In my opinion, Jimmy Carter was the worst President of the 20th century. Ok, so we survived 4 years of economic destruction under his leadership and the socialist agenda of the Democratic Congress in the late 70's and all would be forgiven if the man would just slip gracefully into the night farming peanuts or building houses for the poor (which the local gavernments later seize for back-taxes). But the man will not go away. He won a nobel peace prize (I don't capitalize because I think it's become a farce) for giving away nuclear weapons technology to North Korea and now he goes around bad mouthing America for rolling up our sleevs and trying to fix the mess that he and his bot Clinton created during the 90's. What's worse, he and slick Willie seem to be competing for who can bad-mouth us better. We all know that Clinton will say anything to anyone to get an applause, but at what cost to our future?
From Investors Business Daily:
Posted 11/18/2005
Leadership: It's never held up perfectly, but one of our traditions restrains ex-presidents from criticizing sitting successors. A sensible tradition, especially in war. So why did Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton fail the lesson?
On one level the tradition evolved from civic grace. Having exited the White House, onetime occupants had exhausted, over four or eight years, their chance to execute the policies they'd beforehand formulated, refined, compromised and fashioned into campaign platforms. Post-presidential years were to be surrendered to the judgment of history.
A more critical restraint — again, as an unwritten code — descends on ex-presidents when the issue is foreign policy, especially in wartime or acutely dangerous times. If a figure of such political stature obstructs the current commander in chief's course, he jeopardizes national security and places our fighting forces' lives at risk.
Was it an unseemly breach for Bill Clinton — whom the ridiculous lords of Esquire magazine have dubbed the "most influential man in the world" — to travel to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to tell Arab students that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a "big mistake"?
Absolutely. Dubai may be one of Islam's more progressive oases, but surely Clinton realized Al-Jazeera, the Arab propaganda network, would broadcast his remarks to al-Qaida's breeding grounds.
And never mind the predictable Clintonian parsing. Here's what our 42nd president said: "It was a big mistake. The American government made several errors . . . one of which is how easy it would be to get rid of Saddam and how hard it would be to unite the country."
Hello? In fact, our military's mission to overthrow dictator Saddam Hussein was achieved with such speed, the anti-war elements in Clinton's party and the media were dumbfounded. And Iraq's Shiite and Sunni populations are uniting under a democratic constitution, whereas Clinton's pals said it could never be done.
Does Clinton know he's undermining the Bush administration's counterterrorism policy? You can bet on it. His long-cultivated Bad Boy routine has gone into too many acts. It's time for somebody, perhaps his presidential-aspirant spouse, to bring the curtain down.
Nor does civic grace fall naturally on Jimmy Carter's shoulders. Our 39th commander in chief, on whose watch the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, communist provocateurs created chaos in Africa and Latin America, and Islamo-fascists seized the government of Iran, is on a book tour blasting Bush's foreign policy.
In "Our Endangered Values," Carter suits up his well-known churchianity to go into battle against the political conservatism he sees as having taken over since, well, voters overwhelmingly repudiated his failed administration in 1980. We keep out of theological debates on this page, but it's impossible to ignore the holier-than-thou spirit of Carter's thoroughly politicized, and therefore toxic, religion.
Carter happened to be booming his book on NBC's "Today Show" on the morning The Washington Post broke the news of America's secret overseas prison network for terrorists. Without proof, and without admonishing the newspaper for its possible security breach, he told Matt Lauer that Americans were torturing terrorists in these undisclosed cells.
Did he hand a propaganda arms cache to our enemies? Of course, and he probably knew it. He then complained the administration had overturned American values by launching a "pre-emptive" war.
No, it might be said, Carter doesn't believe in proactive defense. But as Clinton's emissary, he helped arm the North Koreans, one of the world's foremost menaces, with nuclear materials. Disarming Pyongyang remains one of the most vexing problems for the current administration.
Endangered values, anyone? There is something low and reprehensible about this kind of post-presidential behavior. It's telling that Carter chose the squish word "values." Values are subjective, enabling the most mendacious and power-driven to dance around them. What we should nurture are moral principles, which have consequences akin to physical law.
In reasserting Western principles against those who put them under siege, the Bush administration gets the difference. Carter and Clinton manifestly do not. And Gerald Ford, wherever you are, we hope you're having a wonderful day.
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