The article calls it "an event that would turn a page in American history," but it's really just proof once again that former President Dhimmi Carter learned nothing from the crisis with Iran that occurred during his administration. The Carter Center in Atlanta is making preparations for the possible visit by Khatami, doubtlessly considered another "fellow man of faith," as Carter once referred to Ayatollah Khomeini.
From the Washington Post: "Carter Agrees to Hold Talks With Khatami"
For an event that would turn a page in American history, former president Jimmy Carter has agreed in principle to host former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami for talks during his visit to the United States starting this week.
Carter's term as president was dominated by the rupture in relations after the 1979 Iranian revolution and the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, where 52 Americans were held for 444 days until the day he left office.
Iranians made the overture for the meeting, and the Carter Center in Atlanta is working on the possible timing, said Phil Wise, the former president's aide.
"President Carter, in his role since leaving the White House, has made his office and services and center available to basically anybody who wants to talk. He believes that it is much better to be talking to people who you have problems with than not to, and that's the approach he takes now," Wise said. "I can confirm that President Carter is open to a meeting if the former president of Iran would like to have one."
Despite mounting tensions between Washington and Tehran over the latter's nuclear program, the Bush administration issued a visa for Khatami yesterday, as well as for about a dozen family and staff members, for a visit lasting about two weeks, the State Department confirmed. Khatami is expected to arrive in the United States tomorrow.
Khatami, a reformer who served as president from 1997 to 2005, is scheduled to speak at the Washington National Cathedral on Sept. 7. His schedule may include speeches at the University of Virginia and to an Islamic group in Chicago. He may also pay a private visit to Thomas Jefferson's home at Monticello, according to sources familiar with his trip. He will begin his visit in New York at a U.N. conference on the dialogue of civilizations.
The White House said yesterday that Khatami had been invited by private organizations and is not part of the current Iranian government.
[...]
"Carter, who has every reason to be angry about the way in which the Iranian revolution undid his presidency over the hostage affair, is willing to meet, with no hesitation, a person who was president of the Islamic republic and who has never disavowed Ayatollah Khomeini's actions when he was supreme leader," said William Quandt, a national security staffer in charge of the Middle East during the Carter administration.
Carter is a genuine cretin. Had I been Carter, and my reputation had been soiled by the Iran crisis, regardless of my politics, I would have hated every Iranian representative of that regime that ever followed.
Some people never learn.
Peanut Khadr is truly an ongoing embarrassment, a disgrace and a traitor to the nation.
It is hard to understand that people don't openly spit on him, or just drive the message home in such a way that this vain and arrogant lunatic stays out of public life once and for all...
Once again our weakest president in the last 75 years will have a conversation with a member of the mullahstocracy that he helped to install by turning his back on the Sha of Iran and allowing for the transformation of the exiled Khomeini to leave Paris and return to make Iran what it is today.
This is the President who openly stated that he was overwhelmed by the job of being President. He helped bring us the highest interest rates ever(18PCT plus), he brought us odd, and even license plate gas days in 1978 because the oil companies claimed they couldn't keep up with demand, and he couldn't budge the Iranian Mulahocracy that he helped install after they violated international law by attacking and kidnapping American Embassy personal for 444 days.
Dhimmi Carter still remains an enigma for me as to why the American people ever voted this man into the Presidency of United States when he had no working knowledge of international affairs in the middle east theatre.
Just Carter? Why not the other great architects of the Abandonment of the Shah, and of the Resistible but Hardly Resisted (by America) Rise of Ayatollah Khomeini? Why not bring along Zbigniew Brzezinski, he who loves that word "strategic" and of course "Iran expert" Gary Sick, author of that absurd book that cost taxpayers millions for Congress to investigate and find completely without merit. Or even Robert Hunter, and don't forget Shirin, now resident "expert" on something -- "terrorism"? "Islam"? "the Clash of Civilizations?" at some think-tankery.
Has Carter forgotten the total humiliation heaped on him by the Iranians.
They did not release the hostages until the moment Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President.
Carter was an embarassment to the USA when he was President and now he is even more of a idiot.
I seem to remember in 1979 he said he wasn't going to come out of the White House until those brave hostages were released. His reputation, and ability to handle the situation in the fall of 1979 makes George W Bush today seem like George Washington in comparison.
Carter was deranged then and he is worse now, as are those who gave Katami a visa.
I believe Carter was cursed more by sheer half-witted stupidity than arrogance. Stupid people don't know they're stupid.
Either way, Carter's bordering on treason by hosting this self-proclaimed enemy of the US, although he'll never be able to see it as such.
Mr. Carter certainly has to be one of the very worst U.S. Presidents of the 20th century. He was outwitted at every turn by opponents as varied as Khomeini, Castro, Brother Billy and the "killer rabbit." He continues to be a dangerous incompetent, completely out of his league. why in the name of all that is holy did he have to become presient instead of becoming a Baptist minister?
"Whore for rent to Iranian pooh bah" Call the Carter Center for a good time
This news item is totally surreal. Khatami should not be allowed to ever set foot on American soil, let alone be permitted to deliver new subversive marching orders to his Islamic minions in Virginia and Chicago.
Is there not a patriotic federal judge out there somewhere who would issue a warrant for Khatami's arrest? That is a page I'd like to see turned in American history.
In 1979, then-President Jimmy Carter was ridiculed across the United States when he claimed that while on a fishing trip he was attacked by a vicious animal, "hissing menacingly, its teeth flashing, and nostrils flared." Carter reported that he was able to defend himself with a canoe paddle. The animal was... a rabbit, soon dubbed by the press as the "Killer Rabbit."
The delusional Carter looked at a different hissing menace -- Yasser Arafat, about whom the late King Hussein of Jordan reportedly said, "Arafat never came to a bridge he didn't double-cross." But Carter's conclusion: Arafat is the "legitimate" leader of the Palestinians.
Carter delusional as usual; observed the Palestinian Authority under Arafat as a bastion of democracy: "Palestinians conducted a peaceful, transparent election in 1996, which my center monitored, and chose a president and Palestinian Authority members who were universally accepted as legitimate...
Carter presented Arafat as a prince of peace: In 1993 he said the Norwegians proved in Oslo that Rabin could deal directly with Yasser Arafat as the Palestinians' leader. On both sides, this was an unprecedented recognition of the other's legitimacy." But Arafat never recognized Israel's legitimacy. His television, radio, schools and religious institutions repeat a relentless anti-Israel war chant. His Arabic-language speeches are calls to jihad. Analysts clearlyunderstood that Arafat had never repealed the Palestinian Covenant calling for Israel's destruction.
Carter reviewed the history of Arab-Israeli negotiations in his column, but curiously ignored the Camp David talks in July 2000 where Arafat refused to negotiate over Israel's unprecedented concessions. Carter attacked the "hundreds" of Israeli settlements (Peace Now claims fewer than 150) that leads to the "remaining unoccupied Palestinian lands appear[ing] as small, isolated red splotches."
Splotches? U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross has repeatedly stated that the Israeli offers would have granted the Palestinians contiguous control of West Bank land.
Carter concludes that the U.S. can no longer play an even-handed negotiating role because it is "aligned today with Israel and making demands that Palestinians will not accept." Incredibly, Carter suggests that "other world leaders -- perhaps in the Arab world, Europe or the United Nations" should get involved in negotiations. Does Carter expect a fair deal out of a historically anti-Israel coalition?
Former President Carter continues to live with this DHIMMIWIT view of these two such obvious clashing ideologies that has really made it clear that there will never be peace in the Middle East until Israel is wiped off the map.
The images of Dhimmi Carter, and the antisemite terrorist Yasser Arafat receiving Nobel Peace prizes still turns my stomach today with a relfection of such overwhelming ignorance displayed by that one noble committee.
What would Alfred say if he where alive today?
Sometimes when I look at all my children, I say to myself, "Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin."
- Lillian Carter, mother of the former President
This venemous toad of a man, all puffed up with self-righteousness, is a very dangerous, meddling fool. Were he to stick to peanuts, something he at least knows something about, things would be fine. That our weakest, most ineffectual ex-President continues to give cover to every broken-down dictator and enemy of America will, I hope, be seen by future historians as his true legacy.
When enumerating the Carter regime's zombies, let's not forget William Quandt, quoted above, a fugitive from the Rand Corp. and now one of the undead creatures coming back to haunt us from the black lagoon of the Carter Presidency. Yet, Zbig's ominous shadow hangs over us more than any other.
On the other hand, it was George W and his minions, true enemies of terrorism all of them, who gave a visa to one of those turbanned freaks now sullying the land of the Achaemenids and the Sassanids.
[by the way, was it a killer rabbit or a killer duck that Jiminy Cricket slaughtered in the name of peace & democracy?]
Jiminy's brother Billy was such a notorious souse that a brand of beer was named after him. Yet, Billy was sincerer than Jiminy. Billy admitted that he loved the big money that he was getting from Libya.
There was a song, written by Tom Paxton I believe, about the killer bunny, swimming in the pond and resolutely attacking the leader of the free world, Jimmy Carter. If memory serves, the words go something like:
"I dont' want a bunny-wunny
In my widdle wo boat
In my widdle wo boat
In the pond!
"Cuz the bunny might be cwazy
'N he'll bite me in my fwoat
In my widdle wo boat
In the pond."
I have never heard whether President Carter and the rabbit reconciled, but if they did I hope that the rabbit was sincerely contrite.
I'm sure that Mr. Khatami will be at least as contrite as the rabbit.
Has Mike Wallace volunteered as cheerleader?
Give teh guy a break. He was senile even when he was in offive.
We all know Carter is a Cretin, but for us to allow that Iranian Islamofacist to even enter the home of Thomas Jefferson is the ultimate slap. It is a dishonor to the memory of Jefferson to allow people who adhere to the very values that our country was ridding itself of in 1776 to even see Monticello...and Khatami is getting a private tour? I doubt Khatami would even bother to wipe his feet. If I lived in Virginia I'd be planning a sit-in to prevent that evil creep from even driving up the driveway. Gee, do you think THAT would make the news?
Ok, so how many times does a "good" Christian have to "turn the other cheek" before he/she gets his silly, do-gooder head sliced off?
Mr. Carter is certainly an "interesting" character: I hope he doesn't take us all down with him.
"Sometimes when I look at all my children, I say to myself, "Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin."
- Lillian Carter, mother of the former President
Posted by: Shy Guy
ROTFL - that is brillance, people.
Ha Ha
The way I heard it, Jimmy apologized to the rabbit and offered him a lucrative government contract as recompense.
My man Walid Phares keeping the education ball rolling over at Counterrorism Blog:
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2006/08/on_the_axis_of_jihadism_1.php
We can all hope that Carter will take him as a hostage and keep him for 444 days. Make sure to feed and beat him daily.
We know this won't happen.
Has anyone interviewed any of the original 444 Iranian hostages to get their opinions about this? Or has everyone forgotten them in the MSM?
that Khatami would be even invited to visit Monticello shows that persons in the State Dept, White House, and Virginia state govt, have no respect for what Jefferson stood for, that is, they no longer respect civilization.
Recently on CNN's Larry King Peanut Khadr was asked whether he sees his 4-year presidency as a failure. He answered "No, I see the fact that I was elected to the presidency was a great success in itself..."
Never mind the disastrous consequences of his 'leadership!' Never mind the catastrophic fall-out from his obvious failures! This deluded fool still believes he has a place in history, if only! If only he would just lay low, never to be heard of again until ....
Jill Carroll was on CNN tonight, babbling & blubbering away like waterfall.
She "learned a lot" she sez. She learned that whole families are 'in on it', that the women & the children are actually 'insurgents' and that would mean that to fight effectively we would have to wipe all of them out etc....
Well, I wonder did it take her being in captivity for months to find that out? Is there anybody at all who doesn't understand that yet? That IS how Mohammedans 'fight'- thats how Hizzbollah fought from behind women & children... welcome to the brave world of the Jihad-warriors...
Interesting times ahead!
Hey there,
Love the site...I linked your site to mine. Would you mind doing the same for me?
www.americanlegends.blogspot.com
I look forward to reading yours from now on...
Thank you!
Take care,
Mark
Great. Maybe we could arrange to have Hizbollah kidnap him for a hefty ransome--and that would give us justification to NOT come up with the mula and so, alas, leave the moron in Iran for the remainder of his life.
We could even turn this plot into a movie: "RUTHLESS PEOPLE 2: CARTER STUCK IN IRAN"
Why all the focus on the egregious Carter? Spread it around. Clinton bombed Christians in the Balkans for daring to resist perpetual Jihad war there. And now Bush is permitting one of the world's top Jihadist to lurk in the shadows where the Twin Towers once stood.
Maybe this esteemed Mujihadeen can be in the audience as Dubya commits hundreds of millions of American taxpayer dollars to Hizbullah in the form of civilian relief.
There is no such thing as a Moslem civilian, but never mind that.
Your sophomoric ad hominem "arguments" aside, Carter's willingness to meet with anyone speaks to his strong moral character. He is a statesman in an era when cowboys rule. Jimmy Carter is without doubt one of the most active and influential ex-presidents in American history.
After leaving office, he established the nonprofit Carter Center in Atlanta, tasked with advancing human rights around the world. Through his and the center’s work, Carter has helped monitor more than 60 democratic elections, worked with governments in sub-Saharan Africa to develop sustainable agriculture, negotiated for peaceful conflict resolution in various countries, and worked to eradicate diseases such as Guinea worm and river blindness. For these and other efforts, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Carter–whose presidency was highlighted by achievements in international diplomacy such as the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, the Panama Canal treaties, and the arms-reducing SALT II treaty with the Soviet Union—is also the author of 20 books. The most recent, Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis, is a wide-ranging critique of how fundamentalism, both religious and political, is influencing American policy at home and abroad.
Jimmy Carter's involvement with Habitat for Humanity International began in 1984 when the former president led a work group to New York City to help renovate a six-story building with 19 families in need of decent, affordable shelter. That experience planted the seed, and the Jimmy Carter Work Project has been an internationally recognized event of HFHI ever since.
Each year, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter give a week of their time—along with their construction skills—to build homes and raise awareness of the critical need for affordable housing. The JCWP is held at a different location each year, and attracts volunteers from around the world.
I guess you missed this. If you are Zell Miller in disguise, Carter bitch-slapped you in the nicest Southern tradition:
"You seem to have forgotten that loyal Democrats elected you as mayor and as state senator. Loyal Democrats, including members of my family and me, elected you as lieutenant governor and as governor. It was a loyal Democrat, Lester Maddox, who assigned you to high positions in the state government when you were out of office. It was a loyal Democrat, Roy Barnes, who appointed you as U.S. Senator when you were out of office. By your historically unprecedented disloyalty, you have betrayed our trust.
Great Georgia Democrats who served in the past, including Walter George, Richard Russell, Herman Talmadge, and Sam Nunn disagreed strongly with the policies of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and me, but they remained loyal to the party in which they gained their public office. Other Democrats, because of philosophical differences or the race issue, like Bo Callaway and Strom Thurmond, at least had the decency to become Republicans.
Everyone knows that you were chosen to speak at the Republican Convention because of your being a “Democrat,” and it’s quite possible that your rabid and mean-spirited speech damaged our party and paid the Republicans some transient dividends.
Perhaps more troublesome of all is seeing you adopt an established and very effective Republican campaign technique of destroying the character of opponents by wild and false allegations. The Bush campaign’s personal attacks on the character of John McCain in South Carolina in 2000 was a vivid example. The claim that war hero Max Cleland was a disloyal American and an ally of Osama bin Laden should have given you pause, but you have joined in this ploy by your bizarre claims that another war hero, John Kerry, would not defend the security of our nation except with spitballs. (This is the same man whom you described previously as “one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders -- and a good friend.")
I, myself, never claimed to have been a war hero, but I served in the navy from 1942 to 1953, and, as president, greatly strengthened our military forces and protected our nation and its interests in every way. I don’t believe this warrants your referring to me as a pacificist.
Zell, I have known you for forty-two years and have, in the past, respected you as a trustworthy political leader and a personal friend. But now, there are many of us loyal Democrats who feel uncomfortable in seeing that you have chosen the rich over the poor, unilateral preemptive war over a strong nation united with others for peace, lies and obfuscation over the truth, and the political technique of personal character assassination as a way to win elections or to garner a few moments of applause. These are not the characteristics of great Democrats whose legacy you and I have inherited."
Take it like a man, Zell.
Roger, the last paragraph of your post above says it all. Anyone who would say that Republicans favor the rich over the poor, unilateral preemptive war over a strong nation united with others for peace, etc., is really not participating in thoughtful debate.
How interesting that Neville Chamberlain chose to unite in peace with Hitler's Germany in spite of that nation's aggression and failed to honor England's treaties with its allies. The result? A terrible, costly war. Had the treaty nations merely come to the defense of the countries invaded by Hitler, he and his political and military power would have been crushed immediately.
Instead, they dilly-dallied and tried oh so hard to appease as he gathered power and strength, emboldened by his successes. The fruits of appeasement were harvested by the millions of slaughtered people as Germany, for some reason, was not satisfied with the territory they had invaded up to that point.
If you think the above comments of Carter's are a "bitch-slapping" to Zell Miller, you are mistaken. I don't completely despise Carter, but he is just plain wrong in thinking that people that want war will be pacified if only we treat them with respect and come to them in peace.
And his presidency WAS an embarrassment. It set the tone from that point on in terms of seeing people disrespect an embassy and terrorize embassy personnel.
I thought everyone understood that you do not deal with terrorists, because you don't reward uncivilized behavior by acting as though the perpetrator is worthy of recognition. Like a child throwing a tantrum in the corner, we should be IGNORING those that choose to live and behave in violent, animalistic ways. God help us if we don't learn this very soon.
Roger wrote:
No. Not at all. It speaks to his lack of moral judgment. Whether he admits it or not, or whether you want to admit it or not, there are some people on this planet that we shouldn't dignify by talking with them except to demand their surrender. There was only one thing the Government had to say to Jeffrey Dahmer: "You're under arrest."
The day came when the Allies stopped listening to anything Hitler had to say. Even Chamberlain stopped listening. Apparently Carter has no limit beyond which he will not go.
Infinite malleability is a sign of no morals. It's like someone who says "I love my wife, but if she's raped I'll still try to see things from the rapist's point of view."
I have no idea why you brought up Zell Miller (talk about ad hominem attacks, yours was a classic). Therefore everything you said from that point on was totally irrelevant to the discussion we're having.
Why doesn't he just go away....
Alarmed Pig Farmer: Although the Balkans have indeed been fighting off Islamic jihadist insurgents for 900 years (which ranks among the great horrors inflicted on our world by Islam), that is not the only conflict going on there. So I think it is somewhat unfair and oversimplified to state that the Clinton Adminstration was knowingly assisting jihadists against Christians in the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s. There have been serious conflicts among Christian ethnicities such as Serbs against Croatians and Montenegrans in the region. Many people in the region still pledge their allegiance to Communist ideology which carries its own threats to stability in the region. You'll remmember Milosevic was arrested for corruption charges by his own people. I would not mistake Milosevic for a good guy anywhere, even if he IS non-Muslim.
You'll notice that no former Yugoslavian states have made notable overtures to put the old Yugoslavian nation back together. No one there apparently misses Serbian domination. Certainly none of the former Yugoslav states are making overtures to befriend Islamic Bosnia or Albania either.
But I will agree that the Clinton Administration failed to come up with a cohesive plan to deal with Islamic insurgency in the Balkans. Not even 9-11 seemed to get the US government moving on that.
Miserable and deranged old fool, certifiably the worst U.S. President, a useful idiot-turned traitor.
In November 2004 Amir Taheri, an Iranian long exiled in Paris and now in the United States, wrote a very acute column on the role played by Carter, and Brzezinski (and Andrew Young puts in his own ineffable appearance), in solidifying the hold of Khomeini over Iran.
Here is that column:
'AMERICA CAN'T DO A THING'
by Amir Taheri
New York Post
November 2, 2004
"AMERICANS will certainly have 9/11 in mind when they vote today. But they should keep another date in mind, too — one almost exactly a quarter-century ago: Nov. 4, 1979. A clear path runs to 9/11 from the day of the raid on the U.S. embassy in Tehran and the seizure of American hostages.
The 1979 embassy attack came at a time when the administration of President Jimmy Carter was trying to prop up the new Khomeinist regime in Tehran.
Carter had decided to support Khomeini in the context of the so-called "Green Belt" strategy developed by National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. That strategy was based on the assumption that the United States and its allies were unable to contain the Soviet Union, then expanding its zone of influence into Africa, the Indian Ocean region and, through left-leaning regimes, in Latin America. To counter that expanding threat, Brzezinski envisaged the creation of a string of Islamic allies that, for religious and political reasons, would prefer the United States against the "godless" Soviet empire.
The second stage in Brzezinski's grand strategy was to incite the Muslim peoples of the Soviet Union to revolt against Moscow and thus frustrate its global schemes.
The Bzrezinski strategy had been partly inspired by Helene Carrere d'Encausse, who, in her book "The Fragmented Empire," predicted the disintegration of the Soviet Union as a result of revolts by Muslim minorities.
When the Islamic revolution started in Iran, the Carter administration saw it as the confirmation of its assumption that only Islamists could muster enough popular support to provide an alternative to both the existing regime and the pro-Soviet leftist movements.
The Carter administration went out of its way to support the new regime in Tehran. A ban imposed on the sale of arms and materiel to Iran, imposed in 1978, was lifted, and a 1954 presidential "finding" by Dwight Eisenhower was dusted off to reaffirm Washington's commitment to defending Iran against Soviet or other threats.
Also to symbolize support for the mullahs, President Carter initially rejected a visa application for the exiled shah to travel to New York for medical treatment.
Just weeks after the mullahs' regime was formed, Brzezinski traveled to Morocco to meet Mehdi Bazargan, Ayatollah Khomeini's first prime minister. At the meeting, Brzezinski invited the new Iranian regime to enter into a strategic partnership with the United States. Bazargan, concerned that the Iranian left might bid for power against the still wobbly regime of the mullahs, was "ecstatic" about the American offer.
The embassy raid came just days after the Brzezinski-Bazargan meeting in Morocco and, by all accounts, took Khomeini by surprise. It is now clear that leftist groups opposed to rapprochement with the United States had inspired the raid.
Khomeini saw it as a leftist ploy to undermine his authority. He was also concerned about the possibility of the United States taking strong military and political action against his still fragile regime.
Deciding to hedge his bets, the ayatollah played a double game for several days, waiting to gauge the American reaction.
According to his late son Ahmad, who had been asked to coordinate with the embassy-raiders, the ayatollah feared "thunder and lightning" from Washington. But what came, instead, was a series of bland statements by Carter and his aides pleading for the release of the hostages on humanitarian grounds.
Carter's envoy to the United Nations, a certain Andrew Young, described Khomeini as "a 20th-century saint," and begged the ayatollah to show "magnanimity and compassion."
Carter went further by sending a letter to Khomeini.
Written in longhand, it was an appeal from "one believer to a man of God."
Carter's syrupy prose must have amused Khomeini, who preferred a minimalist style with such phrases as "we shall cut off America's hands."
As days passed, with the U.S. diplomats paraded in front of TV cameras blindfolded and threatened with execution, it became increasingly clear that there would be no "thunder and lightning" from Washington. By the end of the first week of the drama (which was to last for 444 days, ending as Ronald Reagan entered the White House), Khomeini's view of America had changed.
Ahmad Khomeini's memoirs echo the surprise that his father, the ayatollah, showed, as the Carter administration behaved "like a headless chicken."
What especially surprised Khomeini was that Cater and his aides, notably Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, rather than condemning the seizure and the treatment of the hostages as a barbarous act, appeared apologetic for unspecified mistakes supposedly committed by the United States and asked for forgiveness and magnanimity.
Once he had concluded that America would not take any meaningful action against his regime, Khomeini took over control of the hostage enterprise and used it to prop up his "anti-imperialist" credentials while outflanking the left.
The surprising show of weakness from Washington also encouraged the mullahs and the hostage-holders to come up with a fresh demand each day. Started as a revolutionary gesture, the episode soon led to a demand for the United States to capture and hand over the shah for trial. When signals came that Washington might actually consider doing so, other demands were advanced. The United States was asked to apologize to Muslim peoples everywhere and, in effect, change its foreign policy to please the ayatollah.
Matters worsened when a military mission to rescue the hostages ended in tragedy in the Iranian desert. The force dispatched by Carter fled under the cover of night, leaving behind the charred bodies of eight of their comrades.
In his memoirs, Ahmad nicely captures the mood of his father, who had expected the Americans to do "something serious," such as threatening to block Iran's oil exports or even firing a few missiles at the ayatollah's neighborhood.
But not only did none of that happen, the Carter administration was plunged into internal feuds as Vance resigned in protest of the rescue attempt.
It was then that Khomeini coined his notorious phrase, "America cannot do a damn thing."
He also ordered that the slogan "Death to America" be inscribed in all official buildings and vehicles. The U.S. flag was to be painted at the entrance of airports, railway stations, ministries, factories, schools, hotels and bazaars so that the faithful could trample it under their feet every day.
The slogan "America cannot do a damn thing" became the basis of all strategies worked out by Islamist militant groups, including those opposed to Khomeini.
That slogan was tested and proved right for almost a quarter of a century. Between Nov. 4, 1979, and 9/11, a total of 671 Americans were held hostage for varying lengths of time in several Muslim countries. Nearly 1,000 Americans were killed, including 241 Marines blown up while sleeping in Beirut in 1983.
For 22 years the United States, under presidents from both parties, behaved in exactly the way that Khomeini predicted. It took countless successive blows, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, without decisive retaliation. That attitude invited, indeed encouraged, more attacks.
The 9/11 tragedy was the denouement of the Nov. 4 attack on the U.S. embassy in Tehran."
The shallow machiavellanism of Brzezinski, with his notion that Islam was not to be worried about because it was a "bulwark against Communism" and Muslims could help destroy the Soviet Union (as it turned out, the Soviet Union did not disintegrate, pace Helene Carrere d'Encausse or Alexandre Bennigsen, or especially Zbigniew Brezinski, but because of the disaffection that extended beyond the highest classes of the intelligentsia, to those who were in the nomenklatura, and whose children often attended school, with the children of those dissidents, in such prestiguous places of higher education as the Institut Vostochnykh Yazykov (Institute of Eastern Languages), and of course Reagan's refusal to permanently contemplate mere "co-existence," and the attitude of his adminsitration, had a galvanizing effect on many in Russia. As for Brzezinski's notion that the "Muslim peoples" would rise up against Soviet power -- there was no hint of it, even if some Muslim soldiers did betray their non-Muslim fellow soldiers in the army in Afghanistan. Brzezinski was not slightly wrong about Islam and about Iran -- he was totally, completely wrong. His mind was incapable of managing to think clearly about Islam; he was a child of the Cold War and possessed a fixation on Russia that went beyond any hostility to or fear of Communism.
Carter was, and remains, a sappy-sentimentalist, one who has shown his spots repeatedly, as in his offer to advise Arafat on public-relations, and in his ill-concealed antipathy to Begin, and of course his utter inability to empathize with, or even to understand, what the Israelis face, and what worries them. And part of his sappy sentimentalism was his belief -- far more advanced a case than anything that Bush has presented -- that people "of faith" are necessarily good people. As Taheri notes above, "[w]ritten in longhand, it was an appeal from 'one believer to a man of God.'" Yes, that was Khomeini through and through, for Jimmy Carter: a "man of God."
Andrew Young's description of Khomeini as a "20th-century saint" needs no comment.
These were the people in charge of the government of the United States , from January of 1977 to January 1981, the period when the Shah fell and Khomeini rose, and consolidated his power, and had his Judge Khalkhali start the judicial executions (beginning with prominent Jews and Bahais) and forced through the legislation that mattered to him most – and what came first was the reduction in the age at which girls could be married (or forced to marry), to nine years, on the model of little Aisha.
That was the Carter, that was how he and Brezinski saw Iran. And neither one has ever shown the slightest embarrassment, expressed the slightest regret, over their colossal series of errors. Nothing Bush has done, stupid and obstinate as he has been in refusing to recognize the ethnic and sectarian fissures within Iraq as useful, as something to be encouraged, has approached what they did, in their four awful years, when the sum total of their accomplishments was to force Israel to turn over, in three tranches, the entire Sinai to Egypt (and to confuse Saint Sadat, or the presumed Saint Sadat, with Egypt), and to let Khomeini, all of whose views had long before been set down by the Ayatollah, but who – Gary Sick? – in the Administration was capable of reading Farsi, or even thinking of getting someone to find out what this Ayatollah was all about – no one did. Yes, and there was one more thing: the oil price rise of 1979, when a leader might have roused the public, might have insisted on a Manhattan Project. Carter put on a sweater, and gave a fireside chat. His conduct of foreign policy was a series of one disaster after another. Yet he continues with his holier-than-thou performances, including that visit to North Korea where he cleared up everything for us, didn’t he? Posterity will not be kind to him, or to the egregious Brzezinske, who deserved him, and whom he deserved.
The 'issue' haunting Jimmy Carter's every move in(and out)of office, even his public leaving of the Southern Baptist Church, is the Jews. Oh, Jimmy just loved the Jews. I'm sure I believe his renunciation of the Southern Baptists vis-a-vis the issue of treatment of woman(his reason given); me suspects it was their steadfast, zealous support of Israel. It was too much for Jimmy to take. Yes, he is an idiot. Yes, he is an America laster, but from Begin to Ed Koch, he never found one he liked(Mr. Chomsky excluded). Lebanon, Iran, Iraq . . . all in his world view with Israel as proxy for the Jews . . . all are tied in.
He's not running for President again. He has no need to pander to Mayor Bloomberg. He must have been fuming in the oval office with the Iranian humiliation, but perplexed as well. He must have though of the Iranians: 'If they only knew my heart, they would release the hostages.' When there isn't an obvious Jewish angle, then he sides with American haters like Chavez.
He was a mean spirited boob. The best day in America was when Ronnie took the helm. The difference in every way between the two was so obvious. The sulking, brooding, mean-spirited, Jew-hating Carter; the classy, optimistic, driven Gipper, full of optimism, God, truth and love of America. I doubt the Gipper was incapable of hate towards anyone.
Brzeniski, the kid Zbig, was haunted by another specter; a hatred of communism. He saw, first-hand, the devil of communism in Poland. I bought it all as well, hook, line and sinker. But, now, looking at the world, we aided the wrong side in the Afghan War; we should have bombed the Muslims. This brings another point to mind: Islam is an ungrateful religion. Where is the gratitude for Kuwait, Kabul and Kosovo. We aided the wrong side EACH TIME. And a lot of good it did us. How they loved us and appreciated our aid and American blood.
"Destroyed my own country's economy, military, intelligence services, foreign policy (btw, what's that all about?), left my loyal employees in the dungeons of the most depraved terrorists outside of the Soviet Union, and spent the next twenty years and more undermining the 'values' of 'liberty', 'free enterprise', 'truth', 'integrity', _whatEVER_, at every opportunity, and...
"...All I got was this stupid (but endearing) "Death to America" t-shirt.
"At least it fits.
"Perfectly."
Jimmy
Dhimmi Carter Wants to Meet with Khatami - Video
Directions to Khatami for finding the Carter Center:
Dear sir,
Go to Atlanta, on the corner of Appeasement Street and Kowtow Avenue you will see a red building. That is the Carter Center.
Youll know it by the large white flag flying proudly from the flagpole.
Let us know when you will arrive and we will make sure all of our female employees are either out of sight or properly covered.
P.S. Dont worry about coming into contact with any dirty jews, there arent any here (we dont like them either).
Sincerely,
The Guy Who Sat On His Thumb While You Debased Our Embassy and Humiliated Our Citizens
Roger, you seem to think that Jiminy Cricket set up his Carter Center for spreading "human rights," as Jiminy himself says. Yet, I don't hear Carter worrying about the Blacks being murdered in the Sudan. Just because his family had KuKluxKlan ties [like Ramsey Clark's family] doesn't mean that he doesn't care whether the Arabs in Sudan murder Blacks. I am only saying that Jiminy, on all his trips to Arab states where they pay fat fees for titled speakers --however idiotic, never seems to have audibly raised the issue of the Sudan.
Then, Roger claims that the Camp David accords of 1978 were some sort of achievement. I see them as a defeat for Israel. We don't really have peace with Egypt, although there is an Israeli ambassador in Cairo. Egypt is still an enemy waiting for a chance to strike. Now, in the Egyptian context, if Carter were so fond of human rights, as he claims, then he would long ago have demanded equality of treatment for the Coptic minority, the purest descendants of the original Egyptians. Yet, the condition of the Copts in Egypt has worsened since Carter became president. Indeed, Prof. Walid Phares has written that the Copts' situation worsened precisely because of the Camp David accords, which gave encouragement to the jihadists in Egypt [pace Phares].
So Roger could kindly stop telling the world about Carter's virtues whereas they are very few compared to his vices.
Jimmy Peanut is looking more and more like Ramsey Clark with every passing day. What a disgraceful, treasonous old fool.
"Brzeznski, the kid Zbig, was haunted by another specter; a hatred of communism. He saw, first-hand, the devil of communism in Poland. I bought it all as well, hook, line and sinker."
-- from a posting above
Brzezinski was born in 1928, and lived in Poland for all of three years, long before the Communists arrived. Nor could it be said that he "witnessed firsthand the Nazis"; his father, a diplomat, was posted to Germany from 1931 to 1935; Brzezinski was aged 3 to 7. Not exactly someone who would be keenly aware, say, of the elections, or of Roehm and the Night of the Long Knives. Of course, personal experience is greatly overrated for an understanding of the world, as compared to specific and detailed knowledge, and intelligence.
Brzezinski never ever gave any signs of understanding Islam. He did give signs of his antipathy to Israel, which might conceivably explain his reluctance to even begin to figure out that Islam might even be more of a danger, because of greater world-wide appeal, and because there is not as yet any way to demonstrate the failures of Islam; the failures of Communism as a politico-economic system were demonstrated, demonstrated to the satisfaction of, inter alia, Aleksandr Yakovlev, Gorbachev, and others.
It is instructive to compare Brzezinski with someone of intelligence, who did live through the early years of Communism in Poland. Czeslaw Milosz, in an early essay on the constant lying required by every one in a Communist state, titled that essay "Ketman" (a spelling of "Kitman"), in a reference to the "mental reservation" practiced by Muslims, a variant of course on the by-now well-known "taqiyya." Neith Milosz, nor Bronislaw Geremek, nor Zbigniew Herbert, nor Wislava Szymborska, would have had, or would have, trouble seening right to the heart of Islam. Brzezinski still doesn't. He can't allow himself to, for it would require a recognition of what the Carter Administration did, and Brzezinski may not wish to apply to himself, as the rest of us should, the title of his first bestseller, "The Great Failure."
I wonder who loses the most credibility by meeting the other.
Pathetic Carter . He is a man so hungry for attention; he wants to be a player - he had only four years - why can't he have more? how can he get it back? He'll do anything, anything to get back up there with the big boys...What a fool...
(Another one of that stripe is Rev. Jackson - always running off somewhere to be important...)
There is nothing more X than an X president. Carter and Clinton both should shut up, sit down, and enjoy their obscurity...
For a former Naval Officer, Jimmy Carter is a white flag waving surrender monkey disgrace.
Reactor shielding has come a long way...
Why hasn't somebody put a muzzle on this retard?
Carter was the same senile idiot who branded President Regan "dangerous" for confronting the Soviet Union and calling them "an evil empire". He predicted Russia could never be defeated an we needed to engage in "appeasement" with them instead of daring to confront them with the "doomed idea of defeating them". A psoter child of why Democrats should never be allowed in political office.
Sorry for the typo. That should read "poster child".