This is sick-making.
In the same piece Carter came very close to claiming that freedom of religion had come to China — causing activists in the field who know the wretched truth to groan in pain.
In a 1999 op-ed piece (USA Today) called ”Let’s Keep Chinese Spying in Perspective ” Carter said that ”some . . . American leaders who have habitually demonstrated animosity toward the People’s Republic of China [note the mimicking of the Communists’ own false description of themselves] have attempted to drive a deeper wedge between our two countries at what is already a troubled time.”
Anyone who doesn’t demonstrate ”animosity” toward that horrible state Realpolitik or no is no friend to mankind.
While in office Carter hailed Yugoslavia’s Tito as ”a man who believes in human rights.” He said of Romania’s barbaric Ceausescu and himself ”Our goals are the same: to have a just system of economics and politics . . . We believe in enhancing human rights.”
While out of office Carter has praised Syria’s late Assad (killer of at least 20 000 in Hama) and the Ethiopian tyrant Mengistu (killer of many more than that). In Haiti he told the dictator Cedras that he was ”ashamed of what my country has done to your country.”
He did even better in North Korea singing praises to Kim Il Sung one of the most complete and destructive dictators in history. Kim’s North Korea as Kirkpatrick says was and is truly a ”psychotic state.” Said Carter of the ”Great Leader ” ”I find him to be vigorous intelligent surprisingly well informed about the technical issues and in charge of the decisions about this country” (well he was absolute ruler).
He also said ”I don’t see that they [the North Koreans] are an outlaw nation.” Pyongyang he observed was a ”bustling city ” where shoppers ”pack the department stores ” reminding him of the ”Wal-Mart in Americus Georgia.”
Carter also employed his longstanding technique of praising the beauty of a dictator’s wife. Kim Jon Ae he noted ”is a very attractive lady.”
Then there’s Carter’s notorious friendship with Daniel Ortega former strongman in Nicaragua. In 1984 when the Reagan administration was trying to put maximum pressure on Ortega to submit to democracy Carter urged Habitat for Humanity to build in Nicaragua. A fine idea perhaps but here’s the (classic) Carter twist: ”We want the folks down there to know that some American Christians love them and that we don’t all hate them.”
In 1990 of course Carter traveled to Managua to monitor the elections and to certify what he figured — and hoped it seemed — would be a Sandinista victory. When the democratic opposition won instead Carter was remarkably churlish even bitter.
But Carter is not completely blinkered when it comes to brutal dictators. Here’s what he said to his interviewer and admirer James Zogby (one of America’s foremost PLO advocates) in 2001: ”I think the sanctions are hurting the people of Iraq and not Saddam Hussein whom I consider to be a dictator and I think an insensitive dictator [!] and he is able now to blame all of his maybe self-induced problems [”maybe self-induced”!] economically and socially on the United States because of our sanctions and because of our fairly infrequent aerial attacks.”
Friends and foes can agree on one thing: There’s no one like Jimmy Carter. No one. (National Review Online)
