Peace Prize - Jimmy Carter

Peace Prize - Jimmy Carter just won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Jay Nordlinger wrote a piece last May in the National Review about the extent to which Carter cuddled up to foreign dictators.

Even when he was in office - when I was 18 and a liberal - the guy reminded me of a perfectly nice fella with a huge Neville Chamberlain complex. He believed in detente with Brezhnev, turning a blind, helpless eye to Soviet expansionism in Africa and Asia, and was basically a hapless fool before the international community.

But it turns out he's worse than that (according to Nordlinger's article, which will be on the NRO homepage later today:

Care for a quick walk down Memory Lane? Joshua Muravchik reminded us of some Carter nuggets in a 1994 piece for The New Republic. While in office, Carter hailed Tito as "a man who believes in human rights." He said of Ceausescu and himself, "Our goals are the same: to have a just system of economics and politics . . . We believe in enhancing human rights." Since leaving office, Carter has praised Syria's late Assad (killer of at least 20,000 in Hama) and the Ethiopian tyrant Mengistu (killer of many more than that). In Haiti, he told the dictator Cédras that he was "ashamed of what my country has done to your country."

While in North Korea, Carter lauded Kim Il Sung, one of the most complete and destructive dictators in history. Said Carter, "I find him to be vigorous, intelligent,...and in charge of the decisions about this country" (well, he was absolute ruler). He said, "I don't see that they [the North Koreans] are an outlaw nation." Pyongyang, he observed, was a "bustling city," where shoppers "pack the department stores," reminding him of the "Wal-Mart in Americus, Georgia."

Reminds me of the fools who nuzzled up to Hitler and Stalin (including, in the latter case, the progenitors of Minnesota's Democrat-Farmer-Labor party) in the thirties, the ones who figured making the trains run on time was the measure of a government and a leader.

A shameful day indeed.

Posted by Mitch at October 11, 2002 11:34 AM