Carter has conducted an unrelenting campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize for more than two decades and now, on October 11, 2002,  his struggles have been rewarded.  He has won “the big one”.  He may now expire this Earth in peace believing himself to have been relevant.  I have read a number of articles commenting on Carter and his Prize but the one which most clearly, expressly and simply describes Carter's contribution is attached.  Please take a minute and read Jonah Goldberg’s article.  Click here. 

My humble opinion:

Prior to the arrival of William Jefferson “Slick Willie” Clinton, I had always considered Jimmy Carter to be the sorriest president our nation has ever endured.   As I write this letter, (May 15, 2002)  ex-president Carter is in Cuba stroking his narcissism and seeking his relevance by throwing a desperately needed credibility lifeline to the repugnant tyranny of Fidel Castro, the vile and despicable relic of the past glory days of communism.  An additional benefit for Carter is of course, as the first ex-president and highest ranking United States citizen to visit the worlds foremost cigar salesman, the nation's television cameras and news organizations are all over Carter like Ted Kennedy on a glass of whiskey.  Carter hasn't received as much attention since he proudly presided over 444 days of cowering to the Islamic Mullah’s reign of Iranian hostage terror.

Mr. Carter, the self proclaimed world-wide human rights patrolman, has deemed it his personal responsibility to handle the nation's foreign policy and diplomatic affairs without seeking any prior approval, permission or consultation from the people who actually have the job. Meddling has been the consistent  trademark of the ex-president ever since he was soundly thrashed in his bid for re-election.  He was wholeheartedly rejected by the people of this country and even the members of his own party and was humbled at the polls by Ronald Reagan.  Not to be deterred by his defeat or accept the rejection of his leadership, Mr. Carter  immediately began his agenda of perpetually interfering with his markedly superior successors. Since his humiliating 1980 election loss, Carter has joined with anyone who shares his disdain for the American people. 

While President Reagan was applying considerable pressure to Daniel Ortega, the military dictator of Nicaragua, in hopes of winning some democratic reforms for the suffering people of that woeful nation, Mr. Carter embraced the communist regime and urged his Habitat for Humanity to build in Nicaragua and to support the Cuban backed Sandinista’s peoples revolution.

While President Bush was striving to garner world-wide support and a military coalition to reverse the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Carter actually wrote letters to all members of the United Nations Security Council urging them to restrain from any resistance or interference of the Iraqi aggression and to prevent President Bush from protecting Kuwait.

While President Clinton was resisting North Korea’s Kim Il Sung’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, Mr. Carter traveled to Pyongyang and praised the “Great Leader” as being intelligent, vigorous and well informed in the affairs of the world.  He declared Pyongyang to be a “....bustling city where shoppers pack the department stores” reminding him of the Wal-Mart in Americus, Georgia.  He acclaimed the peaceful intentions of Kim’s regime and stated “I don't see that they are an outlaw nation.”

Now, with President George W. Bush having his plate full with Islamic terrorism in our homeland, and Carter's good buddy Yassar Arafat exploding helpless Jewish babies, children, women and innocent citizens, Mr. Carter has decided to once again meddle in America’s foreign affairs and to lecture President Bush on how to conduct diplomacy with another of the many despots that Mr. Carter always holds in high esteem.

Let’s take a few lines to discuss Carter's open admiration for international oppressors.  While Carter was president, he openly declared Yugoslavia’s strongman and dictatorial ruler, Marshall Tito, as “a man who believes in human rights.”   While Carter was president he said of Romania’s barbaric Nikolae Ceausescu and himself,  “Our goals are the same: to have a just system of economics and politics . . . We believe in enhancing human rights.”

Since he left the presidency, Carter has praised the virtues and humanitarianism of Syria’s late Hafez al-Assad (killer of at least 20,000 in Hama) and the Ethiopian tyrant Mengistu Haile Mariam.  Ethiopians spent 17 years living under the bloody control of this despot. Mengistu ordered the execution of tens of thousands of his own people, and even blocked food aid during the catastrophic famine of Ethiopia to punish his opponents.  In Haiti, during the 1994 intervention of the Clinton administration trying to remove the military junta that overthrew elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in a bloody coup in September 1991, seven months after Aristide was sworn in as Haiti's first democratically elected president, our sharp-witted Mr. Carter told the dictator Raul Cedras that he was “....ashamed of what my country has done to your country.”

In September of 2001, Carter said to his admirer James Zogby, Islamic activist and premier fund raiser for Yassar Arafat and the PLO,  “I think the sanctions are hurting the people of Iraq, and not Saddam Hussein, whom I consider to be a dictator, and I think an insensitive dictator, and he is able now to blame all of his maybe self-induced problems, economically and socially, on the United States because of our sanctions and because of our fairly infrequent aerial attacks.”  Wow, was he ever tough on Saddam!  Carter actually referred to him as an “insensitive dictator”.

Mr. Carter has for years openly supported Yasser Arafat against Israel.  He has spent considerable time aiding, consulting and even drafting speeches for the Palestinian terrorist to insure the language used would be western style and would gain the most influence for western civilizations and news organizations.

Carter's penchant for human rights abuses displays ponderous selective indignation.  Should there be abuses in South Africa, Chile, Mexico, Britain, Brazil or Spain, Carter will tell you, and anyone else who will listen, all about it.  However, should there be abuses in Communist Cuba, Communist China, Communist Ethiopia, Communist North Korea, Communist Nicaragua, or in tyrannically oppressed Palestine, Syria, Haiti, Lybia, Iraq, Iran, you will hear only about the progress, fairness, freedoms and benefits of these regimes,  who all happen to be victims of capitalistic oppressors.

Mr. Carter has evidentially forgotten how and why the trade embargo was originally placed on Cuba.  Immediately after the revolution which removed Fulgencio “Papa Doc” Batista on January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro fully embraced Communism and quickly became a puppet for the Soviet Union.  Castro and Cuba became the only western hemisphere base for Soviet nuclear missiles, a Soviet nuclear submarine base, a Soviet naval base and an enormous Soviet electronic and intelligence gathering base.  Cuban mercenary troops were sent to support Communist revolutions in Angola, Algeria, Congo, Guinea and Zaire.  Castro sent Che Guevara into Central and South America to spread revolutions and Communism.  Castro and Cuba provided arms and military training to every anti-American government and revolution on Earth, including Lybia.  Mr. Carter needs to set aside his Manifesto for a few days and peruse a history book or two.

While Carter is in Havana praising the works and likes of Castro, he will, before he leaves Cuba, bring up the terrible injustice and injury the USA trade embargo has placed upon Cuba and its poor, innocent and destitute citizens.  What he won’t tell you, is the trade embargo is largely symbolic.  Cuba does not need anything from the United States that it cannot get from other countries such as Mexico and Canada.  And probably get it cheaper.  In reality, Castro can buy nearly anything he wants, including food and medicine, directly from the USA.  Only problem.  He needs to pay for it.  Cash.  Only problem.  He has no cash.  So he can’t buy.  Cuba spent 40 years living on handouts from the Soviet Union.  The Soviet Union went away and so did the handouts.  Do you suppose Carter will ask Castro why after 43 years of Castro’s total and absolute control over Cuba and its economy, why after 43 years under the blessings of Communism, why after 43 years of Castro’s leadership, wisdom, intelligence and love for his fellow Cubans, his nation is the poorest nation in the hemisphere and one of the poorest nations on Earth?  Will Carter ask him that?  No, he won’t.  But he will blame the symbolic USA trade embargo for all of Cuba’s woes.

After 43 years of glorious Communist government, Cuba can claim the lowest standard of living in our hemisphere.   She is now the international money beggar living on the park bench of Nowhere Street, pleading for nickels and dimes and living with the full knowledge that after all these decades, she has survived only because of Soviet welfare and doesn’t have a chance in hell of re-paying her $11 Billion debt.  Jimmy Carter is a ray of hope for Castro and Castro will feed Carter's prodigious ego in desperate dreams of survival.  Carter will wear the benevolent hat of charity and glorification well and will extol the virtues of Castro and Cuba and tell all Americans of the evils of our trade embargo and tell all Americans we should stop exploiting the impoverished Cubans.

What Carter won’t tell you is our neighbor to the north, Canada, is the largest exploiter of Cuba and its citizens of any nation on Earth.  Canada has set up farms, mines and factories in Cuba and pays the State for Cuban contract labor in those enterprises.  They pay Castro $9,500 (USD) for one year of labor and Castro passes on to the poor laborer the paltry sum of $200 (USD).  Castro pockets the rest with the full knowledge and blessing of Canada.  In any other nation on Earth (except Communist China) that would be called “Slave Labor”.  You won’t hear anything about that from Jean Chretien.  You won’t hear anything about that from Jesse Jackson.  And, you won’t hear anything about that from Jimmy Carter.

Jimmy Carter.  The pandering, international gad-fly and self appointed ambassador to everything is the last person on Earth to investigate anything or advise anyone.  This is like asking Rosie O'Donnell to guard your donuts. When he became president on January 20, 1976 he inherited a thriving economy with low inflation, low unemployment and low interest rates.  Actually, the “Prime Rate” was at 6 3/4% when Carter took office.  By the time Carter was humbled at the polls four years later and the American people had categorically rejected his leadership, the “Prime Rate” stood at its all-time high of 21.50%, the economy was in shambles, the Panama Canal was gone, and the country was suffering the shame of over 400 days of disgrace and humiliation by a tin-horn preacher from a third-world country.

Carter knows who he is.  He had a chance to be president, and to leave his mark on our country and our history books, and he failed miserably.  He knows it.  He has to live with himself.  Every morning he sees himself in his shaving mirror and his wasted performance looks back at him.  He knows who he is.  It is this writers humble opinion that Carter himself is so embarrassed over his failed legacy that in his desperation to rehabilitate his pitiful character and reputation, he has embarked on this pathetic mission of meddling everywhere with ill-conceived solutions for dictatorial tyrants and their self-inflicted injuries.  Unfortunately, he hasn’t learned a thing since he held the presidency.  He still has never met a despot he doesn’t love and has never met a problem that America didn’t cause.  He knows who he is.

Jimmy Carter is the president who has set the record for cowardice and incompetence that will stand until the seas run dry. 

That’s the way I see it.