Former President Jimmy Carter has blasted Guantanamo — and you can almost hear the ghost of the late Ronald Reagan saying “There you go again…”
Carter — one of the 20th century’s least successful Presidents and 20th century’s most successful and most socially constructive (literally) ex-Presidents — has bedeviled literally EVERY President who followed him (and that includes Democrat Bill Clinton) with his outspokenness and blunt criticism of U.S policies. Now, Carter is getting headlines with comments made at a Baptist conference in England. The AP:
BIRMINGHAM, England – Former President Carter said Saturday the detention of terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay Naval base was an embarrassment and had given extremists an excuse to attack the United States.
Carter also criticized the U.S.-led war in Iraq as “unnecessary and unjust.”
“I think what’s going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A.,” he told a news conference at the Baptist World Alliance’s centenary conference in Birmingham, England. “I wouldn’t say it’s the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts.”
Carter said, however, that terrorist acts could not be justified, and that while Guantanamo “may be an aggravating factor … it’s not the basis of terrorism…….
….What has happened at Guantanamo Bay … does not represent the will of the American people,” Carter said Saturday. “I’m embarrassed about it, I think its wrong. I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted excuse to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people.”
Earlier this month, Carter called for the Guantanamo prison to be shut down, saying reports of abuses there were an embarrassment to the United States. He also said that the United States needs to make sure no detainees are held incommunicado and that all are told the charges against them.
The 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner also used the occasion to blast the war in general:”I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false,” he said Saturday.
How big a deal is this? Bigger on the surface than it really is, since Carter is no longer realistically the leader of any constituency within the U.S. It’s him, his ideas and his mouth.
Yes, there will be lots of denunciations from (a)those who support the war in every way and discourage any criticism of it and related issues, and from (b)those who’ve had enough of Carter (which probably includes most of the American electorate).
In recent years, Jimmy Carter has become a hot-button issue in himself. And some top conservative bloggers are especially irked today.
Jimmy Carter is a disgrace. Just what we need is for him to be out there criticizing Guantanamo as if he’s accepted all the myths that have been spread about the place. Now, our enemies can quote a former president in criticizing the Iraq War and Guantanamo. Do we hear anything from him on how he’d fight terrorism. I know that that is not his area of expertise so perhaps he could just keep his big mouth shut.
Today he did what most of us thought impossible — he actually made his reputation worse…But even beyond the folly of Carter’s assertions, the fact that he decided to attack the military and the American administration while abroad marks him as particularly despicable. He went to the soil of our strongest ally and attempted to undermine their support for the war effort in Iraq. If he succeeds, then American soldiers will wind up facing even more danger in the country at a time when we hope to be readying the Iraqis to stand on their own. No American should do such a thing during wartime, especially an ex-President — even one as relentlessly clueless as Jimmy Carter.
Slant Point:”Seriously, when I picked up on this story from a commenter, I thought it was dated a months ago.”
Expect lots more criticism of Carter (not that he’ll care) on conservative talk shows and on cable shows.
Our view?
OUR PERSONAL VIEW OF CARTER: I was in Spain as Special Correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor when he was elected President. My father wrote me (pre-email days) that “no one knew where he was coming from” he came up so fast through the primaries. That was one of the few elections I didn’t vote in but I watched the Gerald Ford-Jimmy Carter debate and thought Carter had won.
During Carter’s term many diplomats and Americans visiting in Spain were besides themselves over his tenure. Diplomats were frustrated over the incompetence of Carter’s foreign policy and administration in general. And, almost in a state of grief. Americans visiting talked about the long gas lines and the fact the administration simply did not seem to have a clue in how to ADMINISTER a country. Some (as Carter rightly noted in one of his most criticized speeches) felt America’s best days were over.
I returned to the United States in December 1978. When Carter ran for re-election in 1980 I was working as a reporter on the Wichita Eagle in Kansas. I took a lot of grief from some staffers when I honestly told them I was voting for Ronald Reagan due to Carter’s disastrous foreign policy and poor overall administration. To this date, that was one of the most satisfying votes I ever cast.
ON HIS RECENT COMMENTS:
(1) It’s always unwise to criticize your country in public abroad. On the other hand, Carter has made no bones about his opposition to the war and won a peace prize so this is no huge revelation. He has criticized the U.S. from foreign soil before and the United States survived.
(2)He is RIGHT in one aspect about Guantanamo. People can argue the moral and legal particulars of what is going on there, but there is NO QUESTION that allegations of physical abuse and legal constraints at Guantanamo are being used as ammunition against the United States. These allegations are being used to fine-tune a propaganda perception.
It’s a separate issue as to whether the perception is correct. But Guantanamo is NOT an asset to the United States in terms of international public relations. It has become a public relations disaster for the U.S.
So is he accurate to say Guatanamo is being used to attack the U.S.? That’s probably VASTLY overstated.
There are bigger issues the terrorists and their supporters use to justify whacking American solidiers and ongoing plans to butcher innocent men, women and children to drive up their beloved body count.
They don’t have the battle cry: “Remember Guantanmo!” as a twist on the old American battlecry “Remember the Alamo!” On this point, Mr. Carter was reaching…
Should Carter close ranks with the administration and support the war? One school of thought says yes. But increasingly those who oppose the Iraq war are doing so in a way that is reminiscent to the bitter opposition during the war in Vietnam. Also: it’s simply not Carter’s style to go along to go along.
How will Carter go down in history? Probably as he has so far: as a poor President, one of the most successful ex-Presidents in terms of his service to the public — and a generally ignored gadfly to all of the American administrations that followed him.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.