Carter, foreign policy failure, ignored by Obama

During Meet The Press last week, former President Jimmy Carter complained that President Obama doesn’t ask him for advice. Ignoring Carter may be the smartest thing President Obama has done as president. The Carter administration was a foreign policy failure; it helped create many of the foreign policy problems President Obama is dealing with now.

In 1978, Ian Smith, the prime minister of white-ruled Rhodesia, reached an agreement with the moderate black leaders for a transition government. Under this plan, termed the “internal settlement,” whites, who represented about 4 percemt of the population, would be reserved 28 out of 100 parliamentary seats as well as control over certain government ministries. The deal was grossly unfair but it was a strong step toward change.

In 1979, the first fully democratic election in Zimbabwe history’s occurred. Of the eligible black voters, 64 percent participated, braving the threat of terrorist attacks by Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party, which managed to kill 10 people. Prior to the election, Mugabe had issued a death list with 50 individuals he named as puppets of the Ian Smith regime. Nevertheless, Bishop Abel Muzorewa emerged victorious and became prime minister of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, as the new country was called.

Jimmy Carter didn’t like Bishop Muzorewa and because Mugabe’s party was not included in the election (he preferred to continue fighting against the government) America refused to recognize the new government.

UN Ambassador Andrew Young referred to Bishop Muzorewa, one of the few democratically elected leaders on the African continent, as the head of a “neo-fascist” government. Carter refused to meet Muzorewa when the leader visited Washington. Mugabe, on the other hand, told everyone who would listen that he would turn the country into a single-party, Marxist state.

After eventually taking power, Mugabe began his reign of terror by killing about 25,000 belonging to a minority tribe, the Ndebele. Mugabe has been killing people ever since.

Another “achievement” of Jimmy Carter’s that will endure for a long time is the radical Islamists running Iran; they want to control the entire Middle East, but first want to blow up Israel.

In 2007, the Jerusalem Post recounted that “Carter viewed Khomeini as more of a religious holy man in a grassroots revolution than a founding father of modern terrorism.” Carter’s Iranian ambassador, William Sullivan, called “Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure.” Carter adviser James Bill told Newsweek in 1979 that Khomeini was not a mad mujahidin, but a man of “impeccable integrity and honesty.”

The Shah, on the other hand, understood Carter right away. Soon after Carter’s election, he told his personal confidant, Asadollah Alam, “Who knows what sort of calamity Carter may unleash on the world?”

An analysis in the Jerusalem Post showed where Carter went wrong: “Carter pressured the Shah to make what he termed human rights concessions by releasing political prisoners and relaxing press censorship.” Khomeini could never have succeeded without Carter.

Some governments are totally evil and must be openly confronted and defeated. Khomeini had the help of the PLO in Iran; that alone should have been a big hint about Khomeini.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Adviser, created the policies that brought us the War on Terror by inciting the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan and helping to create both the Taliban and al Qaeda.

U.S. aid to the Mujahedeen Islamic insurgency started six months before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, with the intention of making it more likely for the USSR to attack Afghanistan to support its puppet government. Brzezinski admitted as much in an interview that appeared in International Politics 37, no. 2, 2000.

“That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap. … The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, ‘We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War’.”

Brzezinski got his wish, and once the Soviets invaded, he sprung into action. According to an interview published in the GW University’s National Security archive in June 1997, Brzezinski went to Pakistan to secure weapons for the Mujahidin.

“We engaged in that effort in a collaborative sense with the Saudis, the Egyptians, the British, the Chinese, and we started providing weapons to the Mujahidin, from various sources again — for example, some Soviet arms from the Egyptians and the Chinese. We even got Soviet arms from the Czechoslovak communist government, since it was obviously susceptible to material incentives; and at some point we started buying arms for the Mujahidin from the Soviet army in Afghanistan, because that army was increasingly corrupt.”

After the Soviets withdrew, the Mujahidin began to fight each other for power.

After several years of civil war, a new-armed group formed. Known as the Taliban, this radical group entered the fray. By 1996, with backing from the Pakistani ISI, the Military of Pakistan, and al-Qaeda, the Taliban had controlled most of the country. At the same time, in May 1996, Sudan, which had been the home of al Qaeda, told bin Laden he would never be welcome to return, therefore the Taliban offered bin Laden the opportunity to re-locate its headquarters to Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda enjoyed the Taliban’s protection and built up its network from there. All thanks to the “fuse” lit by President Carter.

Even the Camp David Accords, seen as Jimmy Carter’s big foreign policy achievement, were almost screwed-up by Carter. When Sadat went to Jerusalem and Israel and Egypt began bi-lateral talks, Carter objected. He didn’t care that the peace process already begun by Sadat and Begin might lead to peace, Carter wanted his “Geneva Peace Process” plan that involved all the Arabs at once, or nothing.

Thankfully, Carter couldn’t stop the approaching peace train. Within days after the Sadat visit, Israeli journalists were allowed into Cairo, breaking a symbolic barrier, and from there the peace process quickly gained momentum.

The press has been kind to Carter as he goes around pimping his latest book, but the truth is, 34 years after he left office, the United States is still cleaning up his mess.

Columnist@TheJewishStar.com