Posted on 05/24/2007 4:00:28 PM PDT by Graybeard58
Has there ever been a more embarrassing former president than Jimmy Carter? He got carried away again over the weekend when he called the Bush administration's foreign policy "the worst in history." But Mr. Carter is the last person who should be grading presidents, especially when it comes to foreign policy.
Let's recount a few of his blunders:
The unilateral removal of U.S. nuclear weapons from South Korea. The elimination of the nuclear deterrent emboldened the communist North to pursue its own atomic-weapons program. As a former president in 1994, he further abetted the North's nuclear ambition with the Agreed Framework treaty, which gave North Korea political cover to continue its uranium-enrichment program.
The Camp David Accords. Next year marks the 30th anniversary of the treaty between Israel and Egypt that failed to bring the lasting peace Mr. Carter promised. Instead, it led to a succession of treaties requiring Israel to give up more and more of its territory on faithless promises of peace from Arab nations and factions.
The second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. He negotiated the treaty with the Soviet Union in 1979 as part of his strategy to rid the world of nuclear weapons. But the Senate never got a chance to reject SALT II because Mr. Carter withdrew it in the face of ...
... The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He dealt with communist aggression by criticizing the Kremlin and punishing beleaguered U.S. farmers through the cancelation of the Russian Wheat Deal.
The Iran hostage crisis. The crown jewel of his foreign-policy disasters, this first major skirmish in the war against Islamic terrorism brought tough talk from the Carter White House, but also Operation Eagle Claw, a covert rescue mission in which eight U.S. servicemen died in the Iranian desert. It ultimately led to ...
... The Algiers Accords. Two days before he left office, he agreed to a deal under which the Iranians would release the American hostages, but not until they rewrote U.S. foreign policy to require future presidents to butt out of Iran's internal affairs. By the time Mr. Carter left office, radical Muslims were convinced the United States is a paper tiger, a premise they have tested -- the attacks on U.S. embassies in Lebanon, Tanzania and Kenya; numerous plane hijackings and suicide bombings, the first World Trade Center bombing, the USS Cole, 9/11 and the Iraq war, to name a few -- repeatedly and successfully.
If Mr. Carter is looking for the president with the worst foreign-policy record in U.S. history, he need only find the nearest mirror.
Amnesty for Carter NOW!
Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.
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If experience is a guide, Pres Carter is qualified more than almost anybody. If success is a guide, he had a couple, the Egypt-Israel peace treaty being the main one. Aside from that, he ought to call it a day.
A big factor though, is the fact that we had Clinton for 8 long years and Carter only for 4.
While true, they omitted 80% of his other foreign policy disasters.
The abandoning of five nations friendly to the US to communism and tyranny. Especially Iran and Nicaragua.
However, he loved communist dictators, schmoozing up at times with Tito, Ceaucescu, Zia ul-Haq, Castro, and Kim Jong Il.
It’s hard to tell when he became a bitter anti-Semite, but his entire relations with Israel will have to be re-examined in the light of his pernicious bigotry.
And boy, did he show the Soviet Union by boycotting the Olympics when they invaded Afghanistan.
He even falls behind Bill Clinton, who had *no* foreign policy, because Carter’s foreign policy was inevitably wrong.
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