Although he does view Arafat as a democratically elected leader: The 1996 elections in the P.A. he writes were ”democratic ” ”open ” ”fair ” and ”well organized” (they were well organized all right). Needless to say those elections were like any other in the Arab world which is to say rigged from beginning to end. As former CIA director Jim Woolsey quipped ”Arafat was essentially ”elected” the same way Stalin was but not nearly as democratically as Hitler who at least had actual opponents.” Arafat’s ”opponent” was a prop.
I will tell you a couple of curious things about Carter’s op-ed piece. In the newspaper — the actual physical newspaper — a line came out ”the recent destruction in Jenin and other towns of the West Bank.” But in the version of the piece found on the Times’s website that line read: ”the recent destruction of Jenin and other villages.” Big difference. The latter line of course merely repeats false PLO propaganda as Carter is wont to do. Hard evidence disproved the charge that Jenin was ”destroyed.”
In fact a tiny portion of it was wrecked as the Israelis fight terrorists — who insert themselves among civilians who are in truth human shields — punctiliously compared with the battle tactics of the rest of the world (and they suffer the added casualties that go with that not that Carter or his like care).
At the end of his piece Carter called — no surprise — for an American crackdown on our ally Israel: Silence its weapons threaten its aid. Carter then writes ”I understand the extreme political sensitivity in America of using persuasion on the Israelis’ — which to me sounds an awful lot like ”Sure that blasted Jewish lobby controls U.S. policy as it always has — except maybe for the shining years of 1977 to 1981.”
Really disgusting this effort and utterly revealing of Carter.
An Affinity For Communist Thugs
The ex-president is known as Joe Human Rights but he’s mighty selective about whose human rights to champion. If you live in Marcos’s Philippines Pinochet’s Chile or apartheid South Africa he’s liable to care about you. If you live in Communist China Communist Cuba Communist Ethiopia Communist Nicaragua Communist North Korea…tough luck.
Remember when the Left used to say ”Okay maybe the West has ”political rights ” but the East has ”social rights’ ”? Carter isn’t far off from that. A mission statement of his Center reads ”Human rights’ is a broad term encompassing freedom from oppression and freedom of speech to the right to food and health.” As Jeane Kirkpatrick — whom Carter also openly despises — points out it’s amazing how those who lack the freedom of speech the freedom of worship the freedom of assembly and so on also tend to lack food shelter and health.
In a 1997 op-ed piece entitled ”It’s Wrong to Demonize China” (also for The New York Times) Carter wrote — and forgive the awkward prose — ”American criticism of China’s human rights abuses are justified but their basis is not well understood. Westerners emphasize personal freedoms while a stable government and a unified nation are paramount to the Chinese. This means that policies are shaped by fear of chaos from unrestrained dissidents or fear of China’s fragmentation by an independent Taiwan or Tibet. The result is excessive punishment [excessive punishment!] of outspoken dissidents and unwarranted domination of Tibetans.”
Carter said that ”ill-informed commentators in both countries have cast the other side as a villain and have even forecast inevitable confrontation between the two nations.”
You see the exquisite moral equivalence between a giant and repressive Communist state and the American republic. He then said ”Mutual criticisms are proper and necessary [mutual criticisms mind you: Communist China America . . .] but should not be offered in an arrogant or self-righteous way and each of us should acknowledge improvements made by the other.”
