The Discerning Texan

Jimmy Carter Wants To Top Damage Done In 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis

That's the only way one could look at Jimmy the Dimmy's most recent plans to stick it to his country!

As though he didn't do enough damage in the crisis of 1979, now the worst president in the history of the country plans to stick his nose in another Iran-related crisis - this time he's planning to host former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami for talks during his visit to the United States starting this week.

This particular article appears in the Carter-friendly, Democtatic-leaning, anti-American agended, Washington Post, so it's rather kind to the aging liberal who consistently goes out of his way to criticize the current administration and jump in bed with the country's enemies.

If you haven't guessed it by now, I don't think very much of Jimmy, but I'm not the only one that has such a low opinion of him. For example, Robert Spencer refers to the Wapo article calling Carter's hosting of the enemy as "an event that would turn a page in American history," and says that it is instead, "proof once again that former President Dhimmi Carter learned nothing from the crisis with Iran that occurred during his administration."

As Spencer points out in his piece, in Jimmy Carter we have a man that (is so far removed from reality), he once referred to the Ayatollah Khomeini as a fellow man of faith.

UPDATE: Captain Ed's onboard with disgust for Carter - and even mentions the Logan Act. So is Hugh Hewitt.

And don't miss this from the Times of London: "Don't Get Carter. He Won't Do":

Next week the former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami visits the United States. Though he will not meet government officials, the visit is significant and welcome. Khatami is reputedly a reformer. It may be possible, through him, to widen the gulf between Iranian pragmatists and theocratic populists.

But there is a risk. The current Iranian regime menaces Israel and has lied to the EU about its nuclear programme. It must not interpret Khatami’s visit as proof of the value of bellicosity. Khatami must get the message that the West will be receptive to concessions, but will face down belligerence. There lies the problem: Khatami’s host in the US is Jimmy Carter.

Carter’s poor reputation as president reflects a record not so much of incompetence as paralysis. He led his Administration mainly in the sense that its internal disagreements faithfully reflected his own philosophical chaos and administrative ineptitude. In domestic policy Carter zigzagged left and right, baffling equally the environmental activists he patronised and the churchgoers whose social values he claimed to share. His proposed system of federal energy controls failed comprehensively. In 1980 he acknowledged that inflation was near a “crisis stage”.

He proclaimed human rights while lauding the Shah of Iran’s repressive regime. When the Shah’s revolutionary successors held 52 American diplomats hostage for 14 months, Ayatollah Khomeini accurately sneered: “Neither does Carter have the guts for military action, nor would anyone listen to him.”

Carter cancelled the B1 bomber in the hope of gaining Soviet goodwill, later acknowledging bemusedly the Kremlin’s persisting “unfriendly rhetoric”. He earned the contempt of friendly European governments by announcing deployment of the neutron bomb and then cancelling it without consulting them.

Last weekend he impertinently attacked Tony Blair’s closeness to George Bush. Doubtless he prefers the model of transatlantic relations he pioneered with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of Germany, who observed in exasperation that Carter was “just not big enough for the game”.

Less an elder statesman than a soft cushion who bears the impress of whoever sits on him, the 39th president is the last person Khatami should meet.