According to an interview given to the Star-Telegram, America's second worst President,
[S]aid it was hard to figure out exactly what President Obama’s policy is in the Middle East.
“It changes from time to time,” Carter said. “I noticed that two of his secretaries of defense, after they got out of office, were very critical of the lack of positive action on the part of the president.”
Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was the most recent to criticize Obama, in remarks he made to USA Today while promoting his new book, Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace.
Carter acknowledged that the ISIS situation is complicated and he thinks the U.S. waited too long to respond.
“First of all, we waited too long. We let the Islamic state build up its money, capability and strength and weapons while it was still in Syria,” he said. “Then when [ISIS] moved into Iraq, the Sunni Muslims didn’t object to their being there and about a third of the territory in Iraq was abandoned.”Let us remember that Carter convinced the Soviet Union that we were on the way out, allowed the Soviets and their Castroite stooges to establish themselves in Nicaragua, and helped produce the ongoing disaster in Iran. He lost his own presidency largely because of his foreign policy blunders. Up until now, he routinely has gotten labelled America's Worst President.
We have a new champion!
It is worth noting that Carter has a better grasp of the current situation in Syria and Iraq than does the man who took away his title of America's Worst President.
For all of Carter's bumbling, I always thought he was a decent man at heart. Not so this current zero in the White House.
ReplyDeleteAgree. And he was a naval officer, and have no doubt he cares for his country.
DeleteWasn't he one of Rickover's golden boys?
DeleteIt's pretty sad when your own mother says she never should've had children.
These two equal one another in their hubris and in the oodles they'll get/have gotten from the Arab oil boys. At least we know their price.
Both do have plenty of hubris. Mr. Carter would break into singing "How Great Thou Art" in front of a mirror. Mr. Obama would simply lick himself all over if he could.
DeleteOMG whitewall, THAT'S Funny! Thanks for the laugh, they sure are getting hard to come by these days.
DeleteBlessings
LibertyGrace'sGrandma
Don't forget, Carter also oversaw the retirement of the Civil Aeronautics Board, which set airfares so that the worst airlines could break even, and the Interstate Commerce COmmission, which set rates on freight.
ReplyDeleteBy comparison, the head of the Maladministration has seen the introduction of ... I give up ... so how many new worthless and damaging agencies? And the enlargement of how many others?
Green Bear
Don't get too nostalgic over Carter; he oversaw or actively participated in the laying of dozens of legislative and regulatory time bombs in the US.
ReplyDeleteHis attitude to "Constitutional" probity needs a bit of sunlight as well.
Which?
DeleteStill waiting for a Mea Culpa from the press for their part in getting him elected, then covering for him for the past 6 years.
ReplyDeleteBut I wont hold my breath.
pointless... there's a new "the one"... "the special"... she's all but already elected as potus. can't be worse than bho, I suppose?
Delete- reader #1482
Considering the peanut farmer had a similar attitude to reading briefing books - to the extent Ronnie wanted to see if there was any way to indict the useless bastard -- I wouldn't get too nostalgic about the scumbag
ReplyDeleteTo me the incompetence of the Carter 'administration' is summed up by the Tehran hostage rescue mission fuqup. Miles from the objective, choppers crashing into each other and the Herks, busloads of Iranians driving past and mooning the Delta Force guys. A total shambles, lucky there weren't any rabbits around.
ReplyDeleteMy question about Syria:
ReplyDeleteDid we ever have any good policy options in that cocuntry? Where were its real champions of systems of civil liberties, or even relatively decent strongman wannabes?
The Ba'athist started as European Fascist wannabes, then ended up clients of the Evil Empire. Their opposition is hardcore Islamicist.
We came out on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood in the "Arab Spring", and what did it get anyone? It is clear that the MB, Qaida, IS, and all of the radical Sunnis hate us no less than the radical Shi'i; and that making nice with any of them isn't going to work.
What of Turkey's large involvement in building up an MB/IS-dominated Syrian rebellion?
The two sides are clearly yesterday's dictatorships or the wonderful folks who brought us 9/11 and want to bring us even more.
A 9th century Culture requires a 9th Century Autocrat to keep the radicals in check. Until the region decides to join the 18th century (at least) your best bet is to back the dog who can keep the area stable (and regardless of how you view the Bathist and Assad...he certainly has kept Syria stable for years).
DeleteOf course when your dog goes rabid (Saddam) then, like any good Master, you need to put that dog down. BUT you always make sure you have another top dog (who now understands the rules and the limits) to lead the pack. That was our failing in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We had no dog ready to take charge.
What 9th century culture? Syria had parliamentary institutions for most of the period running from 1932 to 1963. The country was more affluent as measured against its neighbors as well. They've been brought low by 51 years of bad government.
DeleteThe so-called Arab Spring was in fact a series of pan-Arab food riots, due to the increased price of grains. Correct me if I'm wrong, Diplo. This was widely misinterpreted by the Western media as a democratic awakening.
DeleteThe Muslim Brotherhood provided social support services and therefore got elected in Egypt. The Egyptians soon realized the error and wanted the Military back.
It is stunning just how out of tune the US Diplomatic establishment were, or how much they were ignored.
I used to think liberal-democracy (as in liberty, not the current distortion called liberal) was the great pacifier... then along came Jesus...
Delete- reader #1482
Robert of Ottawa....wasn't the first Arab rising in Tunisia and, resulted exactly as you said--from grain prices? Next the wave spread to Egypt. Western media did portray this as a democratic awakening but an awakening due to the Immaculate arrival of Himself...Obama. Western media was all over Cairo with tingling thrills running up and down their legs. Reality rudely interrupted this narrative.
DeleteThe Soviets invaded Afghanistan under Carter's watch, in 1979 I think, the first time the really broke out of their borders (If you don't count Czechoslovakia in 1968).
ReplyDeleteOr Poland in 1956. Or the Baltic states. Or, oh never mind. . .
DeleteAnonymous, Art Deco, and F: Poland, Hungary, the Thuringia-Mecklenburg region, and Czechoslovakia were part and parcel of a recognized Soviet sphere of influence back in the 1950's and 1960's. While Eisenhower is often faulted for not making a forceful enough stand on Hungary in 1956 (and condemning Israel, UK, and France for giving Nasser a black eye over the Suez Canal), he was a president who clearly understood what going into a major war would entail.
DeleteStill, Soviet behavior in those days, and Mao Zedong's having been Uncle Stalin's good little boy, should've disabused American progressives of any illusions about what we were facing on a global scale. Instead, I sense that we had too much nostalgia over how "the Russians killed Hitler", and "tied down so much of the German Army" (no memory of how they started the European War by kissing Hitler over the corpse of Poland).
I have no such nostalgia. It is a shame that the original Allies didn't just let Adolf and Joe go at it without bothering Adolf's men. Obviously the real Allies did not know it would turn out so perhaps it was the best of a bad situation. And the media coverups of the Ukraine mass starvation, the show trials, purges, etc... did not help.
DeleteIrony is a dish best savored after many years have passed and memories grow dim.
ReplyDeleteMr. Carter was a good deal more accomplished than Obama prior to entering office (creditable performance as a naval officer, engineer, agribusinessman, and state governor - in certain respects the most prepared candidate who ran in 1976). He's also the only Democratic president in the last sixty years who was a decent human being. It's not altogether fair to Carter to lump him in with someone as shallow as the current incumbent, a man who let the likes of Rahm Emanuel start the fish rotting from the head down.
ReplyDeleteA number of his initiatives were sabotaged by Congress (keep in mind Carter's policy preferences nearly always improved on the Democratic congressional caucus median). Some of his decisions and appointments were terribly misbegotten (see monetary policy as conducted by Arthur Burns and G. William Miller, 1977-79).
Students of Cyrus Vance have described his attitude in such terms that the man simply had no business in accepting an appointment to superintend the country's foreign policy; he was not emotionally partisan for his own and he conceived of diplomacy as a species of the talking cure. Carter also put Andrew Young in charge of the U.N. Mission, a stupid position which requires a command of public diplomacy which Young was never going to have; Young also was not emotionally partisan for his own country; Carter then replaced Young with Donald McHenry, a Foreign Service lifer whose idea of a bon mot was 'counterproductive polemics' or, perhaps 'negative rhetoric and connotations'. (Those are direct quotes, btw). For advice on Latin America policy, the maven on Mr. Carter's NSC staff was the fatuous Robert Pastor. He tried and failed to put one of Pres. Kennedy's speechwriters in charge of the CIA.
Fairly late in the day, he figured out that he'd erred in many realms.
I worked in the Carter White House for the final two years of his presidency. Calling him a decent human being is a stretch. Privately, he was difficult and in some ways very hypocritical. More than this I cannot say - the history hasn't been written yet on the personal side and even after all this time I have to be a bit cautious.
DeleteThere's a distinction between 'difficult' and 'indecent'. The competition is Obama (routinized lying and, as one wag put it, Potemkin villages all the way down), Clinton (sociopathy), Johnson (of whom the best you could say was that he had a heart but no moral structure; every dimension of his life was a scandal), and Kennedy (a lurid example of aristocratic decadence and absence of scruple). Also, three of the last five Democratic first ladies have been (one could argue) their husband's accomplices. Mrs. Kennedy's had some good points, but there's also the aspect of her that Joseph Epstein described with the words, "Je vais pour l'argent". Mrs. Carter would be slumming it in this company.
DeleteAnother country heard from.
ReplyDeleteGo away. Just go. Now. Shoo.
Who could forget the majisterial Carter Glory Years?
No Gas. Pumps closed. Odd/Even Rationing. Wear ten sweaters in winter, and swelter in summer.
Misery Index. Double digit inflation, interest rates, unemployment.
Evicting the Shah so that the jihadist genie could be released from the bottle. Reducing Iran from the modern western state it had become to the jihado-marxist mess it remains today.
Yep, recall it well. Nothing worked. Not much money around.
Running two woodstoves to augment the oil burner, still freezing.
The world's worst music, disco, provided by hollyweird to accompany the Three Mile Island histrionics.
The world's. Worst. Cars. Ever. As Car & Driver's Patrick Bedard said, 'they can go around corners all day but cannot outrun a shopping cart."
No gas anyway, so what difference it make?
The lone bright spot: toward the end of The Carter Glory Years, the stock market began to rise in anticipation that Mr. Peanuts would be gone and his successor, no matter who it might be, would be an improvement.
Now just go away, Mr. Peanuts. When Hunter S. Thompson said he 'liked' you during Campaign '76, the hairs the back my neck went up, instinct foreseeing the mess we'd be in under this guy's regime.
Never, ever doubt your instincts. Ever.
Oh, and how could one forget the ten voluminous chapters of the Carter Glory Years titled, 'soviets on the move'.
DeleteI must confess I voted for Carter in 1976 as a protest vote against the Watergate aftermath. Big mistake. I was fully over it when I saw Carter give that big hug to Leonid Brezhnev after a treaty signing.
DeleteChoice comment!
DeleteAce
I can't think of a situation he injected himself into that resulted in anything positive.
ReplyDeleteI remember when he went on the bandwagon to prevent the world from doing anything about North Korea's nuclear weapons program. With his hard work and effort, the norks were willing to build their nukes clandestinely instead of out in the open and only announce after they were ready to test. Thank you.... Jimmy.
- reader #1482
"You know you're in trouble when Carter calls you a weak foreign policy president."
ReplyDeleteWell, Carter would know weak foreign policy, wouldn't he?
I feel that my personal favorite for worst President has been slighted here. Millard Fillmore, now there's a bad President!
ReplyDeleteJames the Lesser
I don't know, Andrew Johnson was a piece of work.
Deleteindividual benefit and greed are seen as the greatest good, and none are capable of comprehending God's love for man or acknowledging human virtue.
ReplyDeleteThis is the current administration is essence.
leaperman