Since it was announced that former president Jimmy Carter decided to stop further medical treatment and go into hospice at home, the media has been filled with glowing eulogies despite the fact that he’s still alive. I hope he’s not in pain and his family provides strength. Never having met the man, I will accept the stories claiming he is a wonderful man.
The early eulogies don’t mention that he may be a wonderful guy, but he was a lousy President. To add some balance to the pre-death articles, I’ve decided to post one example of how his bad decisions led to problems the United States is still dealing with today.
One “achievement” of Jimmy Carter’s presidency that will endure for a long time is the fact that there’s a bunch of Islamist crazies running Iran. They want to control the Sunni Muslim States and destroy the little Satan (Israel) and the big Satan (United States).
In 2007 there was an interesting analysis in the JPost about Jimmy Carter and Iran that said in part:
Carter viewed Khomeini as more of a religious holy man in a grassroots revolution than a founding father of modern terrorism. Carter’s ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, said “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint.” Carter’s Iranian ambassador, William Sullivan, said, “Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure.” Carter adviser James Bill proclaimed in a Newsweek interview on February 12, 1979 that Khomeini was not a mad mujahid, but a man of “impeccable integrity and honesty.”
In other words, Jimmy Carter and his foreign policy team had no idea what Khomeini was about.
The Shah, on the other hand, the Shah had the President down pat. He told his personal confidant, “Who knows what sort of calamity he [Carter] may unleash on the world?”
Michel D. Evens, an expert on Middle East affairs, said Carter considered Khomeini, a ‘holy man’ and believed every crisis could be resolved with diplomacy. It was Carter’s Kumbaya-pacifism that got America into trouble.
Carter never got it that Khomeini, a cleric exiled to Najaf in Iraq from 1965-1978, was preparing Iran for revolution. Proclaiming “the West killed God and wants us to bury him,” Khomeini’s weapon of choice was not the sword but the media. Using tape cassettes smuggled by Iranian pilgrims returning from the holy city of Najaf, Khomeini, fueled disdain for what he called gharbzadegi (“the plague of Western culture”).
Carter is very intelligent but very naive. Deep down, he believed everyone wanted peace and friendship with America. He ignored that Ayatollah Lunatic Khomeini was already calling the U.S. the “Great Satan” and taught that democracy was the equivalent of prostitution.
Carter pressured the Shah to make what he termed human rights concessions by releasing political prisoners and relaxing press censorship. Khomeini could never have succeeded without Carter. The Islamic Revolution would have been stillborn.
Gen. Robert Huyser, Carter’s military liaison to Iran, once told me in tears: “The president could have publicly condemned Khomeini and even kidnapped him and then bartered for an exchange with the [American Embassy] hostages, but the president was indignant. ‘One cannot do that to a holy man,’ he said.”
Anyone who would allow students under his rule to take 60+ diplomats, hostage for 444 days is not what I would consider a “holy man.” Bu Carter believed most leaders had good in their hearts, even when they didn’t.
Some governments are totally evil and must be openly confronted and defeated. Khomeini had the help of the PLO when he came back to Iran. That alone should have been a big hint about Khomeini. But then again, Carter believed the Palestinian terrorist were “good guys.” The PLO supplied weapons and terrorists to murder Iranians and incite mobs in the streets. Yasser Arafat was hailed as a friend of Khomeini after he seized control of Iran and was given the Israeli Embassy in Teheran, where the PLO flag still flies overhead.
Four plus decades after Jimmy Carter installed Ayatollah Khomeini and his team of radical Islamists into power, the government that Carter helped to put into power funds radical Islamist terrorists across the world, is on the precipice of creating a stock of nuclear weapons, took away the rights of their people, and threatened the lives and liberties of the American people.
None of this had to happen. The hostages, the years of Iranian threats, hanging homosexuals for sport, throwing Christians in prisons, and other horrible torture of people who do not follow the Iranian political rules stemming from its extreme version of Islamist Shariah law.
The Shah of Iran was not a boy scout, but thanks to Jimmy Carter’s naivety, he was replaced by a terrorist supporting a radical Islamist state whose slogan is “Death To America.”
Just one more example of how a possible “nice guy” was a lousy President. But I do pray that his remaining days are free of pain.
