Subject: Alexander Cockburn on Jimmy Carter > >>CounterPunch >> >>October 18, 2002 >> >>American Journal >> >>Starring Jimmy Carter, in War and Peace >> >> >> >>by ALEXANDER COCKBURN >> >>Now they've given Jimmy Carter the Nobel Peace Prize. Looking at the >>present, wretched incumbent, Democrats feel smug about their paladin of peace. >> >>But there's continuity in Empire. Presidents come and Presidents go. >>There are differences, but over much vital terrain the line of march >>adopted by the Commander in Chief doesn't deviate down the years. Is >>George Bush "worse" than, say, Jack Kennedy, who multiplied America's >>military arsenal, nuclear and nonnuclear, and dragged the world to the >>edge of obliteration forty years ago? Sure, Carter wasn't as bad as >>Reagan. By the low standards of his office, he did his best in the Middle >>East. But how bad is bad? Carter's projected military budgets for the >>early 1980s were higher than the ones Reagan presided over. Remember his >>plan to run MX missiles by rail around the American West? >> >>Recall when Carter said America would not stand idly by while Nicaragua >>tried to set forth on a different path after the Sandinistas threw out >>Anastasio Somoza? Carter told them they had to retain the National Guard, >>which had been Somoza's elite band of US-trained psychopathic killers. >>The Sandinistas said no. So Carter ordered the CIA to bring up the >>officers and torturers running the Argentine death squads to train a >>force of Nicaraguan exiles in Honduras scheduled for terror missions >>across the border. They called them the contras. >> >>El Salvador? In October 1979, a coup by reformist officers overthrew the >>repressive Romero dictatorship and pledged reforms, including land >>reform. But within weeks, it became clear that the reformers among the >>new rulers had been outmaneuvered, so they resigned en masse as the real >>leaders stepped up frightful repression in the countryside, killing close >>to 1,000 people a month. Some 10,000 were killed in 1980, most of them >>peasants and workers. >> >>The Carter Administration sent millions in aid and riot equipment to the >>Salvadoran military, dispatched US trainers and trained Salvadoran >>officers in Panama. The Administration cast the conflict as one between >>the "extremes" of left and right, with the junta trying to steer a >>"moderate" course. In fact, 90 percent of the killings were carried out >>by the army or paramilitary death squads acting under army or government >>supervision. The Carter Administration continued to push this line >>throughout 1980, not suspending aid until the killing of four Maryknoll >>nuns in December. It's all coming back to you? Yes, it was the Carter >>Administration that restored the Khmer Rouge to military health after the >>Vietnamese kicked them out of power in Cambodia. >> >>And he harked to the pain of South Korea, where students and workers were >>demonstrating against the military dictatorship of Chun Doo Hwan, notably >>in Kwangju. Carter's envoy advised the South Korean military to hit back >>hard, and it did on May 17, 1980, killing at least 1,000, the most >>horrible massacre since the Korean War. The White House instructed the >>local US military commander to release a South Korean force from border >>duty to attack the demonstrators, which they did with terrible brutality. >> >>In his introduction to Lee Jai-eui's Kwangju Diary, Bruce Cumings reviews >>the documents unearthed by Tim Shorrock and says the record "makes it >>clear that leading liberals-such as Jimmy CarterSand Zbigniew Brzezinski; >>and especially Richard Holbrooke (then Under Secretary of State for East >>Asia), have blood on their hands from 1980: the blood of hundreds of >>murdered or tortured students in Kwangju." >> >>Carter presided over the dispatch of arms to Indonesia, fresh from its >>invasion of East Timor, which makes him, oh, just one more American to >>get the Nobel Peace Prize after sponsoring genocide in Asia. And he >>started the covert CIA operation in Afghanistan, rallying the mujahedeen >>to fight the Soviets. Soon the CIA would bring the Saudis, and Saudi >>cash, to Afghanistan, not least among them Osama bin Laden. >> >>As Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, who's just finished a history of the first years >>of the Nicaraguan revolution, put it to me after the news of Carter's >>Nobel, "'Benign' Carter was the source of so many bad things, including >>the rise of the Christian right (his endless public pronouncements of his >>faith and his sister's leadership in the actual Christian right gave the >>movement a new legitimacy), the erosion of the UN, the destruction of the >>New International Economic (and Information) Order, etc. And no one seems >>to recall that he led a campaign to free Lieutenant Calley [of My Lai >>infamy] when Carter was governor of Georgia." >> >>Remember that the late 1970s were years of great optimism at the UN, with >>reforming agendas such as the report of the Brandt Commission, which >>called for radical transformation of the world economic order, with >>transfer of technology and development financing from North to South. The >>Carter Administration decided to undercut one 1980 UN Special Session, >>echoing its behavior at the UN Conference on Racism in 1978. The United >>States sent a very low-level delegation to announce its noncooperation >>with the terms of the discussion and generally disrupt the proceedings. >> >>That whole initiative for readjustment of the economic relationship of >>North and South came to nought. We headed into the Reagan 1980s, when the >>deregulatory philosophy embraced by Carter came to full flower, both at >>home and abroad, with the destruction of public infrastructure and social >>services across the world, the collapse of healthcare in Africa, the >>onset of the plague years. At home, too, the post-Nixon/Ford years were >>times of hope. Carter presided over their demolition. Neoliberalism won >>the day on his watch. >> >>Now he's a peace prize winner. He's been campaigning for it for years. In >>the end, how could he have missed, unless the peace prize committee had >>decided to compress the whole process and give it to George Bush? Maybe >>Bush will get it next year, in partnership with Ariel Sharon.
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