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Jimmy Carter: Our Worst Ex-President
by Joshua Muravchek, Commentary

A long and quite excellent article. I'll just excerpt a couple of paragraphs that make one point about ex-President Peanut which I think is significant, but underappreciated:

The effect was exacerbated by one of Carter’s personality tics, strange in a man who boasted so often of his honesty: a compulsion to engage in flattery. At times, this could manifest itself toward a rightist ally like the Shah of Iran. Just months before the outbreak of the revolution that culminated in his toppling, Carter declared in a toast that Iran was an “island of stability” thanks to the “love which your people give you.” But the impulse expressed itself most strongly toward leftist strongmen. Carter hailed Yugoslav dictator Josip Tito as “a man who believes in human rights” and as a “great and courageous leader” who “has led his people and protected their freedom almost for the last forty years.” Visiting Poland, then ruled by the Stalinist hack Edward Gierek, he offered a toast to its “enlightened leaders” and declared that “our concept of human rights is preserved in Poland . . . much better than other European nations with which I am familiar.” He outdid himself in receiving Romania’s iron-fisted ruler, Nicolae Ceausescu, enthusing:

Our goals are the same, to have a just system of economics and politics, to let the people of the world share in growth, in peace, in personal freedom, and in the benefits to be derived from the proper utilization of natural resources. We believe in enhancing human rights. We believe that we should enhance, as independent nations, the freedom of our own people.

Carter’s weakness for dictators and his courtship of America’s enemies not only clouded his human-rights policy, it also contributed to a flaccid approach to security issues, thus adding momentum to America’s strategic decline following defeat in Vietnam. In several corners of Africa, Asia, and the Western hemisphere, Communist or other radical regimes took power, spearheaded by revolutions in Iran and Nicaragua. . . .

His penchant for flattery later got us all in even worse trouble:

Accommodating contrary views was not Carter’s problem, at least when it came to the North Koreans. The real obstacle, as he saw it, was President Clinton’s strong declaratory stance against North Korean nuclear weapons, which he believed was counterproductive. Still worse was the stance of IAEA chief Hans Blix, who was insisting on upholding the rules of the NPT and on getting Pyongyang to account for plutonium it might have already recovered. To overcome these irritants, which only played into the hands of “hard-liners” in North Korea, Carter determined “to build a personal relationship involving trust” with Kim Il Sung.

This he did by telling Kim it was “tragic” that the IAEA had “brought to the UN Security Council a report saying that North Korea has violated its agreements.” Then he added, in a direct attack on U.S. policy, “I think this sanctions effort is a serious mistake.” Having thus built trust, he went on to assure Kim that “The U.S. desires to live in peace and harmony with North Korea. We don’t believe our different government systems should be an obstacle to full cooperation and friendship.”

For Carter, indeed, there appears to have been a solid basis for such friendship. Far from being the hive of fear and deprivation that other visitors had described—and from which masses had fled illegally into China at great peril—North Korea was just like home. He found the shops in Pyongyang to be similar to the “Wal-Mart in Americus, Georgia,” and the neon lights of the capital reminded him of Times Square. Not only were the people “friendly and open,” but the regime reflected their popular will, which he discovered to be “homogeneous.”

That is precisely why, he later explained in a press conference, he was so opposed to sanctions. For the North Korean people would look upon them as a

personal insult to their so-called Great Leader, branding him as a liar and a criminal. This is something . . . which it would be impossible for them to accept. I thought this before I went to North Korea and that’s why I went. Now after observing their psyche and their societal structure and the reverence with which they look upon their leader, I’m even more convinced.

In short order, Carter and Kim struck a deal. . . .
Posted by: Mike 2007-02-01
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=179315