No matter how much suffering and destruction occurred on their watch, U.S. presidents are routinely lionized upon their death. So far we've watched the CIA-owned infotainment complex adulate Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. among other ghouls. Now, it is President Jimmy Carter's turn.
I will now speak ill of the dead. Because the admonition not to do so serves only the wealthy and powerful.
Reporter Sam Husseini has shared his account of Carter lying to him on two occasions about Israel's nuclear weapons, even to the point of denying that he had met with Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordecai Vanunu.
An excerpt:
the Camp David “peace” deal actually propelled war by creating a vacuum, the wars on Iraq to arguably the current Gaza genocide. When I questioned him about Israel's nukes, he lied to me twice, saying he didn't think it was his role as U.S. president to out a country as having nukes (he actually outed Pakistan).
A review of Carter's foreign policy by historian Robert C. Donnelly in The Conversation considered his legacy in Afghanistan:
Beginning in July 1979, the U.S. was providing advice and nonlethal supplies to the mujahideen rebelling against the Soviet-backed regime. After the invasion, National Security Advisor Brzezinski advised Carter to respond aggressively to it. So the CIA and U.S. allies delivered weapons to the mujahideen..
By providing the rebels with modern weapons, the U.S. was “giving to the USSR its Vietnam war,” according to [Carter's National Security Advisor] Brzezinski: a progressively expensive war, a strain on the socialist economy and an erosion of their authority abroad.
Carter also imposed an embargo on U.S. grain sales to the Soviets in 1980..The embargo battered a weak socialist economy and created another layer of instability for the growing population..
In his 1980 State of the Union address, Carter revealed an aggressive Cold War military plan. He declared a “Carter doctrine,” which said that the Soviets’ attempt to gain control of Afghanistan, and possibly the region, was regarded as a threat to U.S. interests. And Carter was prepared to meet the threat with “military force.”
Carter also announced in his speech a five-year spending initiative to modernize and strengthen the military because he recognized the post-Vietnam military cuts weakened the U.S. against the USSR.
What a peacemaker, eh?
Arguably his most enduring legacy was the weaponization of human rights as a lever for effecting regime change. But, he was a hypocrite (a grievous sin in the brand of Christianity he professed). When hostages were taken from the U.S. Embassy in Teheran with the demand that human rights monster Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi be returned to stand trial, Carter refused.
A commonly held belief in the U.S is that the resulting 444 day standoff was the chief reason that his first term presidency ended. Also that Reagan and other GOP operatives conspired with Iran to keep the hostages in detention as long as Carter was in the White House.
Carter told an interviewer some years later that the failed rescue attempt of the hostages was the "worst day of my life." Maybe it was the dumb name, Operation Eagle Claw, that doomed it? As an ex-military man Carter said he took full responsibility for both staging the rescue and calling it off in the face of U.S. Special Forces ineptitude.
A graduate of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Carter never saw combat but did a lot of the foundational work to establish nuclear submarines in the U.S. arsenal. Per Military.com:
Carter trained enlisted men in nuclear reactor and propulsion operations while the power plants for the first nuclear sub, USS Nautilus, and second nuclear sub, USS Seawolf, were being built..
The nuclear submarine program was overseen by the "Father of the Nuclear Navy," Adm. Hyman Rickover. Carter has repeatedly written that Rickover had more of a profound effect on him than anyone except his parents.
Nuclear submarines remain a scourge on the planet to this day, and are a key part of plans for WW3 against China. Just ask the Australian public (not their bought and sold politicians) how they feel about AUKUS.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Keep these truths in mind as the hagiography of Jimmy Carter gets underway.
I'll leave you with this quote from Noam Chomsky (read the full 1990 speech here): "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged."
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