Former president Jimmy Carter spoke candidly in a couple of highly publicized interviews over the past weekend. In one interview, he was quoted as characterizing the current Bush Administration as the worst in history in its adverse impact on foreign policy. He explained his criticism by noting that the United States foreign policy, under George W. Bush was a:
”radical departure from all previous administration policies” [with the Iraq war]. “We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered.”
In a BBC interview, Carter also expressed strong criticism of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He noted that if Blair had not acted in such a subservient manner to Bush and followed blindly in the invasion of Iraq, the situation there would not have been as protracted or as bad as it is now.
The White House responded to the stinging rebuke by attempting to trivialize Carter and thereby reduce the force of his comments. A White House spokesperson stated that Carter’s remarks were “sad” and suggested that Carter was becoming “irrelevant.” The White House response, however, appears rather weak and ineffectual for a couple of reasons. First, Bush has shone a remarkable ability to ignore and disregard any realistic and serious criticism of his decisions or his policies. So we should not be surprised that Bush would brush off criticism from one of the few living people on the planet who have personal knowledge and experience regarding the responsibilities of the office of US President, and therefore the most expertise on the subject. Second, calling Carter “irrelevant” is both petty and ineffectual. It is the ideas and the rationale that Carter spoke that are important. Carter did not seek to aggrandize himself or to even give direction or advice to Bush. He was asked for his honest opinion based upon his experience on a subject and he did so. Regardless of any personal attack by the White House on Carter, his views and opinion are manifest for all to evaluate on their merits.
It is indeed sad that a former President could look upon the actions of his successor and find them so badly flawed. Remember that Carter had far more justification for an invasion of the Middle East than did Bush. Iran had captured the US Embassy and was holding US diplomatic personnel hostage. In many quarters, such an act would be tantamount to a declaration of war. But Carter took the heat and refused to invoke war powers. Despite all the bluster by the current Bush Administration about what it believes that Iran may be planning to do regarding nuclear weapons development, Iran is still not an immediate threat to the US. And despite Bush’s reluctance, it looks like the US will take steps to re-establish dialogue with Teheran that could be useful in defusing rather than escalating tensions. The saddest aspect of Carter’s comments about the current Administration is that they are so accurate.
Carter is not the shrinking violet when it comes to addressing major public issues. He wrote a book expressing his dismay at the way that “religious right” extremists have hijacked the political sphere and steered the American political process in directions that are decidedly “unchristian” and often self contradictory and self serving. We now see each GOP candidate for President trotting off to visit Ralph Reed, and Bob Jones University to genuflect and pray for support in their run for the prize.
Carter also spoke out against the policies of Israel that seem to be geared toward establishing and maintaining a system that is more like apartheid than democracy respecting the Palestinians. He opined that as long as Israel continued on that path, there was no real prospect for a lasting peace between Israel and its neighbors. He faced a firestorm of complaints from highly partisan pro Israel quarters. But as a key player in the Camp David Accords, his knowledge and observations concerning that sphere should not be so easily shunted aside because expressing them was unpopular with strong lobbying groups. The label might have been harsh, but a reasoning view might search for the truth in his commentary and see whether there might be room for improvement in Israel’s foreign policy. After all, the current approach certainly is not working.
Similarly, Carter’s disapproval of Bush's departure into the sphere of "unilateral regime change" and "pre-emptive war," policies that have generally been deemed war crimes in the international community, was not an outrageous statement on its merits. That it broke the “code” of former Presidents not openly criticizing sitting Presidents may have been impolite and sad, but Carter’s comments were all too true and most certainly relevant.
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