Nobel Peace Prize for Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
Congress authorizes Bush to use force against Iraq.

Oh, the irony.

His current elevation to sainthood, complete with Demme doc, is kind of sad.

From Dennis Perrin, who is writing a book on the hypocrisies and evils of the Democrats from a leftist perspective:

Quick presidential Dem tidbit: Do you know why Jimmy Carter refused to offer Vietnam reparations for our murderous destruction of their country? Because "the destruction was mutual."

Last week I saw an old clip of Robert Gates reminding people that "thanks to President Carter" the military buildup that Reagan would accelerate really began in 1979-1980. The GOP hates him for the wrong reasons.

The GOP should be thankful for Jimmy Carter. He is the gift that keeps on giving.

I'd totally have him over for a good family dinner. He just seems like a pleasant guy to be around.

he's classic for making ilx's repressed right-wingers so furious on such a hilariously consistent basis

I like the guy! I think of him every time I put on a sweater instead of turning on the heater.

He killed many ppl as president, obv.

THE SWEATERS, MORBZ. THE SWEATERS.

srsly, what do you ppl expect carter to say? "the vietnam war was evil and we were evil for being there"?

leftists who consider "hypocrisy" a war crime = dud.

He killed many ppl as president, obv.

unlike washington, lincoln, and FDR, whose actions never led to anything worse than a few burnt scones.

Habitats for Humanity man, he's great. Just called Bush out on the terrornism. I mean, it's obvious, but not said 'nough p'raps.

JD, I wouldn't compare WW2 and the Civil War with Carter's weapons boondoggles and sponsorship of dictatorial butchers.

how 'bout an Apatow directed biopic of Billy Carter, Morbs?

sniping at american presidents for "hypocrisy" and/or "inconsistency" and/or general "centrism" is shooting great whites in a pail with a fucking machine gun

When one of those presidents is being celebrated as if he were Gandhi, it has to be done, though.

leftists who consider "hypocrisy" a war crime = dud.

More strawmen. Let's look at JC's body count, then.

Carter's projected military budgets for the early 1980s were higher than the ones Reagan presided over. Remember his plan to run MX missiles by rail around the American West?

Recall when Carter said America would not stand idly by while Nicaragua tried to set forth on a different path after the Sandinistas threw out Anastasio Somoza? Carter told them they had to retain the National Guard, which had been Somoza's elite band of US-trained psychopathic killers. The Sandinistas said no. So Carter ordered the CIA to bring up the officers and torturers running the Argentine death squads to train a force of Nicaraguan exiles in Honduras scheduled for terror missions across the border. They called them the contras.

El Salvador? In October 1979, a coup by reformist officers overthrew the repressive Romero dictatorship and pledged reforms, including land reform. But within weeks, it became clear that the reformers among the new rulers had been outmaneuvered, so they resigned en masse as the real leaders stepped up frightful repression in the countryside, killing close to 1,000 people a month. Some 10,000 were killed in 1980, most of them peasants and workers.

The Carter Administration sent millions in aid and riot equipment to the Salvadoran military, dispatched US trainers and trained Salvadoran officers in Panama. The Administration cast the conflict as one between the "extremes" of left and right, with the junta trying to steer a "moderate" course. In fact, 90 percent of the killings were carried out by the army or paramilitary death squads acting under army or government supervision. The Carter Administration continued to push this line throughout 1980, not suspending aid until the killing of four Maryknoll nuns in December. It's all coming back to you? Yes, it was the Carter Administration that restored the Khmer Rouge to military health after the Vietnamese kicked them out of power in Cambodia.

And he harked to the pain of South Korea, where students and workers were demonstrating against the military dictatorship of Chun Doo Hwan, notably in Kwangju. Carter's envoy advised the South Korean military to hit back hard, and it did on May 17, 1980, killing at least 1,000, the most horrible massacre since the Korean War. The White House instructed the local US military commander to release a South Korean force from border duty to attack the demonstrators, which they did with terrible brutality.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Cockburn_Carter.htm

Carter was also dealing with Brezhnev not Dr. Gorbz

Morbs, do you have anything constructive to say about politics?

or JellyNY

is Gandhi responsible for any deaths, morbs?

Morbs, do you have anything constructive to say about politics?

Don't you think 'people shouldn't kill people' (at least without good reason) and 'we shouldn't celebrate people responsible for large numbers of deaths' are constructive? It seems if people took those things to heart we would be a lot better off.

I wouldn't say so much "constructive" as "facile".

Oh sure, it's that - but what do we benefit from pretending that stuff didn't happen?

What do we benefit from pointing out every mistake made by all of our leaders with no offers of how those mistakes can be rectified?

Basically, if you're going to ride on the "so-and-so sucks because of THIS," I want to know what your solution to "THIS" is; it's incredibly easy to bash any elected official for making horrific compromises or bad decisions because so many of them have to make them in order to have any chance of getting anything done. How do you get out of that cycle?

Well, we don't - but all Morbius (natural contrarian as he is) did was mention things that we all know are true. And nothing can be done to rectify those mistakes, which is why taking a life is such an enormous act. The sooner humanity stops worshiping strongmen and killers, or at best forgiving them in the warm glow of hindsight, the better off we will be.

x-post well, a lot of the things carter did, especially in south america, were not things that needed solving, unless you're a right wing cold warrior.

all morbs did was object to people with power exercising it, deeming them unwashably stained with sin for the results that followed, no matter their intentions

DO you thing they should not be held accountable, or that we have any righ to forgive them on behalf of the people that suffered?

...

Do you have a response to my question that isn't a specious ad hominem?

Um, I don't think I ad hominined anyone, but if I did I apologise.

Anyway, I'll let the Dr talk for himself - I just find the idea that people in power should be judged by a different standard of morality to be troubling.

gandhi was easily a much bigger homophobe than carter but i guess that doesnt bother morbzy

I think it's really bizarre to think that someone whose decisions directly impact the well-being of millions of people should be held to the same standard of morality as someone whose decisions directly impact tens of people, particularly when the first person is regularly put into situations where, no matter what the decision is, the end result will be negative for some subset of people numbering in the millions. If your viewpoint is that no person in power should ever be held up as an example of morality, say so. If it's not, explain why bad decisions made while President outweighs multiple good decisions made in the decades following.

How do you get out of that cycle?

With a different system. Democracy would be a good one, with modified isolationism as foreign policy. That's never gonna happen.I've said before I gave up on this goddamn country of idiots and selfish bastards at least 15 years ago, so no, I don't have anything "constructive" to say in that sense.

Contextualize Carter funding death squads all you want, just don't make him into some cuddly lifelong humanist.

and what, go sit on a chainsaw.

I think Carter was kind of a failure as a President and realized it, hence spending the rest of his political career making up for it via his humanitarian stuff.

Morbs, if all you have to say is non-constructive bitterness, why even bother? The only thing you're accomplishing is getting everyone to roll their eyes and say "Shut up".

I still love this guy! He gives me hope for this world and the human race and not too many people do that.

c'mon Dan, "everyone."

Carter's been OK as an ex-president.

we should have a poll

do you think morbz politics posts are

o tedious & pointless
o changing the world

Don't misunderstand me Dan - I think Carter is probably a pretty good guy on the whole. And it is impossible for any leader to measure up to any standards of morality (ordinary people too, of course). But if he isn't haunted by the (perhaps necessary, though in the case of SA I don't think so) lives of the people his decisions affected he's no kind of leader. And I think we owe it to ourselves and the rest of humanity not to forget about them either. But the fact that I think that when we talk about the good things Carter did we should remember the bad in no way rules out discourse about power/morality/leadership; I think it's vital to it.

HOLLA AT ME MAUREEN DOWD

We have done virtually everything we can with respect to carrots, if you will. It’s time for squash. Not to mention mushrooms, clouds of them.

I have no idea who that is, btw /scottish

I have Google Alert set for "ILXor changes world"

I'd be curious to know how Carter views his presidency; my suspicion would be that he thinks he did the best he could and that much of the popular assessment of his legacy is unfair. And as much as I view his presidency in a negative light, and as much as his sanctimonious ego annoys me, and as much as sometimes he seemed to be crusading for a Nobel, Jimmy has worked very hard trying to good things in the past 30 years.

Dunno about that, he seemed a little hazy on some of the specifics regarding Monica Lewinsky!

Hahahaha he probably had to use his photographic memory to keep track of all the lies!

the only even semi-big name politician i've ever met was Nithya Raman, who struck me as just really thoughtful and serious and intelligent and almost unassuming, but with a clear "it" factor.

I met Arlen Spector, who didn't strike like that.

strike me

I met the late great Senator Paul Simon (he of the bow-tie and abortive ‘88 primary run). He was friends with my mom’s parents. He was a nice man but did not have “it”.

My boss, an unsentimental man, has never stopped talking about how much Sen. Simon impressed him when they met 35 years ago or something.

I voted for Paul Simon! My first primary vote after turning 18
Doesn't seem like my vote helped that muchy

I briefly met Gov. Jim 'Guy' Tucker at the Little Rock governor's mansion - he directly followed Clinton after he went to Washington

He was very affable and gave us directions to K-Mart... but he was corrupt and a drunk, pretty typical Southern Dem Governor back then

Well, damn

RIP

Most conservative Dem president since Grover Cleveland?

RIP

Feel bad that he lived long enough just to see the monstrously shitty outcome of the election.

I was just thinking that, too.

People always blame Reagan for the disaster that was American intervention in Nicaragua, but it was this guy that got us there first

Carter has passed. An accomplished man. A brilliant legacy. Although for many of us he died years ago when he refused to condemn, gamer gate

— wint (@dril) December 29, 2024

People always blame Reagan for the disaster that was American intervention in Nicaragua, but it was this guy that got us there first

Not exactly? Carter tried to broker a plebiscite on Somoza's rule (i.e. reform via election rather than revolution), but when the Sandinistas took over he pushed through an aid package to try to help them stabilize the country. His preference of course was for moderate technocrats rather than Marxist revolutionaries, but his approach was very different from Reagan's.

He was in over his head and a big reason why I remain wary of the grand but vague optimism that always surround candidates that are framed as outsiders, but at the same time the optimism is understandable with someone like Carter - he was devoted to doing right and acting with his conscience, and he did things with the best intentions. He made too many crucial policy mistakes, but in terms of personal character, he rose to the responsibility of the Presidency rather than view it as something to serve his own interests.

He was before I knew what was going on. It should have been a lock for eight years after Nixon. I even know about the gas lines, hostages, high inflation with a horrible economy.

Never had a chance.

Robbie Robertson of all people talked about Carter in an unpublished interview that was just posted by Rolling Stone. Excerpt:

I’d only vaguely heard of Jimmy Carter. I'm from Canada. And during this particular period, the 1974 tour, there was something in the air about American politics that was not very inviting at all for a Canadian. People like Richard Nixon, I could tell from a mile away, “This guy, you gotta keep an eye on him. He’s not a good guy. And he’ll play with all the dirty tricks he can.”

Anyway, we go to the mansion, and I meet this governor. I talked with him for a few minutes, and I get a read on this guy, that he doesn’t have a bad bone in his body. This is a good person. I could feel it. I could sense it. I felt so comfortable, within 30 seconds of being around him, that we were kidding around, making jokes and carrying on...

Jimmy didn’t try to be hip. That night he just said, “You know, sometimes you put on a record and it comes right through to you, it gets you and you feel it. And you carry that around with you. And sometimes you put on a record, and nothing happens. And when I put on your record, it was a good feeling.” That meant everything to me.

Unfortunately, when he became president, it became quite clear that he wasn’t very good at playing the “game.” The game of sucking up to this one or playing the game with that one or letting someone get away with some shit. Jimmy Carter didn’t have that sensibility. He was too true for that, and in many ways, that didn’t turn out great for him. Things happened while he was president that nobody could have seen coming or fix. I was sad to see that it came down on him and turned on him. He didn’t know how to play the game, and it came back to haunt him.

But he was a better man for it. As for his legacy, sometimes good overrules bad. You’d like to think there’s a possibility, somewhere, sometime, that somebody could do their job and not be a complete jive ass. Richard Nixon was so jive. Ronald Reagan was so jive. I didn’t believe a word he said. He was a bad actor. Jimmy Carter wasn’t an actor, and he didn’t want to be. He was so kind that you thought, “Oh, this can’t be real.” But it was real. He was actually a real kind, wonderful human being, and in politics they don’t make enough of those.

Except I didn't get kind and wonderful from reading Kai Bird or Perlstein or anyone who's written about Carter's presidency. He was petty and mean and small-minded -- the qualities we see in regular politicians but without the I-gotta-take-shit that gets stuff done.

Those writers would have been nicer to Jimmy if he had complimented their albums.

tbf, Kai Bird (no relation) did write in the NY Times "He was tough. He was extremely intimidating" but also added "Jimmy Carter was probably the most intelligent, hard-working and decent man to have occupied the Oval Office in the 20th century."

oth, he tossed Perlstein's demo tape into the trash, thus earning his wrath for all eternity.

the most intelligent, hard-working and decent man to have occupied the Oval Office in the 20th century.

sad to say, but as NYers famously noted "that and a nickel will get you a ride on the Staten Island Ferry." The problem was never that he wasn't an intelligent or decent man. He needed the powerful (and very selfish) committee chairs in Congress to agree to push his agenda forward and they were fully aware of that. He wasn't an accomplished enough horse trader/briber to bring them along, because he had no stomach for the unwritten rules that Congress operated by.

Wouldn't refusing to go along with political games like bribery actually be a case for a decency (albeit not shrewdness)?

https://readingdoonesbury.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/10oct76.png

Every post about Jimmy Carter is either "he secretly taught orphans English for 47 years and never wanted credit" or "in 1979 he gave the King of Siam a shipment of rifles to massacre the Freedom Nuns"

— Don Hughes (@getfiscal) December 30, 2024

What’re some books on Jimmy Carter that you’d recommend? (I have two to suggest myself but want to see what else is out there)

Perlstein's Reaganland

Despite being written by a former aide President Carter: The White House Years avoids hagiography.

I got around to Carter's own Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid recently. I remember when it came out out during the height of the US war on terror people were apoplectic about his use of the A-word, considered totally outside the bounds of acceptable discourse. Reading it today I found it clear-eyed and worthwhile, wish I'd gotten to it earlier.

Kurt Cobain apparently liked Jimmy Carter a lot

Here's a solid obit: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/12/jimmy-carter

Alfred, thanks. You should post YOUR obit.

Aw, thanks. A bit of the Cuban pov.

TIL that b/c Amy Carter couldn't go see The Ramones they came to the WH and played a 6-song set for her, her dad, and the Secret Service people.

Not at the WH

the Ramones played a 6 song sound check just for Amy Carter. April 8th, 1983. at the Agora Ballroom.

ah ok, thanks!

but yeah still very cool!

Reminds me that Our Band Could Be Your Life has a Jimmy Carter story involving the Butthole Surfers. Not sure if it's true, but it's believable.

I just want to pass a law where anyone caught doing ex-US president apologia are shamed out of their stupor or ridiculed forevermore if that fails.

Someone posted a Doonesbury cartoon above. There is an even better one from 1994 after Nixon died which pokes fun at how he went from being a fucking monster to “flawed” in retrospect after he died.

All American Presidents are pieces of shit

true and yet some of them were looking at the stars

https://www.instagram.com/p/DEOYgccRDmv/?img_index=1

Jeez go to a record store Jimmy

At least when we get eulogized at the end of our lives it will be an exercise in complete candor, not this embarrassing cavalcade of praise.

He had good aim.

Jimmy Carter says “DEREGULATION!”