Posted on 05/12/2002 4:10:21 PM PDT by kattracks
As private citizen Jimmy Carter takes the Castro five-day tour of Cuba, former-president watchers cringe in anticipation of what new controversial anecdotes, criticisms, or nuggets of Carter wisdom will emerge from the unprecedented mission.Carter arrived in communist-run Cuba on Sunday, hoping to partially defuse the decades long antagonism between the United States and the dictatorship.
On Monday, Carter will tour Cuba’s Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. The center was recently targeted by the Bush administration for allegedly conducting research threatening to U.S. national security. On Tuesday, Carter will make a speech at the University of Havana, which -- breaking with the norm -- will be broadcast to the public.
Pundits forecast that Carter’s calls for ending the embargo against the island nation will be ignored by the administration, which hopes only that the opinionated former statesman causes no embarrassment.
These same pundits look to a wealth of Carter history of inserting himself into world affairs.
Recent case in point: Carter’s criticism of Bush’s infamous "axis of evil” remark.
"I think it will take years before we can repair the damage done by that statement,” Carter said, calling the statement "overly simplistic and counterproductive.”
Infamous Anecdote
Perhaps the most infamous Carter anecdote occurred in the weeks and months preceding the Gulf War. Just as the administration was scrambling to assemble a coalition against Iraq, Carter fired off a missive to members of the UN Security Council, suggesting they block the administration’s move.
Adding what many saw as insult to injury, after the Gulf War Carter flew to Riyadh to restore Saudi funding to Yasser Arafat, who was on the outs for supporting Saddam Hussein.
There appears to be little that the former president considers out of bounds for fair comment. He has lambasted Bush for not muscling Israel out of the Gaza Strip, for nixing the anti-ballistic missile treaty, and for advocating the missile defense shield.
Carter described the latter as a "technologically ridiculous” notion that would "re-escalate the nuclear arms race.”
"I have been disappointed in almost everything he [Bush] has done,” Carter once confided to the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.
Carter’s 1997 op-ed piece entitled "It’s Wrong to Demonize China,” suggested that freedom of religion had come to China -- causing chagrin to activists around the world.
In hot-spot Haiti, Carter empathized with that country’s dictator confiding that he was "ashamed of what my country has done to your country.” Citizen Carter has also gone on record in praise of Syria’s late leader Assad, reputed murderer of at least 20,000 in Hama
Compliments Dictator
After leaving office, Carter has also complimented N. Korean dictator Kim Il Sung, saying, "I find him to be vigorous, intelligent…and in charge of the decisions about this country.” e ruler). He added, "I don’t see that they are an outlaw nation.”
In 1984, when the Reagan administration was pressuring Nicaragua’s dictator to give democracy a chance, Carter pushed for Habitat for Humanity to construct in that country, advising, "We want the folks down there to know that some American Christians love them and that we don’t all hate them.”
But it has been Carter’s recent meddling in the Middle East that has cause the worst rub. "The intifada exposed the injustice Palestinians suffered, just like Bull Connor’s mad dogs in Birmingham,” he announced.
Carter has pasted Israeli prime minister Arial Sharon, declaring him an international outlaw whose objective is to "establish Israeli settlements as widely as possible throughout occupied territories and to deny Palestinians a cohesive political existence.”
Free Cuba activists are nervous of what mischief the volatile Carter will wreak in Havana as he stalwartly moves forward to "share ideas on how to improve the relationship between the United States and Cuba.”
For example, Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, hopes that Carter pitches democracy to Fidel, presses for human rights and visits with dissidents in the jail – and stays away from patching relations with the U.S.
Garcia and other dissidents want Castro to continue to feel the U.S. pressure and hopefully collapse under the weight.
Some Cuba watchers already detect a crack in the Castro foundation. Last Friday, Cuba’s growing dissident movement filed an unprecedented petition with 11,020 signatures, calling for a national referendum to reform the one-party system.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
What a loser!
Carter is arguably our worst president.
I also strongly oppose the trade embargo. Open the floodgates of American tourism. Castro will be living in exile in a seafront palace in Spain or France within 2 years.
Have you ever seen The National Security Archive and/or The Digital National Security Archive?
Here's a link to their Cuba Documentation Project.
They have declassified documents regarding The ULTRASENSITIVE Bay of Pigs, Kennedy and Castro: The Secret Quest for Accommodation, The Death of Che Guevara: Declassified, and Béisbol Diplomacy with Cuba.
quote:
The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
I can see Noriega anf Fidel on the same cell block. Once Fidel is convicted and imprisoned in a federal maximum security prison. there will be constant pressure from lefties and America-haters all over the world to free him. And once Fidel is in prison, Jimmy's disgrace and his years of America-hating might be over.
When that happens, I'll invest in peanut futures, or some good swampland.
The canal built with American ingenuity and blood (where the French failed) this peanut pygmy gave away.
Our Taiwan allies he betrayed while embracing PRC pigs.
Iran with its oil and our ally the Shah he allowed to be raped by the Islamonazis who came to kill us 9/11 with his blessing.
His lips are chapped from kissing dictator butt.
His praise of Kim Il Sung makes Ford's Eastern Europe remark innocent by comparison.
Carter, you are crap. Will you call Fidel on the 100,000 innocents he killed?
Jimmuh, you cow pie, will you demand justice for Fidel sending Migs to murder Brothers to the Rescue?
Peanut-Brain, will you seek out the tens of thousands of political prisoners routinely beaten and starved?
This is a traitor giving aid and comfort to our enemies, in more than an overt act witnessed by two persons.
He should be retired in Leavenworth.
"Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both."
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