Jimmy Carter: The Untold Story

The decision of the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award former President Jimmy Carter the Nobel Peace Prize for 2002 requires some serious review. The Committee stated that it was honoring the former president "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development." But history tells a different story - that of a political neophyte president who, when it came to conducting domestic and foreign affairs, was way out of his depth.

According to Michael Schoenfeld of Commentary, who reviewed Carter's book Living Faith, "to this day he (Carter) still doesn't know how much he doesn't know." In his four short years in office, things went from bad to worse to terrible. Inflation doubled; short-term interest rates hit a high of 21%. But the soaring misery index was the least, however, of what went wrong. From Lancegate to Billygate, the tone of the presidency fell to depths unheard of since the Harding administration.

His record as President illustrates the folly of pursuing a policy of understanding in a world replete with dictators and despots. He lectured Americans on the foolishness of their "fear of communism"............ and the Soviets responded by invading Afghanistan. He tried to appease the mullahs in Iran, and they responded by holding dozens of Americans hostage, releasing them the moment Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.

In his book, Carter proudly recalls how he formulated policy by sitting in the Oval Office studying "a big globe," endeavoring to see the world "through Soviet eyes". There, across the ocean, was the "beleaguered" Leonid Brezhnev, trapped "in a closed society, surrounded by frozen seas, powerfully armed enemies, and doubtful allies." A primary Carter consideration when negotiating with the Soviet dictator was trying (as he puts it) "to alleviate (Brezhnev's) concerns." Saddam Hussein and every other tyrant of the 20th century would have been thrilled had a U.S. President shown such an "understanding."

In one session, where Carter questioned the Soviets' record on human rights, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko turned the tables and delivered a lecture on the Soviet Union's free medical care, zero unemployment and absence of homelessness. "I couldn't argue," Mr. Carter admits. "We each had a definition of human rights and differences like this must be recognized and understood." Really? Ever read The Gulag Archipelago?

Carter was fully aware that human-rights abuses were more prevalent in the Soviet bloc than in authoritarian third-world countries. But he avoided criticism of Communist abuses because he was afraid of offending the Kremlin. As he wrote in his personal diary: "It's important that he [Brezhnev] understand the commitment I have is to human rights.......and that it is not an antagonistic attitude of mine toward the Soviet Union." What Carter failed to see - and perhaps still has not recognized - is that it was the very nature of the Soviet dictatorship that was the problem. If America is committed to human rights, then its policies should reflect antagonism towards those dictatorships that abuse them to remain in power.

Carter's reputation was that of melting in the presence of Communist dictators. As the "human rights president," Carter noted that Yugoslavia's Marshall Tito was "a man who believed in human rights." Carter saluted the dictator as "a great and courageous leader" who had led his people and protected their freedom." He reserved similar remarks for Romania's (now deposed Communist) dictator Nicholai Ceaucescu.

In December 1977, Polish Communist boss Edward Giereck was ushered into the Oval Office. According to the White House transcript of the meeting, he told Gierek, "Our concept of human rights is preserved (ie: safe) in Poland. Carter actually "expressed appreciation for Poland's support for the Helsinki Agreement and its commitment to human rights." He offered no criticism of the Polish Communist government's human-rights record - despite the fact that, one month earlier, the Polish secret police had attacked thousands of workers protesting food price increases. Four people were killed in the melee; hundreds of others were arrested and savagely beaten in prison.

It gets worse. As Jay Nordlinger notes in the National Review Online (October, 2002), "Carter has long enjoyed a reputation as a Middle East sage, owing, of course, to his role in the original Camp David accords. That reputation, however, rests on shaky grounds." Nordlinger points out that Sadat and Begin had their deal worked out before ever approaching Washington. Why did they contact the White House? Prof. Bernard Lewis of Princeton University put it succinctly: “Well, obviously, they needed someone to pay the bill, and who but the United States could fulfill that function?”

No one quite realizes just how passionately anti-Israel Carter was. William Safire has reported that Cyrus Vance acknowledged that, if Carter had had a second term, he would have "sold Israel down the river." In fact, in The Unfinished Presidency, Douglas Brinkley, Carter's biographer and analyst writes, “There was no world leader Jimmy Carter was more eager to know than Yassir Arafat.” The former president “felt certain affinities with the Palestinian: a tendency toward hyperactivity and a workaholic disposition with unremitting sixteen-hour days, seven days a week, decade after decade.” The brutality, the corruption and the human rights abuses to which Arafat and his PLO subjected the Palestinian people were, at best peripheral, and at worst, the fault of the Israelis.

At their first meeting - in 1990 - Carter boasted of his toughness toward Israel, assuring Arafat at one point, “. . . you should not be concerned that I am biased. I am much more harsh with the Israelis.” Arafat, for his part, railed against the Reagan administration. Rosalynn Carter, taking notes for her husband, interjected, “You don’t have to convince us!” Brinkley records that this “elicited gales of laughter all round.” Carter himself, according to Brinkley, “agreed that the Reagan administration was not renowned as promise keepers." Interesting comment, especially to Yassir Arafat.

According to Peter Schweizer in the October issue of the National Review, there is also irony in the Nobel Committee's championing Carter for his commitment to democratic principles. While the ex-president has laudably worked for free and open elections in the developing world, he has also sought foreign influence in American elections to defeat his political enemies.

On repeated occasions during his Presidency, according to numerous Soviet accounts, Carter encouraged Moscow to influence American politics for his benefit or for the detriment of his enemies. Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin recounts in his memoirs how, in the waning days of the 1980 campaign, the Carter White House dispatched Armand Hammer to the Soviet embassy. Explaining to the Soviet Ambassador that Carter was "clearly alarmed" at the prospect of losing to Reagan, Hammer asked for help: Could the Kremlin expand Jewish emigration to bolster Carter's standing in the polls? "Carter won't forget that service if he is elected," Hammer told Dobrynin.

According to Georgii Kornienko, first deputy foreign minister at the time, something similar took place in 1976, when Carter sent Averell Harriman to Moscow. Harriman sought to assure the Soviets that Carter would be "easier to deal with" than Ford, clearly inviting Moscow to do what it could through public diplomacy to help his campaign.

Even when he was out of office, Carter still tried bitterly to encourage Moscow to do damage to his enemies during an election. As Dobrynin recounts, in January 1984, the former president dropped by his residence for a private meeting. Carter was concerned about Reagan's defense build-up and went on to explain that Moscow would be better off with someone else in the White House. If Reagan won, he warned, "There would not be a single agreement on arms control, especially on nuclear arms, as long as Reagan remained in power."

Is it any wonder that this man's presidency ended in a spectacular foreign policy fiasco?

Jonah Goldberg, in his May, 2002 article in the National Review, notes that while the first President Bush was trying to orchestrate an international coalition to remove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, Carter wrote a letter to the U.N. Security Council - including Mitterrand’s France and Communist China - asking its members to stymie Bush's efforts.

He told Haitian dictator Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, he was "ashamed of what my country has done to your country." Carter himself has conducted talks with men like Syria's Hafez al-Assad, and North Korea's Kim II Sung both of whom, he writes, "have at times been misunderstood, ridiculed, and totally condemned by the American public." Part of the reason is "their names are foreign, not Anglo-Saxon," he observes.

He endorsed Yasser Arafat's sham election and grumbled about the legitimate vote that ousted Sandinista Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Unbelievably, Carter even volunteered to be Arafat's speechwriter and go-fer, crafting palatable messages for Arafat's Western audiences and convincing the Saudis to continue funding Arafat after the Palestinians sided with Iraq against the United States.

As we see from Living Faith, Carter has consistently conducted a sustained public-relations campaign to repair his tattered reputation. One component has entailed the public performance of true charitable works through Habitat for Humanity - reporters and TV cameras in tow - building homes for the poor and the oppressed, in the American barrios and also in communist Nicaragua, with Sandinista leaders by his side.

A more significant part of his PR campaign has revolved around the Carter Center, set up to promote international understanding. Arabs are heavy-duty funders of the Carter Center, and they get a lot for their money. The philosophy of the Center, according to Carter himself is to "encourage the use of dialogue to resolve disputes - which runs against the American grain......We tend to see conflicts in terms of friend-enemy, angel-devil, and this is one of the major impediments to world peace."

Sometimes it is necessary to fight a war in order to win peace. But this was never part of the Carter Plan. "Build bridges of understanding" with the communist dictators of yesterday or the Saddam Husseins of today only makes a mockery of the American democratic system and threatens the civilized world. Evil exists. Reagan recognized it; and now Bush II recognizes it. To negotiate with Evil is a mistake under any circumstances.

How a great country came to be led by someone like Jimmy Carter is a historical puzzle that is likely to remain unsolved. One thing is certain - the Nobel Peace Prize Committee disgraced itself when it rewarded Jimmy Carter for his misplaced moral righteousness while its chairman denounced the President of the United States for taking a stand that will actually promote a more peaceful world.

Thanks for the freepmail. I added it here.

Carter's Dirty Money by Alan Dershowitz 7 February 2007 NaomiRagen.com

Friends,

Alan Dershowitz, who worked for Carter's presidential
campaign, tells all about how the ex-President has sold his
soul and his integrity, disgracefully accepting money from a
Saudi foundation that has described Jews as "the enemies of
all nations" and the Holocaust as "a fable." I guess he
realized he could make more for selling his integrity than
his peanuts. The amounts he received were certainly not
peanuts. For shame.
Naomi

What is going on in the world

By Alan Dershowitz

I have known Jimmy Carter for more than thirty years. I
first met him in the spring of 1976 when, as a relatively
unknown candidate for president, he sent me a handwritten
letter asking for my help in his campaign on issues of crime
and justice. I had just published an article in The New York
Times Magazine on sentencing reform, and he expressed
interest in my ideas and asked me to come up with additional
ones for his campaign. Shortly thereafter, my former student
Stuart Eisenstadt, brought Carter to Harvard to meet with
some faculty members, me among them. I immediately liked
Jimmy Carter and saw him as a man of integrity and
principle. I signed on to his campaign and worked very hard
for his election. When Newsweek magazine asked his campaign
for the names of people on whom Carter relied for advice, my
name was among those given out. I continued to work for
Carter over the years, most recently I met him in Jerusalem
a year ago, and we briefly discussed the Mid-East. Though I
disagreed with some of his points, I continued to believe
that he was making them out of a deep commitment to
principle and to human rights.

Recent disclosures of Carter's extensive financial
connections to Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi
Arabia, had deeply shaken my belief in his integrity. When I
was first told that he received a monetary reward in the
name of Shiekh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and kept the
money, even after Harvard returned money from the same
source because of its anti-Semitic history, I simply did not
believe it. How could a man of such apparent integrity
enrich himself with dirty money from so dirty a source? And
let there be no mistake about how dirty the Zayed Foundation
is. I know because I was involved, in a small way, in
helping to persuade Harvard University to return more than
$2 million that the financially strapped Divinity School
received from this source. Initially I was reluctant to put
pressure on Harvard to turn back money for the Divinity
School, but then a student at the Divinity School-Rachael
Lea Fish-showed me the facts
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=348172>. They
were staggering. I was amazed that in the twenty-first
century there were still foundations that espoused these
views. The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up-a
think-tank funded by the Shiekh and run by his son- hosted
speakers <
http://www.adl.org/Anti_semitism/zayed_center.asp> who
called Jews "the enemies of all nations," attributed the
assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and
the 9/11 attacks to the United States' own military, and
stated that the Holocaust was a "fable." (They also hosted a
speech by Jimmy Carter.) To its credit, Harvard turned the
money back. To his discredit, Carter did not.

Jimmy Carter was, of course, aware of Harvard's decision,
since it was highly publicized. Yet he kept the money.
Indeed, this is what he said in accepting the funds: "This
award has special significance for me because it is named
for my personal friend, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan."
Carter's personal friend, it turns out, was an unredeemable
anti-Semite and all-around bigot.

In reading Carter's statements, I was reminded of the bad
old Harvard of the nineteen thirties, which continued to
honor Nazi academics after the anti-Semitic policies of
Hitler's government became clear. Harvard of the nineteen
thirties was complicit in evil. I sadly concluded that Jimmy
Carter of the twenty-first century has become complicit in
evil.

The extent of Carter's financial support from, and even
dependence on, dirty money is still not fully known. What we
do know is deeply troubling. Carter and his Center have
accepted millions of dollars from suspect sources, beginning
with the bail-out of the Carter family peanut business in
the late 1970s by BCCI, a now-defunct and virulently
anti-Israeli bank indirectly controlled by the Saudi Royal
family, and among whose principal investors is Carter's
friend, Sheikh Zayed. Agha Hasan Abedi, the founder of the
bank, gave Carter "$500,000 to help the former president
establish his center...[and] more than $10 million to Mr.
Carter's different projects." Carter gladly accepted the
money, though Abedi had called his bank-ostensibly the
source of his funding-"the best way to fight the evil
influence of the Zionists." BCCI isn't the only source:
Saudi King Fahd contributed millions to the Carter Center-
"in 1993 alone...$7.6 million" as have other members of the
Saudi Royal Family. Carter also received a million dollar
pledge from the Saudi-based bin Laden family, as well as a
personal $500,000 environmental award named for Sheikh
Zayed, and paid for by the Prime Minister of the United Arab
Emirates.

It's worth noting that, despite the influx of Saudi money
funding the Carter Center, and despite the Saudi Arabian
government's myriad human rights abuses, the Carter Center's
Human Rights program has no activity whatever in Saudi
Arabia. The Saudis have apparently bought his silence for a
steep price. The bought quality of the Center's activities
becomes even more clear, however, when reviewing the
Center's human rights activities in other countries:
essentially no human rights activities in China or in North
Korea, or in Iran, Iraq, the Sudan, or Syria, but activity
regarding Israel and its alleged abuses, according to the
Center's website

The Carter Center's mission statement claims that "The
Center is nonpartisan and acts as a neutral party in dispute
resolution activities." How can that be, given that its
coffers are full of Arab money, and that its focus is away
from significant Arab abuses and on Israel's far less
serious ones?

No reasonable person can dispute therefore that Jimmy Carter
has been and remains dependent on Arab oil money,
particularly from Saudi Arabia. Does this mean that Carter
has necessarily been influenced in his thinking about the
Middle East by receipt of such enormous amounts of money?
Ask Carter. The entire premise of his criticism of Jewish
influence on American foreign policy is that money talks. It
is Carter-not me-who has made the point that if politicians
receive money from Jewish sources, then they are not free to
decide issues regarding the Middle East for themselves. It
is Carter, not me, who has argued that distinguished
reporters cannot honestly report on the Middle East because
they are being paid by Jewish money. So, by Carter's own
standards, it would be almost economically "suicidal" for
Carter "to espouse a balanced position between Israel and
Palestine."

By Carter's own standards, therefore, his views on the
Middle East must be discounted. It is certainly possible
that he now believes them. Money, particularly large amounts
of money, has a way of persuading people to a particular
position. It would not surprise me if Carter, having
received so much Arab money, is now honestly committed to
their cause. But his failure to disclose the extent of his
financial dependence on Arab money, and the absence of any
self reflection on whether the receipt of this money has
unduly influenced his views, is a form of deception
bordering on corruption.

I have met cigarette lobbyists, who are supported by the
cigarette industry, and who have come to believe honestly
that cigarettes are merely a safe form of adult recreation,
that cigarettes are not addicting and that the cigarette
industry is really trying to persuade children not to smoke.
These people are fooling themselves (or fooling us into
believing that they are fooling themselves) just as Jimmy
Carter is fooling himself (or persuading us to believe that
he is fooling himself).

If money determines political and public views-as Carter
insists "Jewish money" does-then Carter's views on the
Middle East must be deemed to have been influenced by the
vast sums of Arab money he has received. If he who pays the
piper calls the tune, then Carter's off-key tunes have been
called by his Saudi Arabian paymasters. It pains me to say
this, but I now believe that there is no person in American
public life today who has a lower ratio of real to apparent
integrity than Jimmy Carter. The public perception of his
integrity is extraordinarily high. His real integrity, it
now turns out, is extraordinarily low. He is no better than
so many former American politicians who, after leaving
public life, sell themselves to the highest bidder and
become lobbyists for despicable causes. That is now Jimmy
Carter's sad legacy.

Alan Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard. His most
recent book is Preemption: A Knife that Cuts Both Ways
(Norton, 2006)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.