Jimmy Carter is Our Worst Living President

The Washington Post this morning published an editorial by the only living President with arguably no foreign policy successes to call his own. For hundreds of days, Jimmy Carter did nothing about Americans held hostage in Iran before underlining his ineptitude with a failed rescue mission. His response to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan was to boycott the Olympics. He is a friend, advisor and occasional speechwriter for terrorist and American-killer, Yasir Arafat. And of course, he continually claims credit for a peace that was largely agreed to by the leaders of Israel and Egypt before they approached him for American purchase of that peace.

A newspaper with a steady grip on reality would not provide a podium for the President who afflicted Americans with the “Misery Index” but the Post has a questionable grip on reality, and a long standing love affair with our most inept President in modern times. With the space provided, Carter presumes to lecture America on human rights. He opines that our response to terrorist attacks on September 11 has endangered human rights throughout the world by muting respect for international norms and obligations. He writes, "... U.S. policies are giving license to abusive governments and even established democracies to stamp out legitimate dissent and reverse decades of progress toward freedom, with many leaders retreating from previous human rights commitments."

Carter provides dubious examples of American backsliding on human rights. He mentions the Patriot Act of course- the villain of choice for every leftist in America. He also mentions the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and other foreign prisons. Most revealing of Carter's moral obtuseness is his anger over, "Civilians and soldiers arbitrarily detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without access to legal counsel or being charged with any crime." From a man who has befriended and defended Fidel Castro in spite of the Castro government’s record of disdain for human beings, from a man who has whitewashed conditions for political dissidents in Cuba, we have the assertion that men captured on battlefields in Afghanistan are being held “arbitrarily.” As though firing a loaded weapon at Americans on a battlefield is insufficient proof of hostile intent.

Carter has an excuse for his inanities- he is a fool. The Post, on the other hand, has no excuse for publishing him.