As Jimmy Carter is laid to rest at the age of 100, it is time to remember that, thanks to the Georgia Democrat (and peanut farmer), the United States, along with the rest of the planet, has suffered for the past 45 years from the locofocos' (the Democrats') naïve foreign policy, that is, their traditional "be kind and understanding to our enemies, be tough on our friends" approach to foreign affairs. (After all, in the Far Left's Fairy Tale View of Foreign Policy, the only true enemy of the U.S. and of the rest of the world are America's dastardly Republicans…)
Like government itself, the party of government (at the time, the Carter administration) created a problem, here internationally, where none existed before, to be resolved — by government — in the future.
Like the Russian Revolution, the Cuban Revolution (how much better was JFK in the White House?), the Nicaraguan Revolution (also the result of a Carter policy, see details in the blockquote below), and innumerable other revolutions, the Iranian Revolution made the country a far worse place, both for its own citizens and for the international community at large.
In spite of Carter achievements, such as, arguably, the Camp David peace accords (but surely Britain's Chamberlain also had achievements that the PM could boast of), the world and Iran itself have for 45 years suffered under the helm of the "Death to the Great Satan/Death to the West" Ayatollahs, which today, as Investor's Business Daily puts it, "is the world's biggest sponsor of terror" (see, e.g., October 7, 2023).
Other American Chamberlains followed Jimmy Carter: although unlike Barack "smart diplomacy" Obama and Joe "the grown-ups are back in charge" Biden, the British PM of the 1930s never seems to have thought it rational to deliver to the Democracy-hating Nazis pallets with millions and millions of dollars (or of pounds sterling) in cash. However, along with the Clintons, Obama and Biden did manage to hand billions and billions to the Democracy-hating Communists of China.
In his History of the American People, Paul Johnson writes that
Carter actually added to American weakness by well-meaning but ill-thought-through ventures. One of them was his 'human rights' policy, based on the Helsinki Accords
… A human rights lobby grew up within the administration, taking over a whole section of the State Department, which worked actively to enforce the Accords. Thus, it played a major role in the overthrow of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua. … The 'sharp break' took the form, in 1979, of the overthrow of Somoza, a faithful if distasteful ally of America, and his replacement by a Marxist and pro-Soviet regime, whose attitude to human rights was even more contemptuous and which campaigned openly for the overthrow of America's allies in Guatemala, El Salvador, and elsewhere in Central America
… The next year the State Department's Bureau of Human Rights played a significant part in undermining the position of another old ally, the Shah of Iran, whose pro-Western regime was overthrown by orchestrated street-mobs in 1979. It was replaced by a Moslem fundamentalist terror regime, which swiftly accumulated an unprecedented record of gross human rights abuses and characterized the US as the 'Great Satan.'
… During the 1970s the Cold War spread to virtually every part of the globe and was marked by two developments: the contraction of US naval power, and the expansion of Soviet naval power.
… While the Carter administration was adept at damaging friends and allies, it failed to develop any coherent response to this extension of the Cold War
The very first thing that followed Carter's brilliant foreign policy decision about abandoning America's ally, the Shah, was the humiliating Tehran embassy hostage crisis (which would last 444 days), compounded by Carter's incompetent 1980 rescue attempt (shades of Saigon 1975 and Kabul 2021, all of them incidentally involving helicopters).
As we reflect on Jimmy Carter, let us take a minute to pause and remember how Frank Gaffney defined the Obama Doctrine, aka smart diplomacy, an ideOlogy typical of all Drama Queens' naïve fairy tale foreign policy:
- Abandoning our allies,
- emboldening our enemies,
- and diminishing our country
Update: Will Tanner reminds us that Carter was instrumental in killing the free, prosperous state of Rhodesia and aiding Mugabe in … transforming it into hellish Zimbabwe, while Yehuda Teitelbaum, in turn, opines that the 39th president "might have done more damage to Israel’s security and international standing than any Western leader in history." For her part, Sarah Hoyt points out that the alleged hero, saint, and peacemaker "was responsible for letting the Soviets and their Cuban guerrilla lackeys put former Portuguese Africa to fire and blood".
Update 2: So far, no coverage that I have seen on
the killer rabbit attack on Jimmy Carter's canoe
No comments:
Post a Comment