Wednesday, May 23, 2007

A response to a defender of President Peanut Farmer

One of my readers (YAY! I have actual, living readers who aren't family members!!) offered a comment in defense of President Peanut Farmer. Here was my response, which I hope is not too strident:

Here is the problem I have with what President Carter has been saying and doing: There has been a longstanding political tradition in this country that when it comes to foreign policy, the country needs to speak with one voice, which is that of the sitting President. This tradition goes back years, and while I can't remember the name of the Senator who made the comment, I can say that it was a Democratic Senator from the State of Washington who said "our politics stop at the shoreline".

What President Carter has done (and what Nancy Pelosi has done with her ill-advised visit to Syria) is to throw that "single voice" theory out the window. It creates confusion, and undermines not only the authority of the sitting President but of all of those who will follow him.Let's put it this way: Say that Hillary Clinton wins the 2008 Presidential Election (a very real possibility), and she pushes for U.S. military involvement in Darfur (something that I would support, btw). How do you think it would work if former President George H.W. Bush (or the current President Bush) went overseas and made speeches or gave interviews which decried the move? I'd be willing to bet that Democrats would be up in arms about it.

The second problem I have with this whole "affair" is that the source of the criticism is so lacking in credibility. Jimmy Carter ran the singlemost inept administration this country has ever seen. On his watch, Iran fell into the hands of Islamic fascists (with the tacit approval of the Carter Administration, which did nothing to back up the Shah, who had been a longtime ally of the U.S.). Twenty-eight years later, they are still there, creating havoc in the region, and worse yet, they are now looking to become a nuclear power.That regime is also directly responsible for the deaths of many, many Americans (see 1983, Iranian-funded and supplied Hezbollah attack on Marine Barracks in Beirut). As well, the seizure of the U.S. Embassy was a direct attack on U.S. soil, and President Carter, other than a badly-planned and ill-thought out helicopter attack, did NOTHING.

That's just Iran. Carter also sent mixed signals to the Soviets prior to their invasion of Afghanistan, leading the USSR to believe that there would be no repercussions to it if it invaded. An strong U.S. stand before the invasion (which could have been done privately, and which thus would have allowed the USSR to save face) may very well have prevented the invasion from ever happening, as well as the whole chain of events that followed (Soviets invade, Mujaheddin fight them, Soviets become involved in their very own "quagmire", Osama Bin Laden becomes radicalized by what he sees and goes there to fight, he befriends a young Muslim cleric by the name of Mullah Omar who eventually leads a radical movement which takes over the country and gives sanctuary to Bin Laden's nascent al Qaeda terrorist movement, and we all know what happened after that).

Domestically, Jimmy Carter presided over the worst economic period in this country in the Twentieth Century. Under his "watch", we had something called Stagflation (stagnant economic growth combined with inflation). Interest rates were through the roof.All in all, Jimmy Carter ranks as by far the worst President of my lifetime. He has no authority whatsoever to comment on anything any of his successors (or predecessors) did.

BHG

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