Former President Carter writes scathing letter to Zell

[phats_away]

http://www.ajc.com/today/content/epaper/editions/today/opinion_14e3fa39c58de1d500fa.html

bugmenot.com for a user/pass

[352klr]

If you held a mirror up in front of Zell Miller, you'd have Jimmy Carter.

[Malaga CF fan]

If you held a mirror up in front of Zell Miller, you'd have Jimmy Carter.

Minus a big fat NOBEL FREAKING PEACE PRIZE next to him.... Geez, just try to legitimize Zell Miller, you can't do it. He's a dingbat.

[Pmoliu]

Minus a big fat NOBEL FREAKING PEACE PRIZE next to him.... Geez, just try to legitimize Zell Miller, you can't do it. He's a dingbat.

Malaga,

Granted Senator Miller has his issues, but former President Carter, was by an measure, a pretty lousy President. Nobel Peace Prize and all.

Paul

[352klr]

Minus a big fat NOBEL FREAKING PEACE PRIZE next to him.... Geez, just try to legitimize Zell Miller, you can't do it. He's a dingbat.

Yes, notwithstanding that the award "should be interpreted as a criticism of the line that the current administration has taken."

[352klr]

Minus a big fat NOBEL FREAKING PEACE PRIZE next to him.... Geez, just try to legitimize Zell Miller, you can't do it. He's a dingbat.

I guess Yasser's automatically makes him legitimate in your book too?

[Malaga CF fan]

Malaga,

Granted Senator Miller has his issues, but former President Carter, was by an measure, a pretty lousy President. Nobel Peace Prize and all.

Paul

No, he was not a memorable President, I agree. But he pretty much set the bar for what a person can accomplish after holding the highest office in the US. Considering most of the men who have left the Presidency have written their memoirs, raked in some serious dough, and basically been put out to pasture, Carter's post-Presidency is notable and worthy of mentioning.

But comparing him to Zell Miller is ridiculous...

[Malaga CF fan]

I guess Yasser's automatically makes him legitimate in your book too?

Considering what he's done since then, no. I wouldn't say he's worked for peace.

[monop_poly]

If you held a mirror up in front of Zell Miller, you'd have Jimmy Carter.

Carter never used the term "spitballs" in a nationally televised speech to an allegedly adult audience.

[superdave]

Jimmy Carter did not reach political prominence by working for Lester "Ax Handle" Maddox.

Sometimes, you have to remind the kids around here.

[Malaga CF fan]

Carter never used the term "spitballs" in a nationally televised speech to an allegedly adult audience.

Nor, to my knowledge, has Carter challenged anyone to a duel.... :D

[BenReilly]

No, he was not a memorable President, I agree. But he pretty much set the bar for what a person can accomplish after holding the highest office in the US.

You mean help (by incompetence) one of the most evil countries in the history of mankind obtain nuclear weapons? Good job. Next he's off to Iran in a Kerry Administration.

[352klr]

Jimmy Carter did not reach political prominence by working for Lester "Ax Handle" Maddox.

Sometimes, you have to remind the kids around here.

Yes, Jimmy Carter was a paragon of virtue.

"During his second campaign Carter subtly appealed to class antagonisms, running as the representative of the ordinary people. It was a successful campaign strategy wherein Carter projected himself as a traditional southern conservative. He associated his chief opponent, former governor Carl Sanders, with Atlanta's social and economic elite and chastised him for failing, during his governorship, to invite Alabama's outspoken segregationist governor, George C. Wallace, to address the Georgia General Assembly."

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-676

You see, my father used to work in the Poli Sci department at UGA, so I'm not exactly a young, uneducated kid when it comes to Southern Politics. I was talking it with the Blacks and Chuck Bulloch before I was taking pre-algebra.

[Smiley321]

You mean help one of the most evil countries in the history of mankind obtain nuclear weapons? Good job. Next he's off to Iran in a Kerry Administration.

Bingo! But on the plus side, he did spend the 1980 primary season not mentioning Chappaquiddick. Over and over, he didn't mention it. An heroic feat of restraint, I must say.

[monop_poly]

But on the plus side, he did spend the 1980 primary season not mentioning Chappaquiddick. Over and over, he didn't mention it. An heroic feat of restraint, I must say.

that alone makes him better than the two clowns now running

[yossarian]

You see, my father used to work in the Poli Sci department at UGA, so I'm not exactly a young, uneducated kid when it comes to Southern Politics. I was talking it with the Blacks and Chuck Bulloch before I was taking pre-algebra.

If I guess right will you tell me who your father is? Lief Carter; Gene Miller; Dr. Lauth; Robert Clute; Gary Bertsch....wasn't Loch Johnson was it?

[FlashMan]

pardon my ignorance:

which evil country did carter get nuclear weapons to and how did he do it?

[Mel Brennan]

Carter DID bring Israel and Egypt together after thousands of years, and never gave in to terror (as opposed to a follow-up Executive who sold weapons to terror for our hostages and for $$$ to kill others in Central America), but...

Carter, who came to office in early 1977, not long after Indonesia invaded and annexed the tiny island nation of East Timor, increased military aid to the Indonesian dictatorship by 80%. This equipment including OV-10 Bronco counter-insurgency aircraft that was crucial in the rounding up of much of the country’s civilian population into concentration camps. Most of the 200,000 East Timorese deaths as a result of Indonesia’s occupation took place during the Carter Administration, in large part as a result of this military aid.

Carter also dramatically increased military aid to the Moroccan government of King Hassan II, whose forces invaded its southern neighbor, the desert nation of Western Sahara, barely a year before the former Georgia governor assumed office. Carter fought Congress to restore military aid to Turkey that had been suspended after their armed forces seized the northern third of the Republic of Cyprus in 1974. Carter promised that the resumption of aid would give Turkey the flexibility to withdraw. Turkish occupation forces remain there to this day.

All three of these U.S. allies were in violation of repeated demands by the UN Security Council that they unconditionally withdraw from these occupied territories.

Under President Carter, the United States vetoed consecutive UN Security Council resolutions to impose sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Ignoring calls from the democratic South African opposition to impose such pressure, Carter took the line of American corporate interests by claiming U.S. investments – including such items as computers and trucks for the South African police and military – somehow supported the cause of racial justice and majority rule. (Barely five years after Carter left office, the United States imposed sanctions against South Africa by huge bipartisan Congressional majorities and no longer vetoed similar UN efforts.)

When the people of the African country then known as Zaire rebelled against their brutal and corrupt dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, Carter ordered the U.S. air force to fly in Moroccan troops to help crush the popular uprising and save the regime.

Carter sent military aid to the Islamic fundamentalist mujahadeen to fight the leftist government in Afghanistan in the full knowledge that it could prompt a Soviet invasion. According to his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, it was hoped that by forcing the Soviets into such a counter-insurgency war would weaken America’s superpower rival. This decision, however, not only destroyed much of Afghanistan, but the entire world is feeling the ramifications to this day.

As president, Carter opposed Palestinian statehood, refused to even meet with Palestinian leaders, and dramatically increased military aid to the right-wing Israeli government of Menachem Begin. When Israel violated an annex to the Camp David Accords by resuming construction of illegal settlements on the occupied West Bank, Carter refused to enforce the treaty despite being its guarantor. Carter also dramatically increased military aid to the increasingly repressive Egyptian regime of Anwar Sadat.

Meanwhile, Carter ordered that the evidence his administration had acquired of a joint South African-Israeli nuclear test be covered up to protect their governments from international outrage.

In May 1980, pro-democracy protestors seized the center of the South Korean city of Kwangju, challenging the U.S.- backed dictatorship of Chun Doo Hwan. Carter ordered the release of South Korean troops under U.S. command at the request of the dictator in order for them to re-take the city for the regime, massacring thousands. (When former South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee made a similar request that his troops be released from U.S. command two decades earlier, President Dwight Eisenhower refused.)

President Carter ignored pleas from Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero to not send arms and advisors to the junta whose forces were massacring many hundreds of peasant leaders, trade unionists, priests, human rights workers and other dissidents. Carter continued his military support of the junta even after Romero himself was assassinated while saying Mass, a shooting carried out under the orders of a top Salvadoran general. One of Carter’s last acts as president was to approve a record level of arms transfers to the junta just weeks after Salvadoran troops – under orders from high-ranking officers – raped and murdered four American churchwomen.

Carter was the president who enacted Presidential Directive 59, which authorized American strategic forces to switch to a counterforce strategy, targeting nuclear weapons in their silos, indicating a dangerous shift in nuclear policy from deterrence to one of a first-strike.

He supported the Shah of Iran to the end, even as the dictator ordered his forces to fire onto thousands of unarmed demonstrators. Carter dismissed Iranian anger at the 1953 U.S.-led overthrow of the country’s constitutional government by saying that it was "ancient history," a particular ironic comment in reference to a 4000-year old civilization.

Carter was also a strong supporter of Philippine dictator Fernando Marcos, Pakistani General Zia al Huq, Saudi King Faud and many other dictators. He blocked human rights legislation initiated by then-Congressman Tom Harkin and others. He increased U.S. military spending, militarized the Indian Ocean, and withdrew the SALT II Treaty from the Senate before they even took a vote.

It is certainly true that Jimmy Carter has made many positive contributions to the world since leaving the presidency. He did not simply join corporate boards like his predecessor Gerald Ford. Most leaders – as they have gotten older and more experienced in foreign affairs – have tended to become less idealistic and more prone to support military solutions to conflict. Carter, however, has gone in the opposite direction. And there were undoubtedly some positive achievements even while he was president for which we should also be grateful.

At the same time, we should not whitewash the past.

And we should never compare Carter to prokaryotics like Zell Miller. That speech/dueling threat IS and WILL ALWAYS BE, Miller's legacy.

[352klr]

Carter didn't give into terror? That's like someone on the right saying W. didn't give into Cheney or the Saudis. It's simply rediculous. How many days were the hostages held?

[Ian McCracken]

Jimmy Carter is an asshat. He's telling Zell Miller to put Party over Country. Zell laid it out in the start of his speech:

"For my family is more important than my party."

Whether you agree with Miller or not, telling him to be a loyal party stooge instead of following his heart just shows what an empty rhetorical loser Jimmy has become.