There He Goes Again: Jimmy Carter, our 'model ex-president'

National Review, May 20, 2002 by Jay Nordlinger

Shortly thereafter, Carter actually acted as PR adviser and speechwriter to Arafat. As Brinkley says, he "drafted on his home computer the strategy and wording for a generic speech Arafat was to deliver soon for Western ears . . ." The entire composition is nauseating, but its flavor can be captured in a single line: "Our people, who face Israeli bullets, have no weapons: only a few stones remaining when our homes are destroyed by Israeli bulldozers."

If Carter wrote Arafat's Western-ears-only speeches, Arafat could have written much of Carter's recent New York Times op-ed. The former president began by describing Arafat's 1996 "election" as a "democratic" one, "well organized, open and fair." (It was "well organized," all right.) Of course, this "election" was like any other in the Arab world, which is to say, rigged from beginning to end. As former CIA director James Woolsey told journalist Joel Mowbray recently, "Arafat was essentially 'elected' the same way Stalin was, but not nearly as democratically as Hitler, who at least had actual opponents." Arafat's "opponent" was a prop.

Carter then lit into his bogeyman, Sharon, declaring him an international outlaw whose "goals" are to "establish Israeli settlements as widely as possible throughout occupied territories and to deny Palestinians a cohesive political existence." Sharon has, in fact, accepted the concept and inevitability of a Palestinian state -- but he unpleasantly insists on his own country's existence and security as well.

The ex-president conceded that "there is adequate blame on the other side" -- meaning the Palestinian -- but only insofar as Arafat has failed to "exert control over Hamas and other radical Palestinians" (forgetting the many "suicide bombings" carried out by Arafat's own Al- Aqsa brigades). Carter then wrote -- in an excruciating sentence -- "[Arafat] may well see the suicide attacks as one of the few ways to retaliate against his tormentors, to dramatize the suffering of his people, or as a means for him, vicariously, to be a martyr." This comes as close to an apology for terror as a president -- ex- or current -- ever gets.

The Carter mindset on the Middle East is perhaps best illustrated by the reaction of his key aide and emissary, Mary King, to the invasion and rape of Kuwait by Iraq's Hussein in 1990. She cabled her boss, "Saddam learned from the Israelis that might makes right . . ."

Another thing that everyone "knows" about Jimmy Carter is that he was a "human-rights president," and has ever since been a "human-rights crusader": He himself says so, regularly. And yet, he has a very peculiar view of human rights -- one both peculiar and familiar.

In the old days -- although not so much anymore -- we would hear, "Sure, the West has 'political rights': freedom of speech, freedom of worship, and so on. But the East has 'social rights': the right to food, the right to shelter, the right to health." A mission statement of the Carter Center says, "'Human rights' is a broad term, encompassing freedom from oppression and freedom of speech to the right to food and health." This is inching toward Erich Honecker territory. As Jeane Kirkpatrick -- another Carter bogeyman -- points out, it's odd how those with "political rights" also tend to have plenty of food, plenty of shelter, and plenty of health; it's further odd how those denied "political rights" also tend to do without material comfort.