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Ex-President
By Todd A. Carges
Fri Apr 25, 2008, 02:01 PM EDT
Not content with being the worst President in U.S. History, Jimmy Carter won't rest until he is the worst ex-President in U.S. History. It's certainly not a gimme with Bill Clinton on the loose, but after this past week, Carter widened his lead.
Before we get to his latest transgression, let's just take a second to review his four years in office: weak economy, 10% inflation, skyrocketing gas prices, 10% unemployment, disastrous foreign policy, hostage crises, and a bizarre affection for brutal dictators like Philippine dictator Fernando Marcos, Pakistani General Zia al Huq and Saudi King Faud.
Then, as if all that wasn't enough, in 1979, he pulled American support from the pro-Western Shah of Iran because of "human rights" violations.
This lead to a violent over throw of the Shah by the radical Islamic Imam Ayatollah Khomeini who immediately established a theocratic Islamic republic and then executed 20,000 pro-western Iranians by firing squad.
Iran became a strong hold of radical Islam and destabilized the entire middle east. One of Khomeini's henchman was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His name should sound familiar. As the current head of Iran, he's working hard to develop nuclear weapons to destroy Israel…and us.
Since, leaving office, Carter has similarly embarrassed himself by repeatedly reaching out to brutal dictators that oppose American foreign policy and using his former office to grant legitimacy to their crimes.
In 1994, at the behest of the Clinton Administration, Carter was sent to negotiate a non-proliferation treaty with North Korea. He worked out a solid agreement that would provide North Korea with two nuclear reactors and a substantial amount of oil in exchange for them not using the reactors to produce nuclear weapons. Please read that again, it was Carter (with Clinton's authority) who provided North Korea with nuclear capability. Not to worry though, Jimmy assured us that his friend Kim Jong Il would never negotiate in bad faith. Well, it only took 4 years for North Korea to build and fire a test missile over Japan and refuse to allow U.S. Inspectors in to see what was happening. The rest is history.
In 2002, Carter visited Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, he declared that Castro had no bio-weapons programs because he didn't see them and because Castro told him so. Then he praised Cuba's economic and political liberalization. Shortly thereafter, Castro outlawed the very movement Carter praised and violently rounded up and imprisoned dozens of dissidents.
In 2004, despicable Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez stole his country's "election." Even though exit polls clearly showed that Chavez suffered a staggering defeat, the final tally gave Chavez a lopsided victory. When the Venezuelan people and the rest of the free world cried out, Carter stood up and certified Chavez' victory as"fair and square." Chavez has of course proceeded to call President Bush "the devil" in front of the United Nations and labeled the U.S. Attack on the Taliban as "fighting terrorism with terrorism." Do you see the trend here? Dictators love the gullible Carter.
Just invite him to your palace, give him some food, lie to him about how you treat your people and then sit back and watch as he tells the world how lovable you are. This begs the question, is Carter maliciously stupid or stupidly malicious.
Before you answer that, let's look at his latest transgression. Last week, Carter visited and embraced Nassar Shaer, a senior Hamas official. In case you didn't know, the United States government has labeled Hamas as one of the foremost terrorist organizations in the world. Carter hugged him.
Then, as if that wasn't enough, he visited and laid flowers on the grave of Yasser Arafat, one of the most vicious terrorists the world has ever known. Carter praised Arafat's "historic role in serving his people's cause" and called him a "dear friend." As leader of the PLO, Arafat used children as suicide bombers, ordered masked gunman to raid classrooms and fire on Israeli school children and declared that "peace for us means the destruction of Israel." Some friend, huh. No one wanted Carter to visit Hamas, not Israel, not the new Palestinian Authority, and certainly not the U.S. Only Hamas benefited from this trip. See a pattern here?
Carter is a national embarrassment. His chronic support of dictatorial and terrorist regimes hinders American foreign policy and enables ours enemies to claim legitimacy in the world press. Carter is consistently anti-America, anti-Israel, and anti-intelligent. If his actions weren't so dangerous, they'd be funny. Ex-president Carter, the joke that just won't go away.
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