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It's Jimmy Carter again
May 9, 2008, 12:05 AM
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While it may seem a cop-out for me to write a column that is almost entirely someone else's words, I cannot help myself. Not in this case, for this problem we seem to face - all too often for my taste - keeps coming back to haunt us.
It wasn't enough that we put up with Jimmy Carter - our peanut farmer, former president, elder statement - during the 1970s. He keeps popping up to cause havoc and has all thinking citizens shaking their heads in disbelief. Even Democrats, folks, even them.
Let's face it, we don't always put into off ice those most qualified, and I sometimes wonder if we shouldn't have some kind of test for the most important job in the entire world, instead of allowing the citizens to vote in an election. All too often we haven't been very smart in our selections, and - unfortunately - we haven't always had a lot of "smart people" from which to chose. When this happens, we get a "Jimmy."
The "someone else's words" are from Mortimer B. Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of the U.S. News & World Report, in its April 28/May 5 issue.
Mr. Zuckerman begins with, "There he goes again! Former President Jimmy Carter, acting out his stubborn, self-righteous moralism and his stunning vanity, persists in legitimizing terrorism. How else can the Middle East see Carter's meeting in Syria with Khaled Mashaal, the leader of Hamas? This man Mashaal is responsible for dozens of deadly suicide bombings and thousands of mortar and rocket attacks that have killed more than 250 Israelis, not to speak of the violent takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas last June, which undercut newly revived efforts by Israel and the Palestinians to stroke a final peace deal. And, oh, yes, several of Mashaal's victims have been Americans."
Included in Mr. Zuckerman's article is the statement that Jimmy said that since August 2004, Hamas has not committed a single act of terrorism that cost an Israeli life. Not true.
Hamas itself has claimed responsibility for killing 16 people and wounding 100 in August 2004 with the suicide bombings of two city buses, an attack in September of that year when two preschool children were killed and another that killed six civilians. The list goes on.
The article continues: "Something has gone badly wrong with the always-erratic Jimmy Carter. At Camp David, he effected the rapprochement between Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin that led to real progress. Good work. But then he abandoned the shah of Iran by sending senior American military personnel to restrain the shah's resistance to Ayatollah Khomeini's radical uprising in 1979.
"It was poetic justice that the islamic revolution and hostage taking destroyed Carter's chances of a second term, but that's a small blessing for U.S. now as we cope with a worldwide Iranian-backed Shiite terrorist regime that is learning how to make nuclear weapons."
It continues: "Carter has a blind spot about terrorism. Even his history of Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a departure from reality. He asserts that the initial violence occurred when 'Jewish militants' attacked Arabs in 1939. He ignores the fact that Arabs launched terrorism against unarmed Jews in 1920, 1921, 1929, and 1936 to 1939, murdering hundreds of Jewish civilians. In 1929, the grand mufti of Jerusalem ordered the slaughter of more than a hundred rabbis, students and others whose ancestors had lived in Hebron for millenniums. Nor will you hear him mention the long history of Palestinian terrorism, such as the Munich massacre and plane hijackings and other atrocities originated by Yasser Arafat."
There was more; I can't get it all in just one column. But he adds that "If only Carter's opinions could be dismissed as hot air from a politician losing the limelight. But he does real damage."
It continues: "The peace process is difficult enough without Carter's lies."
The last paragraph of Mr. Zuckerman's article, he states: "A senior foreign policy official summed it all up: 'Carter is an idiot savant,' he said with a sigh. "But hold the savant!"
I can't help it, folks, I am sitting here shaking my head at the idiocy of this man and wondering why there isn't a way to get Jimmy to just stay home and take care of something he knows how to do: grow peanuts.
- Edna Van Leuven is a
resident of Churchill County.
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