losing 43 of 50 states. A sitting president hadn't been that broadly repudiated since Herbert Hoover in the election of 1932.
Carter's forcible ejection left him with one final campaign to wage, the one for his reputation. Carter rightly calculated that the surest means of his restoration was winning the Nobel. Carter went about this by "playing to the balcony" of European opinion leaders, often to the detriment of United States foreign policy. During the first Gulf War, Carter publicly objected to the military liberation of Kuwait, preferring a policy of United Nations sanctions. For years after the war, Carter then argued that the sanctions should be lifted, citing the damage done the Iraqi people by them. However, at no time did he address how best the threat of the Iraqi government to its neighbours be contained.
It is a federal crime for a private citizen to negotiate with a foreign power the national security matters of the United States. This is the statute in its entirty.
Sec. 953. - Private correspondence with foreign governments
Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply, himself or his agent, to any foreign government or the agents thereof for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects
Yet this did not stop the former president from travelling to Pyongyang to negotiate an end to the crisis regarding North Korea's budding nuclear weapons program. Not only was this against the expressed wishes of the Clinton administration, according to then UN Ambassador (and future Secretary of State), Madeline Albright, it was done as the administration was planning a military strike on the reactors at issue. Were President Clinton interested in the sole perrogative of the president in anything other than his own penchant for oral sex, he would have instucted his Justice Department to seek an indictment of Carter. Instead, Clinton sent Carter to negotiate with the junta ruling Haiti as American forces were preparing to invade.
Carter violated one of the most cherished traditions of the presidency, that a former presient remain publicly silent about his successors in office. That former presidents have problems with their successors is not new. John Adams refused to attend the inaguration of Thomas Jefferson. Theodore Roosevelt despised Woodrow Wilson. Harry Truman detested Dwight Eisenhower as intensly as Eisenhower loathed John Kennedy. Richard Nixon privately criticized the policies of Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H.W Bush and Clinton. But all of these disputes were left to history. They were not public. Before Carter, no former president made a statement that would cause a sitting president any difficulty in executing his duties. Even when President Clinton was publicly ridiculing his eldest son, former President Bush remained mostly silent.
In his 1982 presidential memoir, Carter cited as his biggest mistake "allowing Ronald Reagan to become President of the United States." He spoke out repeatedly against the foreign and domestic policies of Presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush and as I've already noted, violated the criminal law in at least one instance in doing so.
To what end? To be awarded the Nobel that would burnish is reputation with the American people. Carter destroyed a 200 year presidential tradition and confused the concept of there only being one president at a time for no other reason than that he could feel better about himself.
In fact, in public statements by the Nobel selection committee, Carter's almost rabid opposition to the 2003 war with Iraq were instrumental in his being awarded the prize. Once recieving it, Carter used his newfound prestige in launching an attack on a sitting president almost unprecedented in its historonics at this summer's Democratic Convention. This is undoubtedly the most scathing attack I've yet read by a former president on an incumbent.
Jimmy Carter, who has made a career of celebrating his own moral compass, seems to abandon it when political considerations demand it. Carter responded to the speech of Democratic Georgia Senator Zell Miller with a letter to him that was released to the public. In that letter, Carter made at least one confounding statement,
It was a loyal Democrat, Lester Maddox, who assigned you to high positions in the state government when you were out of office.
For the unaware, Lester Maddox was the Governor of Georgia in the late 1960's. His claim to fame outside of that state was his vicious segregationist beliefs. These beliefs were manifested in defending his chicken restraunt from black patrons with an axe handle. Is Lester Maddox what Carter considers a "loyal Democrat?" If so, why did Carter run against him in 1966 and 1970? Can Jimmy Carter seriously imply that human gargabe like Maddox is prefereable in his party to Senator Miller? Is Carter insane?
Instead of being "the greatest of ex-presidents", James Earl Carter has done nothing except conduct himself in the manner of a cheap punk, who has demeaned an office he was elected to and undermined the foreign policy of the nation he once lead. Rather than being the greatest of former presidents, he is the most disgusting.
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