Jimmy Carter Redux
In an interview in Plains, Georgia last week, former President Jimmy Carter criticized President G.W. Bush for not applying pressure on Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and for threatening to withdraw the U.S. from the ABM Treaty. We hesitated before commenting on Mr. Carter’s remarks because his anti-Israel animus is widely known, but righteous indignation compels us to go on the record.
In an interview in Plains, Georgia last week, former President Jimmy Carter criticized President G.W. Bush for not applying pressure on Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and for threatening to withdraw the U.S. from the ABM Treaty. We hesitated before commenting on Mr. Carter’s remarks because his anti-Israel animus is widely known, but righteous indignation compels us to go on the record.
It should come as no surprise to those of you who follow JINSA’s policies on the issues that we profoundly disagree with President Carter’s statements. Ballistic missile defense is an indispensable ingredient in U.S. defense policy. And the essence of the problem in the Middle East is the continuing refusal of the Palestinians and other Arabs to recognize the legitimacy of the State of Israel, not Israel’s presence in Gaza.
But our fundamental disagreement with the substance of the former Mr. Carter’s remarks is not our biggest problem. We are thoroughly appalled that a former president would so break with the tradition that former presidents do not criticize sitting presidents on issues that are currently under negotiation by the White House. Being wrong on national security policy is nothing new for Jimmy Carter. He has a history of it. President Carter never wept over spilled Jewish blood. When 20 Turkish Jews were murdered during prayers in an Istanbul synagogue, Mr. Carter of course never said it was a good thing, but he did want Americans to understand Palestinian frustration. He never met an enemy of America that he didn’t understand. Mr. Carter is the man who ridiculed what he called America’s “inordinate fear of communism.” Mr. Carter is the man who developed a Soviet-American proposal for Middle East peace designed to give the Russians a starring role in the region only four years after Anwar Sadat threw them out of Egypt and invited us in. Mr. Carter is the man who thought the “holy man” Ayatollah Khomeini would be better for Iran than the Shah. He is the man who thought the Sandinistas were utopian peasant farmers. He was rewarded with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; the pillaging of Nicaragua by the Sandinista government and the export of communist revolution to other Central American countries; and a hostage crisis in Iran that ended for the Americans under lock and key when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, but which has yet to end for the Iranian people.
Maybe we should look at former President Carter’s remarks in a different light. When he left office, the United States was in geopolitical retreat suffering from the lowest levels of international esteem in recent history while the Soviet juggernaut looked unstoppable even in our own hemisphere. So, maybe 20 years later, it isn’t really such an affront to be criticized by Jimmy Carter.