Wes Vernon
August 2, 2005
Jimmy Carter: a bitter irrelevant man
By Wes Vernon

So President Malaise has done it again.

Former President Jimmy Carter has trashed his country on foreign soil.

This man, whose blip on the historical radar screen is best known for the damage he was able to impose within a mere four years, says he is "embarrassed" because we are keeping terrorists locked up at Guantanamo Bay prison.

Most normal Americans — who are not under the spell of liberal academics and media types — will say we should keep the terrorists right where they are until and unless solid evidence emerges that clearly shows they pose no threat to the United States. And by the way, if anything, the American decision-makers at Gitmo should be more skeptical as to whom they see fit to set free. Some of the prisoners that have been released went right back to the front lines of the terrorists seeking to kill us.

Here is what President Malaise actually said at a news conference in Birmingham, England:

"I think what's going on at Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the USA. I wouldn't say it's the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts."

Jimmy — 9/11 happened before we sent terrorists to Gitmo. What was their "excuse" then? This sounds like a replay of your foreign policy in the Cold War when you said we should avoid "the inordinate fear of communism," lest the Soviets look at us cross-eyed.

President Malaise generously said Gitmo did not justify terrorism, but that it "may be an aggravating factor."

He went on to volunteer, presuming to speak for you and me, that "(w)hat has happened at Guantanamo Bay ....does not represent the will of the American people." Oh, really? Many of us did not know we had asked this ex-president to speak in our name.

"I'm embarrassed about it," he said. "I think it's wrong. I think it does give terrorists an aggravated excuse to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people."

Okay, here's what really causes millions of American to be "embarrassed."

They are embarrassed that this long gone president presumes to speak for them. Liberals keep trying to prop up his image notwithstanding that he was driven from office because of double digit inflation, double digit unemployment, persistent double digit stock market dives (the "misery index"), and because American hostages were held in Iran after the American president, whose number one Constitutional responsibility is to "preserve and protect" the United States, turned his back on our friend the Shah of Iran, leading to the overthrow of our ally by an America-hating Islamic fundamentalist cabal.

That was arguably the first shot in the War on Terror. And this man now gasps in horror at Gitmo and what he calls the "unnecessary and unjust" U.S. action in Iraq, both results of that same war. You have to admit this much for the arsonist. At least he doesn't blame others for starting the fire.

But this is not the first time Carter has given aid and comfort (however inadvertently) to those who would destroy us.

On a day in January, 1984 — three years into the Reagan presidency — ex-President Carter dropped by for a visit and chat at the Soviet ambassador's residence. There and then he told Ambassador Dobrynin that he was worried about President Reagan's military buildup (a key part of the Gipper's strategy to end the Cold War). According to Dobynin's memoirs and the 2002 book "Reagan's War" by Peter Schweitzer, Mr. Carter confided to the representative of the regime that threatened to dominate the world and bring down the United States that the world would be better off with someone else in the White House.

What was Dobrynin to think other than that he was being told to be patient and not to worry, that there's an election later this year, and help is on the way?

Try to imagine the uproar that would have resulted — even in the non-interventionist or "isolationist" America of late 1940 — if former President Herbert Hoover had visited the German and Japanese embassies and said, in effect, "What are we going to do about that madman in the White House (FDR)?"

Ask yourself if Hoover would have been accused of treason if he had done that.

Schweitzer's book also reveals that during the 1980 campaign when Reagan was gaining in the polls, then President Carter dispatched pro-Soviet industrialist Armand Hammer "to the Soviet embassy for a secret meeting with Ambassador Dobrynin to ask for Soviet help" with Jewish emigration and other potential vote-getting issues that would benefit an incumbent president. The promise to the Soviets was that "Carter won't forget that service if he is re-elected."

And there's more: Last year, ex-President Carter was sent as an international observer of the referendum in Venezuela on Fidel Castro's pro-Marxist buddy, President Hugo Chavez. Mr. Carter pronounced that "everything is going very well." To put it charitably, this was sloppy "observing." The opposition forces in Venezuela charged in effect that he was blind as a bat.

Venezuelan News and Analysis reported that television networks showed long lines that were barely moving, fingerprint technology that wasn't working, soldiers that were overstepping their functions by demanding to see ID cards, and government workers who were "menacingly" driving by some polling centers. Further the Wall Street Journal reported the Carter Center and the OAS audited only a tiny fraction of the voting machines they were supposed to audit.

The VN added: "Then Jimmy Carter said he planned to leave Venezuela to celebrate his wife's birthday the day before opposition protestors were shot at point blank as they protested [the legitimacy of] the referendum results."

When a former American president passes away, it is quite normal for other former presidents, who have shared the rare experience of occupying the toughest job anywhere in the world, to put aside their differences and philosophies for that one day, and find one decent thing to say about the departed former leader of the free world.

Not a word from Jimmy Carter the week that Reagan died. All during the weeklong mourning of his fellow Americans, he uttered not one comment.

The historian Steven F. Hayward writes, "It is difficult to understate the completeness of the disaster of Carter's presidency." And he added that "the piety of Carter's [1976] election campaign had become self-righteousness when the time came to govern."

Not since Woodrow Wilson had the U.S. had a president whose sheer arrogance and self-righteousness had hastened his own failure. Yet Jimmy Carter still presumes to lecture against America's role in the world during a time of war. And he trashes U.S. policy while he is on the foreign soil of an ally, Britain. He appears oblivious to the possibility that he is feeding ammunition for America's enemies in the war, and also bolstering the anti-war anti-American forces in Britain that are plotting to bring down Tony Blair, America's best friend in the war.

Small wonder that during the week of the national mourning over the death of Ronald Reagan, this bitter man instead was content to lick his wounds. He might have been lamenting to himself that his place in history will never be as assured as that of the man who ousted him.

© Wes Vernon

 

The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
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