Carter's call: Bush is the all time worst

The Killer Rabbit Strikes

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It is quite extraordinary for a former president to criticize the officiating President of the United States in as harsh a fashion as Jimmy Carter has done. It is obvious that Carter is genuinely alarmed at Bush's behavior and fears for the future of the Republic. I think he has every reason to be.

To use Bush's pet phrase, "There are some who," ... There are some who think Bush is stupid. I don't. I think the problem with Bush is that he is a very bad man, what the Spanish call "una mala persona" or what a cockney would call "a nasty piece of work". But he is not dumb.

A proof of his superior intelligence is that he has been able over the years to convince many people (most Americans at one time or another) that he is a "regular guy", a "straight shooter", "just folks" etc, when the fact is that he is a cheater a liar, a nasty sonovabitch and a jerk to boot. To do that takes brains, not just cunning. It also takes an enormous focus, a focus that must be very draining on all the rest of his personality. His own self-deception and fear of self-examination must be so monumental as to preclude almost any other kind of meaningful mentation.

Jimmy Carter has every right to be alarmed. The next few months may be the most dangerous in the history of the United States. Here is a bad man with a damaged personality, facing total failure and humiliation... and with an atomic arsenal at his disposal. Take a look around you and savor it, next year the world may look a whole lot different. DS

Carter Blasts Bush on His Global Impact - Associated Press
Abstract: Former President Carter says President Bush's administration is "the worst in history" in international relations, taking aim at the White House's policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy. The criticism from Carter, which a biographer says is unprecedented for the 39th president, also took aim at Bush's environmental policies and the administration's "quite disturbing" faith-based initiative funding. "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history," Carter told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a story that appeared in the newspaper's Saturday editions. "The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me."(...) "We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered," he said. "But that's been a radical departure from all previous administration policies." Carter, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, criticized Bush for having "zero peace talks" in Israel. Carter also said the administration "abandoned or directly refuted" every negotiated nuclear arms agreement, as well as environmental efforts by other presidents. Carter also offered a harsh assessment for the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which helped religious charities receive $2.15 billion in federal grants in fiscal year 2005 alone. "The policy from the White House has been to allocate funds to religious institutions, even those that channel those funds exclusively to their own particular group of believers in a particular religion," Carter said. "As a traditional Baptist, I've always believed in separation of church and state and honored that premise when I was president, and so have all other presidents, I might say, except this one."(...) Carter also lashed out Saturday at British prime minister Tony Blair. Asked how he would judge Blair's support of Bush, the former president said: "Abominable. Loyal. Blind. Apparently subservient." "And I think the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world," Carter told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. READ IT ALL

Jimmy Carter: they still make heroes

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Former President of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Jimmy Carter, is a very quiet, polite, gentleman of the old south. His own personal journey has been one of rigorous self-examination and self-criticism. He has transcended the racism that surrounded him in the rural Georgia where he grew up, as few men or women of his generation ever have.

Certainly if anyone has made a exemplary effort to live in harmony with, and according to, his deepest beliefs and system of values, it is Jimmy Carter.

In the context of America's contemporary power structure, former president Carter's denouncing the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories as apartheid is nothing short of heroic. At 82 years old, after a lifetime of outstanding achievement, this brave old man has chosen of his own free will to be insulted and smeared and to risk who knows what possibilities of physical violence. Heroic. DS

Carter Says Book's Critics Should See Territories - Associated Press
Abstract: Carter, 82, spoke at Emory University, where he is a professor. More than 600 Emory students and staff members attended his lecture on the book, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid." The book has been attacked as biased against Israel. He said he realized that the book's title, alluding to South Africa's former system of racial division, would cause criticism. He said that Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, icons of the freedom struggle in South Africa, have seen the conditions of the occupied land and have "used the same language" to describe the situation as he did in the book. "The title makes it clear the book is about conditions and events in the Palestinian territories and not in Israel and the text makes it clear the forced segregation and domination of Arabs by Israelis is not based on race," Carter said. Instead, he said the conditions stem from the desire of some Israelis to acquire choice land -- hilltop properties, farmland and sites controlling water access -- in the occupied territories. He invited his audience, some of whom protested against his book this week, to visit the occupied areas to see for themselves. READ IT ALL

Doomsday scenarios: take your pick

"As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth. As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change."
Stephen Hawking

"The clear fact is that Israel will never find peace until it is willing to withdraw from its neighboring occupied territories and permit the Palestinians to exercise their basic human and political rights. With land swaps, this "green line" can be modified through negotiations to let a substantial number of Israeli settlers remain in their subsidized homes east of the internationally recognized border. The premise of exchanging Arab territory for peace has been acceptable for several decades to a majority of Israelis but not to a minority of the more conservative leaders, who are unfortunately supported by most of the vocal American Jewish community."
Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter and the "Friends of Israel"

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Here is what Jimmy Carter has actually said:

"When Israel does occupy this territory deep within the West Bank, and connects the 200-or-so settlements with each other, with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or in many cases even crossing the road, this perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa."

Here is what Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League has said about Carter quoted in Haaretz:

"When you think about the charge that he has made that the Jewish people control the means of communication, it is odious. If the Jews controlled the media, how come he is traveling around the country speaking about this book on talk shows?

How are we really supposed to read Mr. Foxman's remark? Are we allowed to think that if Mr. Foxman himself actually controlled the media, a former president of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize winner wouldn't be able to travel freely around the United States of America and speak about his book on talk shows? Does Mr. Foxman feel frustrated because he can't manage to actually silence a former US president and Nobel Peace Prize winner?
As Jimmy Carter goes on to say:

"I feel completely at ease, I am not running for office. And I have Secret Service protection."

Can we interpret that to mean that if you don't have to look for work and you don't have 24 hour bodyguard service, you had better keep your mouth shut?

In a situation like this, with the Israeli right wing tied like an albatross around the neck of US policy, where the intimidation is this naked, what is very important is to witness that the Jewish community is not monolithic on this question. Here is what Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine has to say about former President Carter in Tom Paine:

Jimmy Carter was the best friend the Jews ever had as president of the United States. He is the only president to have actually delivered for the Jewish people an agreement (the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt) that has stood the test of time. Since the treaty, there have been bad vibes between Israel and Egypt, but never a return to war, once Israel fully withdrew from the territories it conquered in Egypt during the 1967 war. To get that agreement, Carter had to twist the arms of Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. Sometimes that is what real friends do—they push you into a path that is really in your best interest at times when there is an emergency and you are acting self-destructively. When the U.S. government is following a self-destructive policy, even a policy backed by people in both major political parties, its best friends are those who try to change its direction and are not afraid to offer intense critique. That’s why a majority of Americans, and 86 percent of American Jews, voted in the 2006 midterm elections to reject Bush’s war in Iraq and his policies suspending habeas corpus and legitimating wire-tapping and torture. Not because we were disloyal, but precisely because we love America enough to challenge its policies even when Vice President Cheney questions our loyalty. We know that critique is often an essential part of love and caring. That is precisely what Jimmy Carter is trying to do for Israel and the Jewish people in his new book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. So it’s astounding to see the assault on Carter that has been launched by the ADL chair Abe Foxman, law professor Alan Dershowitz and a bevy of other representatives of the Jewish community.(...) Jimmy Carter is speaking the truth as he knows it, and doing a great service to the Jews. Unfortunately, this peace is impeded by the powerful voices of AIPAC and the mainstream of the organized Jewish community, who manage to terrify even the most liberal elected officials into blind support of whatever policy the current government of Israel advocates. Ironically, this blind support has had the consequence of pushing many morally sensitive Christians and Jews to distance themselves from the Jewish world, which makes blind support for Israeli policies the litmus test of anti-Semitism. Younger Jews cannot safely express criticisms of Israeli policy without being told that they are disloyal or “self-hating,” and elected officials tell me privately that they agree with Tikkun’s more balanced “progressive Middle Path” which is both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine. But we’ve found that even Jews in the mainstream media have ignored or condemned our new organization, The Network of Spiritual Progressives, which is, among other things, trying to be an interfaith alternative to AIPAC. It’s time to create a new openness to criticism and a new debate. Jimmy Carter has shown courage in trying to open that kind of space with his new book, and he deserves our warm thanks and support.

The United State's position in the Middle East is disintegrating in great part because of supporting the policies of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Binjamin Netanyahu and Nathan Sharansky with arms, money and endless UN Security Council vetos. As the situation in the Middle East continues to disintegrate, America may even find itself defending the policies of a up and up fascist like Avigdor Lieberman in a like manner. Because of this disintegration, in a measurable space of time, we may very well find Americans having to bicycle to work, (if they still have jobs).The very worst thing that could happen to United States of America would be a wave of antisemitism. It could literally tear the country to pieces as it did to Spain and Germany. It may turn out that Jewish people settling in Palestine has been a terrible mistake. That would be a tragedy for the Jewish people and also for the Palestinian Arabs who have had to suffer so much for that dream. What would be the greatest tragedy for the American Jewish people, the rest of the American people and for the entire world who have derived so much benefit from this relationship, would be if the Jewish people's settling in the USA had also turned out to be a mistake. What the American Jewish people need most at this moment are less "Friends of Israel" and more just "simply friends"... and friends talk straight to their friends. DS

Antisemitism: a footnote - II

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Continuing from a previous post it important to underline that murderous, antisemitism still exists. The charming youngster in the photo on the right is a German neo-Nazi. Antisemites still exist and they hate Jews... all Jews, just as they always have. They would hate Tony Judt as much as the ADL or AIPAC apparently do... Not because of his political stand, but because he is Jewish, they don't consider him a "self-hating Jew". They don't need any Jewish help to hate Jews. They would hate Amira Hass or Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, or even Sandy Koufax if it came to that, simply because these people all are Jewish. It is not acceptable that people who make a reasonable criticism of Israel and its relationship with the United States, as former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter has, be hysterically smeared or that two well qualified and respected academics such as Mearsheimer and Walt be classed with the skinhead in our picture. This really can't continue. At this moment it is absolutely imperative for Americans to define the terms, "antisemite", "antisemitism" and "antisemitic", with great precision. Why? Because the United States is in the process of suffering (it is only beginning) the greatest humiliation of its entire history in Iraq. The origins of this war of choice are obscure and as its story unfolds and as the disaster and sense of humiliation deepens, Americans will want to get to the bottom of who was responsible. It appears at this point that the Israeli right wing have their fingerprints all over it. Their relation to the neocons and to AIPAC is going to be studied under a microscope. This is inevitable. With today's viral technology if the debate is suppressed, even the result of a "who killed Kennedy?" treatment of this subject would be devastating for US/Israeli relations. It is absolutely essential to distinguish the individuals and the specific organizations responsible and to avoid at all cost a "vee vas stabbed in der back," antisemitic surge, because that would literally tear the American social fabric apart as it did Spain's and Germany's before. It is absolutely essential that a natural surge of anti-Israeli feeling; natural, because it appears that a foreign country has led the USA into a great disaster, that these feelings not be turned against America's Jewish community, a community which is an essential, fundamental, part of the United States of America, warp and woof. Accusations of "double loyalty" should not be bandied about frivolously, the question of "double loyalty" has always existed in the USA, a country of immigrants. I'll give a personal example: as a boy I have been at parties with Irish-Americans, where the hat was passed for the IRA and it was soon filled up. The IRA is a terrorist organization and also a symbol of Irish independence and the US government has always frowned upon it, to say the least. The accusation of double loyalty never came up, because the USA has no strategic interest in Ireland or Britain's relation with Ireland. For the USA the "troubles" are a domestic issue for courting the Irish vote. Israel and American Jewish support of Israel has been more or less an element of US domestic politics (this is horribly unfair to the Palestinians) till now. That has changed forever. Israel's fatal mistake was to draw the USA into a military adventure which is tearing American power and prestige to shreds. This is going to cost Israel dearly, but there is no reason it should cost America's Jewish community. The only way it could is if this hysterical attacking of anyone who states the obvious as an antisemite, making them out to be like the fellow in the photo, continues unabated. Nobody likes to be insulted, not just Jewish people. DS

PS. Phil Weiss (who is Jewish and thus also hated by antisemites) has a "must read" post over at New York Observer, the subject is, "Jimmy Carter Can't Say What Jewish Critics of Israel Are Free to Say". He proceeds to cite Israel's famous UN Abba Eban, chapter and verse on the subject of Jewish pressure and influence in US politics.

Antisemitism: a footnote

David Seaton's News Links

Note to readers:

Antisemitism does exist. What is unacceptable is to lump ex-president and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State, James Baker with the brutish skinheads and "lager louts", who desecrate Jewish cemeteries and firebomb synagogues. This hysterical, attack dog strategy, with its Stalinist overtones, is debasing language to a point where "genteel antisemitism" may make a comeback. Is that what AIPAC and the ADL want? These strategies are neurotic and self-destructive. The debate is inevitably going to take place because America is being defeated in a war, whose origins are unclear. It would be good if America didn't turn into a mega-Bosnia because of it. DS

Baker Report "antisemitic" and Jimmy Carter is trashed: the battle is joined

David Seaton's News Links

The selection of neocon blogs from the Los Angeles Times below is a good sample of how this battle over Baker-Hamilton and Israel's influence on US policy is going to shape up. Most of the classic points are here, beginning with blanket charges of anti-Semitism, references to "Islamofascism" and of course "Munich" and Neville Chamberlain. Also in the LA Times is a brave piece by Jimmy Carter, certainly America's most underrated president, defending himself against the, by now, inevitable charges of antisemitism, where he says:
"Book reviews in the mainstream media have been written mostly by representatives of Jewish organizations who would be unlikely to visit the occupied territories, and their primary criticism is that the book is anti-Israel. Two members of Congress have been publicly critical. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for instance, issued a statement (before the book was published) saying that "he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel." Some reviews posted on Amazon.com call me "anti-Semitic," and others accuse the book of "lies" and "distortions." A former Carter Center fellow has taken issue with it, and Alan Dershowitz called the book's title "indecent."(...) The book describes the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank. An enormous imprisonment wall is now under construction, snaking through what is left of Palestine to encompass more and more land for Israeli settlers. In many ways, this is more oppressive than what blacks lived under in South Africa during apartheid. I have made it clear that the motivation is not racism but the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize choice sites in Palestine, and then to forcefully suppress any objections from the displaced citizens. Obviously, I condemn any acts of terrorism or violence against innocent civilians, and I present information about the terrible casualties on both sides. The ultimate purpose of my book is to present facts about the Middle East that are largely unknown in America, to precipitate discussion and to help restart peace talks (now absent for six years) that can lead to permanent peace for Israel and its neighbors. Another hope is that Jews and other Americans who share this same goal might be motivated to express their views, even publicly, and perhaps in concert. I would be glad to help with that effort. "
A selection of neocon bloggers from the Los Angeles Times

Roger Simon:

Is James Baker the biggest American anti-Semite since Father Coughlin[?]

Charles Johnson:

All these recommendations stem from a basis of complete fantasy, in which Israel's Arab neighbors are genuinely interested in peace and all we have to do to get it is ask them the right way.

Michael Brandon McClellan:

The report is thus simultaneously both unoriginal and ridiculous.

David Horowitz:

The news is sickening to every decent soul except to the Islamic Nazis and their friends in the international left and the delusional folk who think that if America leaves Iraq the terrorists will leave too (Speaker Pelosi actually made that precise comment this October). Talking to the Hitler in Teheran and the Arab Mussolini in Damascus makes perfect sense to the contemporary Chamberlains -- Baker, Hamilton (he of the capitulate to the Sandinistas crowd). I never thought I would live to see a day when the last years of the Thirties would be repeated, let alone by Americans. But there it is.

Hugh Hewitt:

Of the 43 "former officials and experts" consulted --including Mark Danner of the New York Review of Books, Thomas Friedman, Leslie Gelb, Sandy Berger, Anthony Lake, Ken Pollack, Thomas Ricks, and George Will-- the ISG did not find it necessary to talk with, say, Victor Davis Hanson, Lawrence Wright, Robert Kaplan, Mark Steyn, Michael Ledeen, Reuel Marc Gerecht, or Christopher Hitchens. The ISG did talk with Bill Kristol. I wonder how long that sit down lasted?

The report combines an almost limitless condescension towards the "Iraqi sovereign government," even going so far as to lay out a timetable for its exact legislative program for the next six months, with a cavalier indifference to the Syrian death squads operating in Lebanon, and the certain nature ofDS the Iranian regime --still, on this very day, hosting the anti-Holocaust conference.

It is a wonder, this bit of appeasement virtuosity, and I think it will gain for its authors all the lasting fame that has attached itself to the name Samuel Hoare, and his brainchild, the Hoare-Laval Agreement.

This battle is going to be the most fierce and wrenching in the United States since the anti-slavery debates of the 1850s. It is absolutely essential that it take place, the air must be cleared. What is so tragic is that this debate about Israel's and its lobby's influence on American policy could only take place in the context of of America's huge failure in Iraq. DS