As Easy As It Gets: Fisking Jimmy Carter

There once was a time when I had a reasonably favorable opinion of Jimmy Carter but that opinion is gone now. When he was building homes in Georgia for Homes for Habitat and before he started meddling in foreign affairs, he was rebuilding a positive image of himself. That's far in the past now. This interview with Der Spiegel won't improve his image.

SPIEGEL: You also mentioned the hatred for the United States throughout the Arab world which has ensued as a result of the invasion of Iraq. Given this circumstance, does it come as any surprise that Washington's call for democracy in the Middle East has been discredited?

Carter: No, as a matter of fact, the concerns I exposed have gotten even worse now with the United States supporting and encouraging Israel in its unjustified attack on Lebanon.

Unjustified attack? What kind of bonehead thinks that Israel's attack on Hezbollah is unjustified? It's scary that this idiot ever was president. Let's look at his 'logic':

SPIEGEL: But wasn't Israel the first to get attacked?

Carter: I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza. I do not think that's justified, no.

Mr. Carter would be well advised if he didn't mischaracterize Israel's bombing missions as being a bombing raid of all of Lebanon. I suspect that Carter is such a pacifist that no action would amount to the requisite "legal or moral justification" to suffice him.

A good example of this is Carter's dismantling the U.S. military to such an extent that his failed attempt to rescue the Teheran hostages failed because the helicopters crashed because they weren't properly maintained. Afterwards, it was reported that they didn't have the spare parts to maintain the helicopters.

By the way, it was Carter's lack of action that started the global jihad that we're currently fighting. It was Carter's inaction that didn't dispose of Grand Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. Experts on terrorism cite that as the start of the global jihad movement. That's why I refuse to give any credibility to anything Carter says about foreign policy.

SPIEGEL: But negotiations failed to prevent the burning of Beirut and bombardment of Haifa.

Carter: I'm distressed. But I think that the proposals that have been made in the last few days by the (Lebanese) Prime Minister Siniora are quite reasonable. And I think they should declare an immediate cease-fire on both sides, Hezbollah said they would comply, I hope Israel will comply, and then do the long, slow, tedious negotiation that is necessary to stabilize the northern border of Israel completely. There has to be some exchange of prisoners. There have been successful exchanges of prisoners between Israel and the Palestinians in the past and that's something that can be done right now.

Carter is delusional if he thinks that Hezbollah's willing to eventually come to a lasting ceasefire that guarantees peace for Israel. I'd have better odds of hitting a Powerball jackpot a week for a month than there is that Hezbollah will agree to a lasting peace with Israel. The only way that Israel will have times of peace with Hezbollah and Hamas is if they demolish their military and jihadist capabilities from time to time.

SPIEGEL: One main point of your book is the rather strange coalition between Christian fundamentalists and the Republican Party. How can such a coalition of the pious lead to moral catastrophes like the Iraqi prison scandal in Abu Ghraib and torture in Guantanamo?

Carter: The fundamentalists believe they have a unique relationship with God, and that they and their ideas are God's ideas and God's premises on the particular issue. Therefore, by definition since they are speaking for God anyone who disagrees with them is inherently wrong. And the next step is: Those who disagree with them are inherently inferior, and in extreme cases, as is the case with some fundamentalists around the world, it makes your opponents sub-humans, so that their lives are not significant. Another thing is that a fundamentalist can't bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality. And so this administration, for instance, has a policy of just refusing to talk to someone who is in strong disagreement with them, which is also a radical departure from past history. So these are the kinds of things that cause me concern. And, of course, fundamentalists don't believe they can make mistakes, so when we permit the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, it's just impossible for a fundamentalist to admit that a mistake was made.

Carter's diatribe is offensive to me because it's so bigotted. Shame on him for making such wild-eyed assumptions. As a fundamentalist evangelical Christian, I don't condon any of the actions that Carter ascribes to me. I certainly don't think of my opponents as "sub-human" and I certainly don't think that "fundamentalists don't believe they can make mistakes." Lord knows that I don't agree with that statement.

What is true, however, is that I do believe that it's possible to correctly interpret the Bible's teachings and apply those lessons to my life. I don't believe that it's that difficult to understand clearly what's taught in the Bible. Put another way, what God clearly says shouldn't be minimalized or negotiated upon.

The truth is that Jimmy Carter is a bigger bigot than he thinks Christian fundamentalists are.

SPIEGEL: So how does this proximity to Christian fundamentalism manifest itself politically?

Carter: Unfortunately, after Sept., there was an outburst in America of intense suffering and patriotism, and the Bush administration was very shrewd and effective in painting anyone who disagreed with the policies as unpatriotic or even traitorous. For three years, I'd say, the major news media in our country were complicit in this subservience to the Bush administration out of fear that they would be accused of being disloyal. I think in the last six months or so some of the media have now begun to be critical. But it's a long time coming.

This is proof positive that Carter is completely unhinged. How on God's green earth can he think that "the major news media in our country were complicit in this subservience to the Bush administration"? I'd dare him to cite examples of that. I'd bet good money that he couldn't come up with many examples.

SPIEGEL: Was the whole country in danger of losing its core values?

Carter: For a while, yes. As you possibly know, historically, our country has had the capability of self-correcting our own mistakes. This applied to slavery in 1865, it applied to legal racial segregation a hundred years later or so. It applied to the Joe McCarthy era when anti-communism was in a fearsome phase in the country like terrorism now. So we have an ability to correct ourselves and I believe that nowadays there is a self-correction taking place. In my opinion the election results in Connecticut (Eds: The primary loss of war supporter Senator Joseph Lieberman) were an indication that Americans realized very clearly that we made a mistake in going into Iraq and staying there too long.

Carter should've stuck to pounding nails because he's clearly clueless as to what happened in Connecticut. That will be manifested this November when people other than the lunatic fringe Nutroots vote en masse to 'correct' August's mistake. It'll be further manifested when anti-military fanatic John Murtha is fired that same night in November.

Technorati: Carter , Diplomacy , Ayatollah Khomeini , Christianity , Bigotry , President Bush

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Posted Tuesday, August 15, 2006 5:29 PM

July 2006 Posts

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