The Jimmy Carter Magic

Carter is so often maligned for his stupidity, it tends to be forgotten that he was also self-righteous, incompetent, and backstabbing.

Out of respect for my old pal, Pat Caddell, I've let the encomiums to former President Jimmy Carter pollute the airwaves for the past two weeks without a peep out of me. Time's up.

As you listen to liberals gloat about Carter's dedication to "human rights," recall just some of the human suffering this imbecile launched on the world.

Example No. 1: Carter went wild on the Helsinki accords, which were intended (by morons) to curb the Soviet Union's monstrous repression of its own citizens, In fact, however, the Soviets not only ignored the accords, but actually used them to crackdown on dissidents. Anyone who attempted to monitor Soviet abuses under the agreement was arrested, imprisoned or exiled.

Paul Johnson described the policy in Modern Times:

"[T]he Helsinki process led directly to a resumption of widespread repression [in the USSR]...reaching a climax in the years after 1977. Leaders of the monitoring groups were the chief victims. In some cases the KGB followed a new policy of issuing dissenters with exit visas and driving them out of their own country. But many others got long prison sentences with forced labour."

On the other hand, Carter got to brag about his deep commitment to human rights.

Example No 2: Carter’s gift to the world: Islamic lunacy.

Liberals had spent a quarter century bellyaching about the CIA’s role in toppling their beloved Mohammed Mossadegh and helping return the Shah of Iran to power back in 1953.

Mossadegh was the sort of authentic Third World dictator the left admires. Mossadegh may have impoverished his country, but he was lifey: He cried, fainted, and consulted his two-year-old granddaughter before making important government decisions. By contrast, the Shah was pro-Western and didn’t dress like a clown. He did not threaten to hurl Scud missiles at Israel. Liberals found him a bore.

To their delight, in 1978, Carter ostentatiously withdrew American support for the Shah, then stood idly by when, weeks later, he was deposed by a mob of Islamic fanatics.

Richard Falk of Princeton famously predicted that the incoming Ayatollah Khomeini “may yet provide us with a desperately needed model of humane governance for a third-world country.” Carter’s U.N. ambassador Andrew Young said Khomeini would “eventually be hailed as a saint.”

Like night follows day, soon after Carter allowed the pro-Western Shah to be deposed by a bloodthirsty Islamic mob, the mob seized the American embassy and took fifty-two Americans hostage. It was a living testament to liberal “diplomacy”: American citizens being held captive by angry barbarians in a frightening land.

For 444 days, the human rights of Americans suffered mightily, until the voters wisely removed Carter, and replaced him with Ronald Reagan, who preferred manly force to patient suasion when dealing with violent crazies.

The hostages were released the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated -- an event memorialized in a Jeff MacNelly cartoon showing Khomeini reading a telegram: "It's from Ronald Reagan. It must be about one of the Americans in the Den of Spies, but I don't recognize the name. It says 'Remember Hiroshima.'"