White House; Carter “increasingly irrelevant” (Updated)

Former worst US President in my memory, Jimmy Carter, feeling left out of limelight lately, took time to bash the President on BBC last week, while taking a glancing blow at Tony Blair, according to the Washington Post;

The former president also lashed out at British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Asked by BBC Radio how he would judge Blair’s support of Bush, Carter said: “Abominable. Loyal. Blind. Apparently subservient. And I think the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world.”

Of course, this a foreign policy critique from the guy who not only aided the mullahs’ rise to power in Iran by abandoning our tradition ally the Shah, but he also facilitated the creation of the Taliban in Afghanistan by being such a spastic creampuff that the Soviets invaded Afghanistan during his Presidency without fear of retribution (except that we boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics – that must’ve really stung, huh?).

Well, according to the Post (Reuters Wire service story), the White House fired back at Carter yesterday;

White House spokesman Tony Fratto had declined to react on Saturday but on Sunday fired back.

“I think it’s sad that President Carter’s reckless personal criticism is out there,” Fratto told reporters. “I think it’s unfortunate. And I think he is proving to be increasingly irrelevant with these kinds of comments.”

Carter has been an outspoken critic of Bush, but the White House has largely refrained from attacking him in return. Sunday’s sharp response marks a departure from the deference that sitting presidents traditionally have shown their predecessors.

Yeah, well Reuters forgets that former Presidents have traditionally kept their stupid mouths shut on policy, too. Especially when they’re talking to the foreign press. Carter has been a non-stop, yammering goofball since Clinton left office and the new administration has ignored him.

Of course, Clinton sent Carter to negotiate with the Haitian Generals and North Korea (look how well those worked out for us) and he went to insure that Hugo Chavez won his re-election in Venezuela. I’m surprised he had nothing to do with his favorite Commie’s election in Nicaragua (Daniel Ortega, by the way).

Carter, during his interview, went on to blather;

In his interview with the [Arkansas] Democrat-Gazette, Carter, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, criticized Bush for having “zero peace talks” in Israel. Carter also said the administration “abandoned or directly refuted” every negotiated nuclear arms agreement, as well as environmental efforts, by other presidents.

Look how well all of Carter’s negotiations have worked out for us – yet he thinks that there is something negotiate over in the Middle East. Hey, dipstick, Arabs don’t want to negotiate – they want to kill us all. Especially YOU.

Carter went on to ignore history;

“We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered,” Carter said.

I guess Carter forgot that every other nation on Earth has waged pre-emptive war on us in the last century. Remember the Zimmerman Telegram? The sinking of the Lusitania? How about Pearl Harbor? And ya know what – the Carter Doctrine was a pre-emptive, unilateral move by your administration to protect the free flow of oil in the Persian Gulf.

Don’t you think it’s time we stopped sitting still like ducks on a pond during opening day? Or would you prefer that we just sit by and wait for terrible things to happen like the embassy seizure in Iran?

No, of course you don’t think we should get ahead of our enemies – that’s why you got to be the last President who could walk the mile down Pennsylvania Avenue on your inauguration day. By the end of your administration, you’d made the world so dangerous that every President since has had to ride in a bullet-proof limo.

The RNC wasn’t so gentle with Carter as the White House;

“Apparently, Sunday mornings in Plains for former President Carter includes hurling reckless accusations at your fellow man,” said Amber Wilkerson, Republican National Committee spokeswoman. She said that it was hard to take Carter seriously because he also “challenged Ronald Reagan’s strategy for the Cold War.”

Carter’s been wrong about every one of his foreign policy criticisms and attempts over the last 35 years. Why should anyone think he has something substantial to add now?

UPDATE: Fox News Channel (with an AP contribution) reports that Carter claims he was misunderstood;

“My remarks were maybe careless or misinterpreted but I wasn’t comparing the overall administration and certainly not talking about anyone personally,” Carter said in an interview Monday when asked to explain.

The comments “were interpreted as comparing this whole administration to all other administrations when what I was actually doing was responding to a question about foreign policy between [President Richard] Nixon and this administration, and I think that this administration’s foreign policy compared to Nixon’s was much worse. … I wasn’t comparing this administration with other administrations throughout history but just with President Nixon’s,” he told NBC’s “The Today Show.”

What a doofus. In his quote above, he used the word “worst” which means he was comparing this administration with at least two other administrations, otherwise he would have used the word “worse” which would be used in comparing two administrations (Nixon versus Bush). Language means stuff.

Oh, and he admits that he’s irrelevant;

Carter…said he doesn’t “claim to have any relevancy” on the Iraq issue, though he has sent reports for the president and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on his personal activities monitoring elections around the world.

Well, he finally got something right. The old coot needs to go back to Plains, sit on the porch of his mansion and rock himself further into obscurity.

Editor’s Note: I know I’ve said much of this before, but I feel it bears repeating. This a form of self-flagellation over the guilt that my first vote in a Presidential election went to Jimmy Carter. I regretted it within days after his inauguration when his first official act was to give amnesty to draft dodgers. And the main reason I’d voted for him was because he’d promised, during the campaign, to not surrender the Panama Canal (where I was stationed at the time) – we all know how that turned out.

Later, I spent weeks on Green Ramp in Fort Bragg waiting for the signal to run a Soviet combat brigade out of our Hemisphere – that of course never came to fruition, to our great shame – but our equipment at the time had been manufactured during the Vietnam war and there were no parts available and mostly failed to work – none of us were surprised when Desert One ended because of maintenance failures.

There was no fuel or money to train; we practiced jumping from the tailgate of moving duece-and-a-half trucks to simulate assembling on the drop zone. When I got promoted to Sergeant from Corporal, my raise was an whopping $22/month.

So yeah, my beef with Carter is personal and will last until one of us dies. Expect one of these posts everytime he opens his stupid yap.

Category: Foreign Policy, Historical, Jimmy Carter, Politics, Terror War