Jimmy Carter
Still Friending Tyrants
By Lawrence W. White
This article originally appeared in
Pundit Press
http://punditpress.blogspot.com/2011/04/jimmy-carter-still-friending-tyrants
.html
If Jimmy Carter were on Facebrook, his friends would include Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, Daniel Ortega, Fidel Castro, Hafez al-Assad, Kim Jong Il, Hugo
Chavez, and the leadership of Hamas. These are all people he has embraced,
legitimized, flattered, or in other ways "friended". In fact, it is not
possible to find a tyrant he does not like.
The same is not true for Israel. Carter's best known book, a poison polemic
entitled, "Palestine; Peace not Apartheid" is one of the bibles of those who
seek to delegitimize Israel and represents a low point, even for Mr. Carter.
(There is no shortage of lows; they include his praise of Hafez al-Assad, a
man who massacred 25,000 of his own countrymen in Hama, his commendation of
Kim Jong, repressive ruler of North Korea, his high marks for Fidel Castro,
you get the idea)
As President, he served a single term, losing a re-election bid to Ronald
Reagan. He presided over our nation during the turnover in Iran, in which
one dictator, the pro-American Shah, was replaced by another, the
anti-American and Islamist Ayatollah Khomeini. This represented a step back
for the Iranian people, and especially for the role of women in that
unfortunate country. And of course, he did nothing about the seizure of
American hostages, an act of war by Iran.
It is often said that we grow wiser as we grow older.. Something very
different has happened with President Carter.
His latest adventure, again demonstrating a willingness to be used by
America's enemies, has been his recent trip to Cuba to lobby on behalf of
Cuban spies. Mary Anastasia O'Grady has written about this in the Wall
Street Journal
<aoldb://mail/write/online.wsj.com/.../SB10001424052748703806304576236773023
662808.%20html%20-> . By way of background, five Cuban spies were arrested
13 years ago by the FBI, and were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder
(four Americans were killed). They had also sought to infiltrate US
military installations.
In Carter's trip to Cuba, he went on television to argue for the release of
the five spies. While in Havana, he expressed doubt about the trial that
resulted in the conviction of the spies, and indicated that he would speak
with Barack Obama about a pardon for them. So much for his opinion of our
nation's criminal justice system. For his efforts, he was praised by Fidel
Castro as "brave and serious".
It is difficult to imagine that Carter cares about the people of Cuba who
have been living under the control of a dictatorship for 52 years. His only
concern seems to be to ingratiate himself with the Castro brothers.
According to Freedom House
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/6/jimmy-carter-does-havana/> ,
more than half a million Cubans have suffered in the Castros' various
gulags, dungeons and torture chambers. The Castro regime's total death toll
- from torture, prison beatings, firing squads, machine-gunning of escapees,
drownings, etc,- approaches 100,000
In 2002, Carter opined that "the embargo
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/6/jimmy-carter-does-havana/>
of <http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/cuba/> Cuba is the stupidest law
ever passed in the U.S.", And yet, as president,
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/jimmy-carter/> Mr. Carter imposed
more economic sanctions against more nations than any other American
president in modern history. These sanctions were only against U.S. allies.
And so, it was not suprirising that as Carter was leaving Havana, Raul
Castro
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/6/jimmy-carter-does-havana/>
enthused that " <http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/jimmy-carter/> Jimmy
Carter was the best of all U.S. presidents,"
To fully understand what makes Carter tick, one needs to "follow the money".
<http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=26364> Alan
Dershowitz has outlined Carter's extensive financial connections to Arab
oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia,
One example concerns the Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up, a
think-tank funded by Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahayan, which gave money to
both Carter and to the divinity school at Harvard. Harvard refused to be
tainted and returned the money; Carter kept it. The Zayed Centre has hosted
speakers who called Jews "the enemies of all nations," attributed the
assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks
to the United States' own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a
"fable." (They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.) Carter has referred to
Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, a known bigot, as his personal friend,
Carter and his Center have accepted millions of dollars from suspect
sources, beginning with the bail-out of the Carter family peanut business in
the late 1970s by BCCI, a now-defunct and virulently anti-Israeli bank
indirectly controlled by the Saudi Royal family. One of the principal
investors and founder of the bank is Carter's friend, Sheikh Zayed. Agha
Hasan Abedi, who gave Carter "$500,000 to help the former president
establish his center...[and] more than $10 million to Mr. Carter's different
projects."
Saudi King Fahd contributed millions to the Carter Center "in 1993
alone...$7.6 million" as have other members of the Saudi Royal Family.
Carter also received a million dollar pledge from the Saudi-based bin Laden
family, as well as a personal $500,000 environmental award named for Sheikh
Zayed, and paid for by the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates. It's
worth noting that, despite the influx of Saudi money funding the Carter
Center, and despite the Saudi Arabian government's myriad human rights
abuses, the Carter Center's Human Rights program has no activity whatever in
Saudi Arabia.
So what do the Saudis and other benefactors get for their money? Lots of
attention to alleged abuses by Israel, but virtually none by Iran or any of
the Arab nations. The Saudis have apparently bought Carter's selective
outrage
The Carter Center's mission statement claims that "the Center is nonpartisan
and acts as a neutral party in dispute resolution activities." This is
clearly not the case. What is clear is that Jimmy Carter is dependent on
Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia, and that he has
necessarily been influenced in his thinking about the Middle East by such
enormous sums.
A few questions. With all that we know about Jimmy Carter, is this episode
in Havana a new low? What do you call a former President who considers the
leaders of democratic and pro-American Israel to be immoral, but considers
Hafez al-Assad, Fidel Castro, and Kim il-Jong to be our friends? And what do
you call a former President who expresses such public contempt for our
criminal justice system? And what do you call a former President who trades
money from Saudi sources for selective outrage? While some, not knowing
better, will praise him as a man of peace, his historical legacy will be
forever tarnished.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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