Ratwell,
I really don’t want to insult you but you just lost me with this one, what are you drinking.
Ok let’s look at this objectively
What did carter do positive for the country and world?
I am waiting?
Still no answer…. I can’t think of a thing, he was by far the worst president that this country has ever seen – bar none.
OK first thing Carters fiscal policies were disastrous. I don’t know about you but I stood in line for 4 hours at the unemployment line to get my fourth extension check. The line went out the building, around the corner and went two blocks and that was in the good times in 1980, it got worst in 1982.
His fed appointment pushed the interest rate to 21.5% - you think we have problems now, imagine buying a house at a discount rate of 18%.
The second thing is the CIA, dismantling much of it, restricting it from spying and creating the super secret United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).
Let’s see, he backed the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, which was also backed by Castro. He let our ally fall and made a mess of central America and led to mass killings during and after the revolution.
He pulled his support from the Shah of Iran and this led to the fall of the Shah. This led us to the point we have today, Islamic fundamentalist who got their power with Iran behind them, the Shah kept this controlled. And the reasoning behind this change in national policy was the Shah was violating human rights – oh yea, lets see the blood letting after the fall was not a real thing, blood on Carter’s hands.
He gave the panama canal away. We paid for the thing, our tax money paid for it for years and he gave it away.
He gave us the department of Education, a cluster**** of a department and since has had a hand in our demise as a country – by the way, you know why he did this? Teacher’s unions supported him and this was a pay back. Reagan should have gutted it and ended the madness.
He didn’t deserve his Peace Prize, just like ALGORE it was given on false truths. He did nothing for the peace process. The funny thing is the King of Morocco and Ceausescu of Romania were the ones who actually did the work on the diplomatic side, Carter did the arm twisting with Egypt by threatening no aid (which has been increased to give them the most money than any other country gets) in order to get it here instead in the Hague. There are a lot of things that happened behind the scenes that Carter made it look like he did something about it, he didn’t – it was an international effort.
Oh he did legalized home-brewing while he was president.
So since he left office he monitored the elections in South America which gave us a dictator, sure it was a fixed election but he has the nerve to say we need UN monitors for our elections here.
Since then he has criticized the US for it’s policies on foreign soil, not only is this really a horrible thing to do being a former president, but it shows he has no respect for the office or the people of the US.
Since then he has consistently sided with the PLO, he (and I do agree with him on this) tried to help Arafat get a visa to go to the UN, but the US refused to give him one. The problem is we allow Iranian and Syrian diplomats free access to the country, and gave one to a known terrorist, Mandela but didn’t for Arafat – which is really against the our laws and the treaty. But anyway I digress; he backs the PLO, Hamas and a number of terrorist organizations.
He has, against the policies of the US, met with Ex hamas leader and others in the past.
He has meddled as a diplomat without portfolio in Korea, Iraq to name a couple.
His book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, is as anti-semantic as it can but appears as something as a peace book, go read it. It shows the lack of support Israel has from him, it has been criticized as well not very good and even Clinton has been involved with calling it misses the target.
It means a lot when an incoming president like Bill Clinton goes and meets with Ronald Reagan and George Bush and ignores Carter. It tool like a couple weeks before he decided to meet with Carter. What a slam that was but it was what he meant to Clinton and others in the administration.
As a humanitarian, I would say that others by far can be called humanitarian before Carter. I would put it to you this way, he was at the top and tried to ruin the country. He left us with many many problems and his policies ruined many lives in this country. Humanitarian? I would say that starts at home and being an American first, supporting America and it’s people.
The one thing that he needs to do is build houses for people who need them…..
I don’t like McCain, I think he is someone who is part of the problem. He made one insulting comment, he offered jobs at $50 an hour to any American who can do the work some invader can. I am still p*ssed off at him for that insult but I look at Obama and see another Carter, someone who will just ruin this country quickly. See there is the difference, if real democrats were in power, I would not worry about it but Carter wasn’t like by his own party and he had a hard time working with the Congress.
Here is my view:
Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs
Carter spreads a new doctrine
By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - The Arabs first heard of Jimmy Carter when he was elected president of the United States in November 1976. They were skeptical at first, thinking he would pursue Middle East policies no different from those of former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, which were very sympathetic to Israel.
Making things more worrying was that Carter confessed that prior to his election, he had never met an Arab. The new president, however, promised to be different from previous American leaders. From day one, he made it loud and clear that he did not see the world through the narrow alliances of the Cold War; the world was not "you are either with us or with the Soviet Union".
That is why he invited Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia, Israeli
prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, King Hussein of Jordan, Hafez al-Assad of Syria and Anwar Sadat of Egypt to visit him in Washington.
All of them - with the exception of Syria's Assad - responded promptly. Rabin, himself a Washington insider for nine years, was furious at the new US president. Carter was taking Middle East initiatives without clearing them first with Israel. Even worse, he was promising statehood to the Palestinians and calling for an end to Syrian-US tension.
Unlike what many Arabs believed, he was never anti-Israeli but believed that just like the Israelis, the Arabs had the right to live and hope. They too suffered. They too existed and feared. They had legitimate interests, he claimed, that needed to be respected to bring peace to the Holy Land. These views were shared by his new secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, and national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.
This year, Brzezinski (who is now a foreign policy advisor to Democratic presidential challenger Barack Obama) visited Damascus and met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He then visited one of the private universities in Syria and spoke to students of the Faculty of International Relations. Most of them asked questions about the Carter era. They wanted to know why was it that America's number one ally in the region, Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran, had been toppled by the Islamic revolution of 1979, despite assurances of support from the Carter White House?
They asked him about the arming and training of jihadis to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in December 1979. They asked him what could be expected in Syrian-US relations if Obama made it to the White House? That visit was frowned on by decision-makers in Washington, who accused Brzezinski of visiting a nation "that disrupts regional peace and supports international terrorism".
The psychological shock of seeing Brzezinski in Damascus was nothing, however, compared with what happened when Carter landed in the Syrian capital on April 18 to meet not only Assad but also Khaled Meshaal, the head of the political bureau of Hamas, a Palestinian military group that the US brands a "terrorist organization".
The Carter Center explained the trip, saying it aimed to "support and provide momentum for current efforts to secure peace in the Middle East". Carter said, "I feel quiet at ease in doing this. I think there's no doubt in anyone's mind that if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process."
Carter's Middle East tour had three main objectives: 1) Ending hostilities between Hamas and Israel, either through a peace deal or a truce. This would build on an earlier offer made by Hamas founder Ahmad Yassin for a truce (hudna in Arabic) with the Israelis. 2) The release of Corporal Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held in Hamas captivity since 2006. 3) The release of Palestinians from Israeli jails. On another level, the trip aims at finding common ground, and improving relations, between Syria and the United States.
It has been over 15 years since Carter last visited Damascus as a private citizen, during the era of former president Hafez al-Assad. Before that, when Assad turned down the Washington invitation, the two men had met in neutral Geneva at the Intercontinental Hotel on May 9, 1977. That seven-hour meeting was opened with a one-hour speech by the Syrian president, on reaching peace in the Middle East, to which Carter nodded and attentively took notes. At the press conference, Carter reaffirmed his support for a Palestinian homeland, and praised cooperation with Syria.
In his book Peace Not Apartheid, Carter wrote:
When I became president, one of my primary roles was to persuade Syrian President Hafez al-Assad to ... cooperate with me on a comprehensive peace effort. Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and others who knew Assad had described him to me as very intelligent, eloquent and frank in discussing the most sensitive issues. I invited the Syrian leader to come and visit me in Washington, but he replied that he had no desire ever to visit the United States. Despite this firm but polite rebuff, I learned what I could about him and his nation before meeting him.
The two men last met at the funeral of King Hussein of Jordan in 1999.
Generations of Syrians grew up hearing good things about Carter; they remembered him as an honest US president - although his signature graced the much-loathed Camp David accords between Egypt's Sadat and Israel, in 1978.
Needless to say, they were thrilled that he decided to visit Syria in 2008, despite all the high-alert warnings he received from both the White House and the US Department of State. Carter had tried to visit Syria in 2005, but relations had soured between Syria and Washington, and he was advised not to but then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice. He explained, "I made a visit to the Middle East early in 2005 and planned to visit the young Syrian president in Damascus. As usual, I notified the White House well in advance of my itinerary and immediately received a call from the national security advisor, who informed me that I would not receive approval for this portion of my trip.
"I tried to explain that I would be glad to use my influence to resolve any outstanding problems. In a somewhat heated conversation, I also expressed my view that refusing to communicate with leaders with whom we disagreed was counterproductive. Despite this effort to embarrass and weaken Bashar al-Assad, he has survived ... When an international effort is launched to end the current conflict between Israel and Lebanon, Syria may once again play a major role."
Carter believes the time has come to re-engage the Syrians and to talk to Hamas. Speaking from Jerusalem on April 21, he said Hamas was willing to accept Israel and live as a neighbor "next door in peace". After meeting with Meshaal, he also heard that Hamas was no longer going to try to undermine current Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and his efforts to reach peace with Israel.
Earlier, they had seized power from Abbas in Gaza and harangued the Palestinian leader for taking part in the Annapolis peace conference in the US last year. This stance - delivered to the US leader from Damascus - had Syria's fingerprints all over it. These were important extractions from the Islamic group, which earlier refused to negotiate any peace with Israel or recognize its right to exist.
The charter of Hamas calls for the destruction of the state of Israel, something that it refused to amend when elected to power in 2006. While Hamas was saying all that to the aged US president, Israel launched a series of attacks over the weekend, killing seven Hamas guerillas, after two jeeps packed with explosives were detonated at a border crossing in Gaza.
Why now?
Why has Carter decided to brush aside all official warnings and go to Damascus, whereas he had received similar requests to refrain from making the trip in 2005? A logical answer would be that Carter went to Syria to listen, take notes and convey his findings (as a private citizen) to think-tanks and decision-makers in Washington.
Nobody asked him to do so; he is doing it at his own will, hoping it might bring about a breakthrough in Palestinian-Israeli talks. Carter realizes this is close to impossible in what remains of President George W Bush's term at the White House. This tour is aimed at whomever comes next, Obama, Hillary Clinton or John McCain.
Additionally, Carter is also worried about the prospects of a new war in the region, either between Syria and Israel, Hamas and Israel (already taking place), or Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Tension is rising on the Syrian-Israeli border after the Israelis carried out their largest military maneuver since 1948 on their border with Syria in April.
Many in Washington and Tel Aviv are convinced the only way to get Syria to change course and distance itself from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas is to bomb it. While it prepares on the border with Syria, Israeli officials come out with assuring statements, saying that they don't want war with the Syrians.
This was repeated by President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who went further in July 2007 and addressed the Syrian leader in an interview on the Saudi channel al-Arabiyya, saying: "You know that I am ready for direct talks with you ... I am ready to sit and talk about peace, not war."
Other Israelis, such as then-deputy chief of staff Major-General Moshe Kaplinsky, sent other signals, saying provocations could lead to "miscalculations on the border". Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in July 2007 responded to a question about peace with Syria with the blunt, "Absolutely not!"
For its part, Syria says it remains committed to peace, by abiding to United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 (land-for-peace) and returning to the June 4, 1967, line with Israel. The September 2007 Israeli air intrusion into Syria and the latest maneuvers of the Israeli Defense Force have alarmed the Syrians. This week, while speaking to a gathering of Arab intellectuals, Assad said, "While war is not a preferable option, if Israel declares war on Syria and Lebanon or if America declares war on Iran, Syria would be prepared."
Each side accuses the other side of not being interested in peace. This is what Carter heard both from Assad and Olmert. But both sides are prepared should something go wrong or a "miscalculation" take place on the border.
Will Carter's diplomacy result in any breakthrough? Apart from symbolic moral lifting to the Syrians and Hamas - and headache for Carter himself - the visit will not produce any tangible results, neither on the Syrian nor on the Palestinian track, because at this stage neither the Americans nor the Israelis are ready. Carter is yet to write or convey his impressions of the Middle East, over 30 years after his election as president of the United States.
Not much has changed. Syria was at odds with Egypt in 1976. It still is. Then, it was over Egypt's walkout on the Syrians in the October war of 1973 and its attendance of Kissinger's famed Geneva conference. Now its over Lebanon and Egypt's no-show at the latest Arab conference in Damascus.
Lebanon was in the early months of its civil war. It looks dangerously close to another today, with no president and a sharp divide between political parties. The Syrians don't trust the Americans for what they did to the Arab world after 1973. Kissinger had distanced Syria from both Iraq and Egypt. The honeymoon with Cairo was disrupted when Kissinger got Sadat to go to Geneva without the Syrians. He then turned to Iraq and encouraged the Kurds to riot against the central government to divert its attention and drain its strength, so that it did not venture into any new Middle East adventure, such as coming to the aid of Syria.
Whereas today, the Bush White House has distanced Syria from Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. In 1976, there was still a Soviet Union to keep relative control on US actions in the Arab world. The US is now free to act as it pleases. Back then, the US had a friendly neighbor in Tehran. It now has President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Then, the US was not occupying Iraq and sharing a 605-kilometer border with Syria. More importantly, then Carter had power to make things happen.
He was the sitting 39th president; a man with vision, authority and character. He is now a private citizen, old and ailing, whose views are not so well received at the White House. And unless a Democrat makes it in the US elections, Carter will remain persona non grata both at the White House and State Department from 2009 onwards. By the next time elections come around and possibly bring about a Democratic president, it would be 2013. Carter would be 89.
So if the current visit were to result in any breakthrough, it needs to be done in the next administration, not this one. In 1980, the ex-president issued his famous Carter Doctrine, in response to the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He stated the US would use military force if needed to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf. This was after the Truman Doctrine, saying the US would send aid to countries threatened by communism. Then came the Eisenhower Doctrine for the containment of communism in the Arab world. Finally there was the Nixon Doctrine, providing military aid to Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Carter no longer has the authority to issue doctrines. But regardless, his breath is one of fresh air for the Syrians.
I cannot for the life of me see why anyone would see this as Anti-American. He is for peace just like me.
