Jimmy Carter's Legacy

Jimmy Carter’s Legacy

Jim Kavanagh

I was part of the Carter Center’s election observation missions in Palestine (1996 & 2006) and Nigeria (1999), and I met Jimmy Carter personally. He was, in all my interactions with him, a very nice man. He impressed me as sincere in his humanistic Christianity and, above all, in his love and respect for his wife, Rosalynn. There were a lot of problems in the 1996 Palestinian election that caused many of us to urge him not to make a statement flatly endorsing it as “free and fair,” and it was Rosalynn who successfully insisted that he make a more nuanced statement, incorporating our concerns. That relationship with Rosalynn, along with his surprising passion for wild turkey hunting (I mean going on about it at great length and in great detail) certainly humanized him for me.

Of course, personal impressions do not determine political effects. On the occasion of his death, Carter is best known by most Americans for his "post-presidency,” which shines in contrast with the self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement of other ex-presidents.  Foregoing vanity “library” projects and collections of six-figure speaking fees in favor of physical labor for Habit for Humanity, respected international election and health work via the Carter Center (the latter less well-known but central to its mission), speaking forthrightly about Israeli apartheid, and meeting with Palestinian resistance groups like Hamas made him into our most admired ex-president.

His relative honesty about Palestine-Israel is the strongest lingering “political” trait associated with him, and one for which he was shunned by the Democratic Party, including Obama, who forbade him from speaking at the 2008 Democratic convention on the advice of Alan Dershowitz—though you’re not likely to hear that during the liberal mainstream media encomia today. Nor are you likely to hear much about his accurately describing the U.S. as an “oligarchy with unlimited bribery.”

So, credit is due for these exceptional stances. But none of the laudatory aspects of Jimmy Carter’s “post-presidency” should be allowed to efface or excuse the policies of his administration. Carter, who described himself as "Conservative, moderate, liberal and middle-of-the-road," was, indeed, politically all over the place in a transitional period for the country and the Democratic Party, While marketing his administration as the champion of “human rights,” he faithfully executed the job of all U.S. presidents—to be the guarantor of capitalism, imperialism, and Zionism.

I’ll link here to two fine analyses of Carter’s foreign policies, by Sam Husseini on Substack and @SpiritofLenin on X. I don’t have much to add to their accounts of such items as the massacres in Kwangju, Indonesia, East Timor, and Latin America, the deliberate Carter-Brzezinski provocation of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and setting up of “God is on your side” al-Qaeda jihadis, and the original—and most consequent—splitting of Arab anti-Zionist resistance at Camp David, which was based on Carter’s false promise to guarantee the cessation of West Bank settlements that Begin refused to sign for and opened the road Trump took to the Abraham Accords and Netanyahu has taken to Gaza, Syria, and Greater Israel.

When Jimmy Carter Lied to Me (Twice) and the Weaponization of Most Everything - Sam Husseini

The crimes of Jimmy Carter 🧵:

In 1980, 44 years ago, Jimmy Carter approved an operation to crush a pro-democracy uprising in Gwangju, S. Korea against the US-backed military dictatorship. S. Korean military forces ki!!ed at least 600 people and injured over 4,000. pic.twitter.com/bjtNEhycIc

— Friendly Neighborhood Comrade (@SpiritofLenin) December 29, 2024

https://x.com/SpiritofLenin/status/1873484602343563664

I’ll just add that the Carter administration also initiated the Democratic Party’s embrace of de-regulation and austerity—the ideas of Milton Friedman and policies of Paul Volcker. Jimmy Carter was the precursor of the Democratic Leadership Council and “New Democrat” Bill Clinton. As I said in another essay, “starting with Carter and cemented with Bill Clinton, the Democrats decided to win for themselves the title of ‘the party of fiscal responsibility.’ As Bill said: ‘I hope you’re all aware we’re all Eisenhower Republicans…We stand for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market. Isn’t that great?’” Jimmy Carter set that in motion.

Carter was defeated decisively by the Reagan team, which was clearer in its promotion of capitalist ideology and more ruthless in its willingness to take down its opponent via treasonous collaboration with Iran to prevent the release of American hostages—an act that Carter, unwilling to undermine faith in the American delusion, could never quite bring himself to acknowledge and denounce for what it was.

In the end, one might say that the contradiction between his personal humanistic impulses and the political role he chose to, and had to, play, is sad.

But, in the face of the utter catastrophe the U.S. has visited on the world and the utter disgrace it has visited upon itself—most tellingly in the slaughter it is committing in Gaza—I have no sympathy left for after-the-fact, coulda, shoulda, but didn’t when I had the power and responsibility acts of contrition and kindness. Colin Powell should have refused to lie to the world to start a war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Nothing he or his aide Lawrence Wilkerson now says makes up for that. Jimmy Carter should have acknowledged and appropriately responded to Israel’s nuclear weapons (as he did to Pakistan’s), and he should not have lied to Sadat about guaranteeing the cessation of West Bank settlements in order to secure Zionism’s greatest victory in weakening the Palestinian cause. Nothing he said or did afterward makes up for that. And the only people I can feel sad and mad for now are the Palestinian people whose ongoing slaughter those deceptions enabled. They do not rest in peace.

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