Koch on Carter = Knave

John Hinderaker of the excellent Power Line blog recently posed the question if former President Jimmy Carter is more a fool or a knave. Mr. Hinderaker's opinion was that

"...in this instance, with everyone from the Secretary of State to Israel's Prime Minister pointing out the folly of his mission, the balance tilts toward "knave."

Today, over at Real Clear Politics, Ed Koch, the former Mayor of new York City, weighs in with his memories of the seven Presidents with whom he has worked over his professional career. As one might suspect with a lifelong Democrat, he is forgiving of Lyndon Johnson, but his opinion of Jimmy Carter is one that makes for very interesting reading. Writes Koch of Carter,

I came to know Carter well.

When he ran for reelection, he asked me to campaign for him in 1980 - I was by then Mayor of New York City -- and I said that I would vote for him, but not campaign for him because he was then engaging in hostile acts towards Israel. I was popular with the Jewish community and when I would not campaign for him unless he changed his position, he called me to his hotel in New York when attending a fundraiser and said, "You have done me more damage than any man in America." I felt proud then, and even more today, since we now know what a miserable president he was then and the miserable human being he is now as he prepares to meet with Hamas.

Some Democrats do understand just how low Jimmy Carter has sunk in the years since he left the White House. And his comments on George W. Bush are equally interesting. Regarding the current President, Mr. Koch wrote,

Now we come to the last president on this list, George W. Bush. I campaigned for his reelection and have no regrets. I believe that history will treat him more kindly than current public opinion polls indicate. He and Tony Blair recognized the danger of Islamic terrorism to the Western world when most world leaders did not. In addition, he is a very nice guy.

Mr. Koch may be a Democrat, but he is clearly a man of honor and believes that 'American' trumps 'Democrat' or 'Republican' identity. And he is able to recognize the good qualities George W. Bush has as a human being- not the portraits so popular in the media, where 'Bushitler' alternates with 'Village Idiot'. Would that the majority of the American media and the Democratic Party could cease their partisan warfare long enough to appreciate that simple fact. If so, we would be a better country and I believe a stronger one.

Pot To Kettle- You're Black!

According to al-Reuters news agency, former President Jimmy Carter called current Vice-President Richard Cheney a disaster for the United States". Carter was speaking in Washington DC, to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Reuters quoted Carter as saying,

"He's a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military and he has been most forceful in the last 10 years or more in fulfilling some of his more ancient commitments that the United States has a right to inject its power through military means in other parts of the world," Carter told the BBC World News America in an interview to air later on Wednesday.

"You know he's been a disaster for our country," Carter said. "I think he's been overly persuasive on President George Bush and quite often he's prevailed."

Asked to respond, Cheney refused to lower himself to Carter's level, responding through spokesperson Megan Mitchell that "we're not going to engage in this type of rhetoric."

I find this to be appalling and ridiculous at the same time. Considering Carter's record in office, for him to accuse anyone of being a disaster for the United States is the height of idiocy. After all, this is the man who gave away one of the United States' prime security assets in the Panama Canal, who allowed Iranian terrorists to hold American diplomatic and military personnel hostage for over a year, whose weak response to said kidnapping ensured that we now face a theocratic, fundamentalist Iran determined to destroy us, and whose domestic policy nearly crippled the United States economy. Subsequent to being summarily rejected in the 1980 elecetion, Carter has made common cause with such undemocratic, autocratic leaders as Fidel Castro of Cuba, Mahmoud Ahmajedhadi of Iran, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. He has undermined United States policy and has broken the traditional rule of respect for his successors, issuing derogatory comments about the current President.

Whether or not Richard Cheney is in fact a disaster for the United States can only be judged at a distance, once this Administration is out of office. It is almost impossible to judge a Presidential Administration at close range, though I rather suspect that the Bush Administration will score relatively well once time has had a chance to take effect. History has judged Carter to be a very poor President with reason and perhaps he feels guilty for how badly his term in office appears in restrospect. But that is no excuse to undermine the current Adminstration. Carter has become a national disgrace and the sooner he realizes this and retreats into deserved obscurity, the better this nation will be. Comments like this one are both hilarious considering the issuer's record and appalling for the lack of class it reveals for the commenter and the lack of respect it shows both of the office of President and the current occupant.

Carter Says Iran No threat To Israel- Too Far Away

Proving once again that common sense is no prerequisite for occupying any government office, let alone the White House, former President Jimmy Carter said today that Iran was no threat to Israel. According to Breitbart News,

Former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday that it was almost inconceivable that Iran would "commit suicide" by launching missiles at Israel.
Speaking at Emory University, Carter, who brokered the 1979 Camp David peace accord between Israel and Egypt, said Israel's superior military power and distance from Iran likely are enough to discourage an actual attack.

"Iran is quite distant from Israel," said Carter, 83. "I think it would be almost inconceivable that Iran would commit suicide by launching one or two missiles of any kind against the nation of Israel."

This displays a level of ignorance and naivete that I find almost unbelievable. Of course, Carter is not known for his political understanding. Iran's physical distance from Israel is irrelevant, when one considers that the commander of Iran's air force said yesterday that Israel is within range of Iranian medium-range missiles. In addition, Iran's president has said on a number of occasions that Israel should be destroyed. The belligernat statements emanating from Tehran seem to indicate that Iran thinks it can indeed destroy Israel without suffering serious damage to itself.

Israel is at risk, in part due to Carters' own feckless foreign policy, and his failure to act when Iran committed an act of war agsint the United States by seizing its embassy in 1979. the ramifications of that act are still unfolding and ultimately it is my belief that we are going to have to fight Iran, unless the population removes the mullahs before we have to go in with our own forces, which I find unlikely. The only thing that Carter's outburst does at this stage is reinforce his image as America's worst ex-President, and confirms us in our wisdom that Jimmy Carter is not to be trusted where his own country's intersts are concerned. He is more likely to give them away as he did the Panama Canal than to actually stand up and fight for his fellow countrymen.