Jimmy Carter - a legacy only moonbats could love?

Discussion in 'Politics' started by hapaboy, Apr 14, 2008.

Is Jimmy Carter a danger to the US?

  1. Yes. By enthusiastically seeking dialogue with our enemies, he invites attacks on us or our interes

    11 vote(s)
    57.9%
  2. No. He is a man of peace only trying to resolve deep-seated hatred.

    8 vote(s)
    42.1%
  3. Jimmy who? I'm neutral on this.

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  1. Tyranny's Enabler

    By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.

    Monday, April 14, 2008

    Jimmy Carter’s pathetic need for political rehabilitation following a presidency widely regarded as one of the worst in American history is once again making news. He reportedly will meet this week with Khaled Mashaal, the Syrian-based leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian arm, Hamas – an internationally recognized terrorist organization.

    Mr. Carter maintains this is no big deal since he has met with Hamas officials before. Indeed, in keeping with his Carter Center’s self-appointed status as global election monitor, the former president did officiate in January 2006 when the Brotherhood’s terrorists defeated those of Fatah led by Yasser Arafat’s longtime crony, Mahmoud Abbas.

    In point of fact, it seems there is scarcely a serious bad actor on the planet with whom Jimmy Carter has not met. He is a serial tyrant-enabler, the very personification of Rodney King’s risible appeal, “Can’t we all get along?” Mr. Carter has come to epitomize the notion that “dialogue” is always in order, no matter how odious or dangerous the interlocutor – or the extent to which they or their agendas will benefit from such interactions.

    As Barak Obama (whom Carter has all but endorsed) is as wedded as the former President to the idea of condition-free dialogue with tyrants, it is worth reflecting on just a few of the many example’s of how this Carteresque practice has produced disastrous results:

    * In 1979, then-President Carter undermined the Shah of Iran and made possible the Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Iran and subsequent Islamic revolution. Although the uber-mullah returned the favor with the sacking of Embassy Tehran and seizure of its personnel that assured Carter’s would be a one-term presidency, the regime thus born has ever since been a blight on its own people and a state-sponsor of terror and nuclear wannabe that represents an ever-growing menace to its region and the world.

    * In 1994, Citizen Carter made a mission to Pyongyang at a time when then-President Bill Clinton was first confronting evidence of North Korea’s illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons. The former president’s intervention gave rise to a deal that lent invaluable prestige to the regime, perpetuated its hold on power and utterly failed to preclude the North’s acquisition of a nuclear arsenal.

    * In 2004, Jimmy Carter ignored abundant evidence of official vote-rigging and election fraud in a Venezuelan referendum, handing victory to Hugo Chavez and clearing the way for the most destabilizing accretion of power in the Western hemisphere since Fidel Castro’s communist revolution in Cuba – a model and inspiration for Chavez.

    In short, thanks in no small measure to Jimmy Carter’s proclivities and meddling, the world is a considerably more dangerous place. Following his lead now will make it more so, for three reasons:

    First and foremost, “talking” to tyrants legitimates them. Dictators go to great lengths to conjur up the perception of authority and permanence. They are particularly anxious to do so for domestic consumption, to ensure their continued rule. To the extent that outsiders recognize, to say nothing of embrace, them, it enhances their stature at home and validates their misconduct on the world stage.

    Second, such efforts generally have the effect of emboldening these thugs. After all, they are being rewarded for bad behavior. The result is predictable: even worse behavior. That can mean redoubled efforts to: acquire nuclear weapons, destabilize their neighbors, raise the price of oil and engage in other activities inimical to U.S. interests.

    Third, it is ironic but true that – even as Carter-style enabling of tyrants makes matters worse – it typically encourages in this country the impression that vexing problems with those regimes have been made more tractable. Diplomatic placeboes reduce the perceived need and popular support for more effective, albeit more difficult, alternatives.

    It is instructive that even an Israeli government known for appeasing terrorists has finally had it with Jimmy Carter. Israel’s ceremonial head of state, President Shimon Peres, met with him Sunday for the purpose of publicly denouncing Carter’s “activities over the last few years [that have] caused great damage to Israel and the peace process.” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his foreign and defense ministers have gone so far as to decline requested meetings with Carter.

    The one possible up-side of the latest instance of tyrant-enabling by Jimmy Carter is that it puts in sharp relief an issue that should feature prominently in the 2008 U.S. elections: Do we want to entrust the job of commander-in-chief to someone who believes, as Mr. Carter does, that dialogue with our sworn enemies – notably, Iran, and its vassal, Syria – is a good and necessary step?

    This is, of course, the oft-repeated position of Barak Obama and other Democratic opponents of the effort to secure victory in Iraq. Is it the view though of what the former condescendingly calls “ordinary” Americans, people who have generally shown more common sense than the likes of Messrs. Carter and Obama?

    In the final analysis, Jimmy Carter will be best remembered by history as a man whose time in and out of high public office was almost unblemished by success. Notwithstanding a Nobel Peace Prize (given by an awards committee avowedly anxious to rebuke President Bush) and assorted good works on behalf of Habitat for Humanity, his role as a tyrant-enabler will be an object of scorn and derision rather than the vindication he so transparently, and desperately, seeks.
     
  2. Jimmy Carter will, or should shamefully go down in history as Father of the North Korean nuclear bomb, and also father of the Olympic boycott: where he brought politics into the international sporting arena . . . second in stupidity to Al Gore who managed to make the weather a political issue, good grief!
     
  3. "No. He is a man of peace only trying to resolve deep-seated hatred."

    looks like this choice is ahead for right now. what strikes me is hapa's deep seated hatred for Carter. when someone hates a peace keeper this much it is a sure sign they are sociopaths.
     
  4. Jimmy Carter Amok

    By Emmett Tyrrell

    Thursday, April 17, 2008

    WASHINGTON -- In the 1980 presidential election, the American people did the best they could with President Jimmy Carter, given the limitations imposed on them by our Constitution: They retired him from office (44 states participated in the ceremony). Looking back, however, on how the scamp has abused his retirement, I, for one, wish we could have done better. Perhaps he could have been put in a jar. He has, in the succeeding 27 years since his exit from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., remained almost as ruinous a nuisance out of office as he was in office. That cannot be said of any other president.

    Just before Jimmy was given the heave-ho, the Misery Index, an index combining rates of inflation and unemployment, was at an all-time high of 21.98 percent -- up from 12.68 percent when he was elected in 1976. After his last full year as president, inflation was at 12.5 percent and unemployment at 7.2 percent. Today the Misery Index is at 8.83 percent, though the Democrats have not a nice thing to say about Jimmy's Republican successors. In Jimmy's day, the prime rate moved from 7 percent to 20 percent, and the home mortgage rate was almost 18 percent. Think about those figures this autumn when you are asked to choose between Sen. John McCain and either Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Clinton, two Democrats with even less experience than Gov. Jimmy Carter in matters economic.

    As for foreign policy, Jimmy presided over a steady decline in American influence, as the Soviets went on a worldwide offensive while the American military atrophied. American diplomats were jailed in their own embassy in Tehran, Iran, and the military rescue mission mounted by Jimmy to free them was one of the few American military embarrassments of the 20th century. Incidentally, Iran's present president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, played a major role in holding our diplomats, according to retired FBI agents who monitored Ahmadinejad's communications from Tehran to fellow conspirators then in New York.

    Yet Jimmy remains quite full of himself. In fact, his sense of moral superiority has grown as the memory of his failed presidency recedes into history. Rather than retire to a library to read, as former President Harry Truman did, in the hope that he might understand what went wrong during the Carter administration, Jimmy founded The Carter Center for "waging peace, fighting disease, and building hope." Perhaps it is his intention to spread the failure of his presidency throughout the world. Think of it, a worldwide Misery Index of 21.98 percent!

    There was a time when former presidents were reluctant to criticize their successors and absolutely refused to do so while on foreign soil. Jimmy broke from that discipline years ago. He attacked the Reagan administration from Cairo, Egypt, in 1984 by scoffing at the president for being "more inclined to form a Contra army to overthrow the Sandinistas or inject the Marines into Lebanon or use American battleships to shell villages around Beirut" than to negotiate. In the run-up to the Gulf War, he interposed himself, warning that if the George H.W. Bush administration attacked Iraq, the United States "would reap great and very serious deleterious consequences politically." To the consternation of Clinton administration officials in 1994, Jimmy popped up in North Korea to work out a nuclear agreement with President Kim Il Sung that proved utterly futile. The North Koreans detonated a nuclear device 12 years later.

    Now against the wishes of the George W. Bush administration, Jimmy is in the Middle East, holding meetings with Hamas and laying a wreath on the grave of the deceased Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Hamas regularly lobs rockets and mortars into Israeli neighborhoods and is dedicated to Israel's destruction. Arafat was a famously corrupt leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and was responsible for the deaths of Americans and Israelis alike, as well as hundreds of other innocent people. Of course, the Bush administration's opposition to Jimmy's arrogant journey only encourages this impudent man.

    The Israelis are ignoring his visit for the most part, after making it abundantly clear that they do not favor it. They are right to snub him. That he has been greeted by Hamas speaks volumes about the public life of Jimmy Carter. A failure as a president, Jimmy is appraised as a useful tool by our enemies.
     
  5. LT701

    LT701

    our one sided support for Israel can best be explained to Americans

    'see the price at the pump'?

    Carter wasn't perfect, but he may be the unluckiest president ever

    Then, like now, war costs were sending inflation soaring, *which happens after every war*, and we were in a part of the fed reserve cycle where the piper was being paid.

    The Iranian thing was a time bomb planted in 1953, as our CIA played stooge for British oil interests

    I dont agree with everything the RonPaulers say (for instance, if you read his immigration guest worker policy, it's NOT acceptable), but a lot of RP's issues and debates do go a long way to explain the Carter years

    No I dont approve of much of what hammas does. But do you think every palestinian has control over them? Do YOU have control over everything OUR government does?

    More decency toward the average Palestinian would go a long way toward solving problems that we can no longer afford
     
  6. maxpi

    maxpi

    Palestinians would have to have rule of law before anybody could view tham as anything other than unruly criminals..