A few weeks ago, Jimmy Carter gave an interview to the German newspaper Der Spiegel, mostly on the recent Lebanon conflict. It was classic Jimmy Carter – at once moralizing and morally confused, ill-informed and preachy – illustrating why the American people voted him out of office after just one term and the politically partisan Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Take first the former president’s historical illiteracy. “Under all of its [the Bush administration’s] predecessors there was a commitment to peace instead of preemptive war,” Carter claimed.
But is that really so? What about the Spanish-American War of 1898, or Vietnam and Grenada? (I may be missing a few dozen other cases for reason of space.) How do those conflicts square with Carter’s theory that Bush has made “a radical and unpressured departure from the basic policies of all previous administrations including those of both Republican and Democratic presidents”?
Carter proved equally ignorant of current events. To Der Spiegel’s question, “But wasn’t Israel the first to get attacked?” Carter replied:
“I don’t think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza.”
There are more errors than words in this statement. To begin with, the whole interview was primarily regarding Lebanon, and even Hizbullah admits that there are precisely two Lebanese “prisoners” in Israel, one of whom is the murderer of an infant. Second, Israel did not bomb “the entire nation of Lebanon,” even taking the dubious description of that balkanized country as a “nation.” Christian, Druze and most Sunni areas were not touched.
Third, notice his characterization of Hizbullah and whatever Gaza group kidnapped Israeli soldiers on sovereign, internationally recognized Israeli territory as “militants,” not terrorists. That moral confusion by itself would have deserved another Nobel Peace Prize, and was natural coming from a president who described the Iranian kidnappers of American diplomats as “students” and forbade killing them during the ill-fated hostage rescue attempt.
Then there is Carter’s apparent belief in conspiracy theories. Consider his view that “Israel looks upon this as a justification.” The implication is that Prime Minister Ehud Olmertdid nothing, day and night, since taking office a few months ago but look for a pretext – a “justification” – to murder babies in southern Lebanon. This claim, distinctly reminiscent of a blood libel (Jews kill babies), merely reveals how extreme is Carter’s bias against the Jewish state.
Related to this is Carter’s contempt for the Bush administration. “This administration has not attempted at all in the last six years to negotiate or attempt to negotiate a settlement between Israel and any of its neighbors or the Palestinians,” he insists. But didn’t this administration publicly support the concept of a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Did it not also receive and publicly support Palestinian Authority President Abbas?
Carter’s unerring instinct for capitulation is also evident. “There has to be some exchange of prisoners,” he counsels. “There have been successful exchanges of prisoners between Israel and the Palestinians in the past and that’s something that can be done right now.”
Israel has made that mistake before, releasing jailed terrorists only to meet with a resurgence of terrorist violence. Doing so again would, presumably, yield similar results. Remember Einstein’s words: Insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. This is Carter’s solution to Israel’s war with Hizbullah.
At no point does Carter let the facts cloud his vision. “Another thing is that a fundamentalist can’t bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality. And so this administration, for instance, has a policy of just refusing to talk to someone who is in strong disagreement with them – which is also a radical departure from past history.”
So, according to Carter, the Bush administration is “fundamentalist” because it is “just refusing to talk to someone who is in strong disagreement with them.” One wonders if this is the same Bush administration that has pushed for six-party talks with North Korea and has submitted to the European consensus of conducting negations with the Iranian regime.