Posted on 04/20/2006 5:41:33 AM PDT by Dark Skies
Everybody’s playing the blame game these days. The current target is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who seems to be standing in for President Bush – the man who his enemies say is responsible for everything that’s gone wrong since the Biblical flood. (“Bush lied about the need to build an ark.”)
South of our borders we have a nut job running oil-rich Venezuela and threatening to do all kinds of nasty things to us. In North Korea we have another nut job building nukes and rattling sabers, and in Iran there’s still another whacked-out leader threatening to blow Israel off the map, for starters.
Believe me, Rummy had nothing to do with any of that. Nor did George Bush. If you’re looking for someone to point the finger at, look no further than James Earl Carter. Every one of these problems can be laid at the door of the Georgia peanut farmer and self-anointed evangelist for world peace, understanding, goodwill, and promoter of universal love-ins with dictators who hate us.
Let’s begin with Iran, a boiling cauldron of hatred for everything associated with Western civilization. Recall that when Jimmah took office Iran was ruled by a strong ally of the United States, the Shah. Like most Middle Eastern potentates, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, ruled with an iron hand. Under him, Iran was not the kind of democracy we’re now promoting for the Middle East.
The Shah, however, was also the staunch friend and ally of the United States. He saw to it that the oil kept flowing in our direction, and kept his military in good-enough shape to protect our interests in the area.
But the Shah somehow offended Brother Carter’s exalted view of the inherent goodness of a mankind freed from the strictures imposed by dictatorial rules. With a wink and a nod, he arranged to have Pahlavi replaced by an exiled mullah - the Ayatollah Khomeini - who in Carter’s view would be a moderate leader who would democratize Iran.
What Carter got for us was a Muslim fanatic seething with hatred for everything Western, who without blinking an eye spat on our national sovereignty when he took over the United States embassy in Tehran and held 52 American hostages for 444 days, until the U.S. came to its senses and elected my dad Ronald Reagan to replace the hapless Jimmy Carter.
Thanks to Carter, Iran today constitutes a grave threat to the United States and to world peace. He allowed the creation of an Islamic Republic bent on imposing the most repressive form of Islam on the entire world.
Then we can turn to Venezuela, now locked in the grip of a Castro-clone and fervent communist Hugo Chavez, who is creating a heavily armed communist dictatorship on our southern doorstep. When Chavez faced a recall election Cater was on hand to monitor the election, which turned out to be rigged to elect Chavez from the very start. Despite overwhelming evidence that the Chavez victory was the result of rampant vote fraud, Mr. Carter put his stamp of approval on it, declaring it to have been fair and honest. Carter kept Chavez in office.
In 1994, when Bill Clinton was facing down North Korea’s Kim Il-Sung, father of current dictator Kim Jong-Il, he sent Carter to strike a deal on his development of nuclear technology. Speaking of the dying murderous dictator, Carter said he found him "vigorous, intelligent, surprisingly well-informed about the technical issues, and in charge of the decisions about this country," and added, “I don’t see the [North Koreans] are an outlaw nation."
The deal Carter made allowed the North Koreans to work behind the scenes to build nuclear weapons which now threaten world peace. When he came back from North Korea he told CNN’s Judy Woodruff, “I think it's all roses now.... “
I agree with Jack Kinsella who once wrote in the Omega Letter Daily Intelligence Digest that “Jimmy Carter holds the hands-down record for being the worst ex-president the United States has ever known. His post-presidential meddling in foreign affairs has cost America dearly, both in terms of international credibility and international prestige.”
I am reading "The Real Jimmy Carter" by Stephen Heyward right now. Carter, in my opinion, is by far the worst president the United States has ever had. I cannot find a single thing he did as president that didn't immediately turn to complete and utter crap. And his track record since then reflects the same - Palestine, Venezuela, Haiti, North Korea...."Jimmy Carter" should be a synonym for "complete and utter failure".
But.....
If it wasn't for Carter's immense ineptitude, we wouldn't have had the Great Communicator for 8 years.
In his 1982 presidential memoir, Carter cited as his biggest mistake "allowing Ronald Reagan to become President of the United States."
As much as I despise Clinton, gotta admit: Carter was WORSE.
While I agree that Carter was one of the worst presidents in my lifetime what separates Carter from the rest is that he is clearly the worst ex-president in the history of the country.
bttt
I agree, but I don't think we've gotten the bill for the Clinton years, yet.....
"worst ex-president" ...
much worse than that, my friend.
Think of all the damage wrought by declared enemies of our Nation - the John Walkers and other traitors, from both within and without - and compare that damage to the effects of Carter's decisions and influence.
IMHO, Jimmy Carter was - and continues to be - the Manchurian Candidate.
Bingo!
I remember it being said before the 1980 election that the only reason to vote for Carter was that if he won, he would never be eligible for the Presidency again.
Carter may have been the worst president this country ever had, but I also think he gets an unfair rap on some key issues. Iran is one of them. Our current problems with Iran didn't begin in 1979, but all the way back in 1953 when the Eisenhower administration helped the British topple the duly-elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh and install the Shah as a puppet government. The Iranian uprising in 1979 was pretty much a natural backlash against the excesses of the Shah's regime, and the U.S. really has nobody to blame but ourselves for what has transpired in the old Persian empire over the last 50 years.
LBJ was even worse.
Calling him an utter failure gives him too much credit, because it indicates mere incompetence. He is far worse than that. His actions are deliberate malice toward his own country and its citizens. He consistently does the opposite of what is right. Evil.
ping for later reading
Clinton's errors seem mostly due to inattention and a focus on his own political fortunes. Carter seems to have done his stupid, dangerous crap on purpose.
install the Shah as a puppet government""
Say what you want about the Shah of Iran, but:
He kept numerous tribes in line, for better or worse.
He was building schools and educating Iran--both boys and girls- and realized they needed education to deal with the whole world, not just their tribal areas.
Iran was on track to have a modern, educated work force until Carter stepped in and destroyed the Shah's chances to bring this to fruition.
Today, Iran is years behind the rest of the world, and instead of just isolating themselves and living in the 7th century, they are trying to force the rest of us into the same century.
I will NEVER be able to say anything kind about Carter. I would slap him silly if he ever showed up near my property.
It is beyond my comprehension that a man who could barely be successful growing peanuts could be voted President. He was beyond naive. I don't know a proper word for it, but he is now well into the territory of treasonous, IMO.
How ironic -- you could pretty much say the same things about Saddam Hussein, too.
Jimmah must have been shocked to his core in seeing the outpouring of respect and love for Reagan at his funeral.
Nah- they usually don't see things that they don't want to see.
Yeah, but most of us won't live long enough to see the records that have been sealed regarding the exploits of LBJ, which, I believe, will show just exactly how corrupt he really was.....until then, Carter is worst in my book.
Someone said that Mis' Lillian really wanted son Billy to run for president, but she wasn't sure Jimma was smart enough to run the gas station.
And don't forget that it was Jimmah who gave the Panama canal away.
And I will never forget the Christmas when there were no outdoor lights thanks to Carter.
And, he was NOT a nuclear scientist as the Dems claimed.
"“Jimmy Carter holds the hands-down record for being the worst ex-president the United States has ever known. "
The worst President, Period!
Read Barr McClellan's book "BLOOD, MONEY, AND POWER" for the real picture of LBJ!
Carter completed this process, but let's not give Gerald Ford a free pass here. During his tenure as President, Ford significantly advanced the negotiations to cede away the Canal Zone, laying the foundation for what ultimately happened under Carter. Ford drew heavy criticism from Ronald Reagan during the 1976 primaries for his role in this.
I don't dispute that, but that doesn't necessarily mean the U.S. had to be involved. There was a good chance that he would have been toppled by opposition elements in Iran anyway -- which would have allowed the U.S. to operate at arm's length with Iran as far as their internal conflicts were concerned.
If nothing else, the U.S. involvement in Iran over the last 50 years has made it very difficult for us to establish any credibility in the Middle East whenever some moron from Washington stand up and makes silly, utopian statements about "establishing freedom and democracy" as part of U.S. foreign policy.
Eight hundred? Or eight thousand?
The Dow first hit 1000 in 1968, then again in 1972 and not again until 1982.
Yeah. It would have been much better if Carter would have done some lusting in the oval Office instead of just in his heart.
What WAS he thinking?
21% interest rates
I was a framming carpenter working in Fort Wayne,IN when the prime hit 13%. The was the end of that job. For the next few years, every time I drove through Chicago, there was not a construction crane in site.
The only thing I credit Carter with was ruining the ecconomy so bad that I decided to go to college and stuck with it untill I graduated. By then Reagan was president!
"Are you better off now than you were 28 years ago?"
It seems everybody thinks Carter was a worse President than Clinton. While Carter may have been the second or third worst Clinton still takes the cake. Remember the FBI files, the punitive IRS audits, the perjury, the dirty tricks like killing Kathleen Willy's cat, the Vince Foster pseudo-investigation, the Chinese contribtions exchange for nuclear secrets, the Civil Case fixing, the Easter Lewinsky...
Clinton never gave us that sinking feeling of knowing that we were no longer the great nation we used to be, that was associated with the Carter years. It was a very depressing time in our history. I still watching Columbia take off after Reagan got in office. My heart soared right along with it. We were back on our feet.
In 1994, when Bill Clinton was facing down North Korea’s Kim Il-Sung, father of current dictator Kim Jong-Il, he sent Carter to strike a deal on his development of nuclear technology.
Carter went on his own and really screwed things up. Klinton was a joke as well, basically giving North Korea the ability to go nuclear, but Klinton never "sent" Carter.
Furthermore, Jimmy Carter did not want Khomeini installed, but was dangerously ignorant not to support the Shah or even grant him amnesty into the US, especially when the Shah needed medical attention.
South of our borders we have a nut job running oil-rich Venezuela and threatening to do all kinds of nasty things to us. In North Korea we have another nut job building nukes and rattling sabers, and in Iran there’s still another whacked-out leader threatening to blow Israel off the map, for starters.
Believe me, Rummy had nothing to do with any of that. Nor did George Bush."
Sometimes when I look at my children I say to myself, "Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin."
Thanks to George 76 for this great post.
"I agree, but I don't think we've gotten the bill for the Clinton years, yet....."
I don't agree 100%. The bill arrived with the first WTC bombing in 1993, thence through numerous attacks secondary to Clinton's fecklessness, culminating in the September 11, 2001 islamic attacks. Will things get worse? Who's to say, but I'd say we have so far paid dearly for the "Clinton Years".
Jimmy Carter damaged the United States during his Presidency with long lasting consequences. Amazingly, Jimmy Carter contiues to damage the United States during his ex-Presidency. Jimmy Carter was truely the worst man ever elected President of the United States of America.
However, Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Volkler Chairman of the Federal Reserve whereupon the Chairman defeated inflation, stagflation, and economic malaise through monetary policy. I am sure Jimmy Carter regrets the appointment.
You got that right. The only thing I'd want to do on ibn Qarter's grave is take a good long leak on it. The man is not only a contemptible boob, he is a vile, wicked little man.
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