Carter continues to harm America

Dan Sernoffsky

Conventional wisdom has it that Jimmy Carter was the most inept president of the 20th century, perhaps the most inept in the history of the United States.

It was, after all, on Carter's watch that mortgage interest rates were at 21 percent, inflation was hovering around 12 percent and unemployment was around eight percent.

As commander in chief, he decimated the U.S. military while pursuing a policy of appeasement that emboldened the old Soviet Union, allowing the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan and responding by boycotting the Olympics. He abandoned an ally in the Shah of Iran to open the door for an Islamic revolution that resulted in the imprisonment of 52 American citizens for nearly two years, destroyed the credibility of the United States in the Middle East, and set in motion the rise of Islamic terrorism that we continue to fight.

He presided over the first energy crisis, urging Americans to turn down the thermostat and put on a sweater rather than to promote increased domestic energy production.

When he turned to working with Habitat for Humanity immediately following his failed presidency, a failure accentuated by the fact that he and his policies were completely rejected by the American public in the election landslide that put Ronald Reagan in the White House, conventional wisdom had it that he had become America's "best" ex-president.

Conventional wisdom, however, may be wrong. It is becoming increasingly apparent that Carter was not inept but rather that he was pursuing, and continues to pursue, an agenda designed to undercut the policies and sovereignity of the country he once pledged to protect and defend. He traveled to North Korea to hobnob with dictator Kim Il Sung amd broker what turned out to be a failed nuclear disarmament treaty. He traveled to Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro -- the man who had hoodwinked him during his presidency to allow the dictator to empty his prisons of hardened criminals and ship them to the United States in the Mariel boat lift -- and to use his audience with the dictator to criticize the United States while praising Cuba's education and health care systems. He traveled to Venezuela to certify the election of Hugo Chavez, even as questions were being raised about the legitimacy of the vote. He played a major role in legitimizing the elections that brought Hamas to power in Gaza.

In the process, Carter also wrote a book excoriating Israel, suggesting that Israel was involved in apartheid in fighting for survival against an enemy bent on enacting Hitler's "Final Solution."

Inept? It has become evident that he is an anti-Semite interested only in self-aggrandizement, seeking affirmation from America's enemies rather than her citizens.

Any question of that motivation was answered in his recent trip to Syria. In meeting with Hamas, Carter lent an air of legitimacy to a group listed as an international terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, then further insulted America's closest ally in the region by laying a wreath on the grave of another international terrorist, Yasser Arafat.

For all his claims of having made the trip as a private citizen, Carter knows that as a former president he has considerably more prestige, legitimate or not, than any other private citizen. And in speaking about his meetings with Hamas after having been rightly spurned by Israeli officials in his perfunctory visit to Israel prior to traveling to Syria, he further showed his disdain for the principles upon which his native country was founded when he stated "When I go to a dictatorship, I have to talk to one person and that's the dictator, because he speaks for all the people."

Fittingly, Carter's action are finally beginning to have consequences, consequences that may finally relegate to a silent retirement an embittered, failed politician who has willingly sacrificed the tenets of the oaths he took as a Naval officer, a governor, and a president in an effort to satisfy his own vanity.

"America must speak with one voice against our terrorist enemies," said Rep. Joe Knollenberg in criticizing Carter. "It sends a fundamentally troubling message when an American dignitary is engaged in dialogue with terrorists."

Rep. Sue Myrick was more succinct. She has called for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to revoke Carter's passport. Such a move would be beneficial. It is time for it to happen.

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Dan Sernoffsky is an award-winning sportswriter and political columnist for The Lebanon Daily News in Lebanon, Pa. A career journalist, he is a graduate of Ottawa University, Ottawa, Ks., and attended graduate school at Central Michigan University. The father of four grown children, he and his wife reside in Lebanon.

dsernoffsky@yahoo.com