[lbryce]

The Carter administration did score a major achievement as a result of the Israel-Egypt peace accord. Your mitigation of the Carter administration would have merited some credibility had it not been for the one single issue, event on which the Carter presidency is seen as a dismal failure, one of the worst in modern history; the taking of American hostages by Iran.

It is this issue more than anything else that demonstrated the manner in which President Carter was woefully unqualified. unfit to serve. The Iran hostage crisis, the event on which his presidency is seen as the abominable failure it was, was one in which President Carter had only himself to blame for events turning out the way they did.

[AzaleaCity5691]

I alluded to that somewhere when I mentioned him not backing the Shah.

If the Shah had stayed in power the hostages would not have been taken and there would not have been ribbons on trees across the country.

That was his big foreign policy mistake and if you’ve ever ready anything about it you know that there was a fierce debate during the Iranian Revolution of whether or not to push for a military crackdown or to push the Shah aside and try to work with the revolutionaries. Brezinski wanted the crackdown. Vance wanted the Shah to step aside. Vance won.

If Brezinski had prevailed the hostages wouldn’t have been taken and we would be inhabiting a far different world today.