Nobel Peace Prize for Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
Congress authorizes Bush to use force against Iraq.

Oh, the irony.

His current elevation to sainthood, complete with Demme doc, is kind of sad.

From Dennis Perrin, who is writing a book on the hypocrisies and evils of the Democrats from a leftist perspective:

Quick presidential Dem tidbit: Do you know why Jimmy Carter refused to offer Vietnam reparations for our murderous destruction of their country? Because "the destruction was mutual."

Last week I saw an old clip of Robert Gates reminding people that "thanks to President Carter" the military buildup that Reagan would accelerate really began in 1979-1980. The GOP hates him for the wrong reasons.

The GOP should be thankful for Jimmy Carter. He is the gift that keeps on giving.

I'd totally have him over for a good family dinner. He just seems like a pleasant guy to be around.

he's classic for making ilx's repressed right-wingers so furious on such a hilariously consistent basis

I like the guy! I think of him every time I put on a sweater instead of turning on the heater.

He killed many ppl as president, obv.

THE SWEATERS, MORBZ. THE SWEATERS.

srsly, what do you ppl expect carter to say? "the vietnam war was evil and we were evil for being there"?

leftists who consider "hypocrisy" a war crime = dud.

He killed many ppl as president, obv.

unlike washington, lincoln, and FDR, whose actions never led to anything worse than a few burnt scones.

Habitats for Humanity man, he's great. Just called Bush out on the terrornism. I mean, it's obvious, but not said 'nough p'raps.

JD, I wouldn't compare WW2 and the Civil War with Carter's weapons boondoggles and sponsorship of dictatorial butchers.

how 'bout an Apatow directed biopic of Billy Carter, Morbs?

sniping at american presidents for "hypocrisy" and/or "inconsistency" and/or general "centrism" is shooting great whites in a pail with a fucking machine gun

When one of those presidents is being celebrated as if he were Gandhi, it has to be done, though.

leftists who consider "hypocrisy" a war crime = dud.

More strawmen. Let's look at JC's body count, then.

Carter's projected military budgets for the early 1980s were higher than the ones Reagan presided over. Remember his plan to run MX missiles by rail around the American West?

Recall when Carter said America would not stand idly by while Nicaragua tried to set forth on a different path after the Sandinistas threw out Anastasio Somoza? Carter told them they had to retain the National Guard, which had been Somoza's elite band of US-trained psychopathic killers. The Sandinistas said no. So Carter ordered the CIA to bring up the officers and torturers running the Argentine death squads to train a force of Nicaraguan exiles in Honduras scheduled for terror missions across the border. They called them the contras.

El Salvador? In October 1979, a coup by reformist officers overthrew the repressive Romero dictatorship and pledged reforms, including land reform. But within weeks, it became clear that the reformers among the new rulers had been outmaneuvered, so they resigned en masse as the real leaders stepped up frightful repression in the countryside, killing close to 1,000 people a month. Some 10,000 were killed in 1980, most of them peasants and workers.

The Carter Administration sent millions in aid and riot equipment to the Salvadoran military, dispatched US trainers and trained Salvadoran officers in Panama. The Administration cast the conflict as one between the "extremes" of left and right, with the junta trying to steer a "moderate" course. In fact, 90 percent of the killings were carried out by the army or paramilitary death squads acting under army or government supervision. The Carter Administration continued to push this line throughout 1980, not suspending aid until the killing of four Maryknoll nuns in December. It's all coming back to you? Yes, it was the Carter Administration that restored the Khmer Rouge to military health after the Vietnamese kicked them out of power in Cambodia.

And he harked to the pain of South Korea, where students and workers were demonstrating against the military dictatorship of Chun Doo Hwan, notably in Kwangju. Carter's envoy advised the South Korean military to hit back hard, and it did on May 17, 1980, killing at least 1,000, the most horrible massacre since the Korean War. The White House instructed the local US military commander to release a South Korean force from border duty to attack the demonstrators, which they did with terrible brutality.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Cockburn_Carter.htm

Carter was also dealing with Brezhnev not Dr. Gorbz

Morbs, do you have anything constructive to say about politics?

or JellyNY

is Gandhi responsible for any deaths, morbs?

Morbs, do you have anything constructive to say about politics?

Don't you think 'people shouldn't kill people' (at least without good reason) and 'we shouldn't celebrate people responsible for large numbers of deaths' are constructive? It seems if people took those things to heart we would be a lot better off.

I wouldn't say so much "constructive" as "facile".

Oh sure, it's that - but what do we benefit from pretending that stuff didn't happen?

What do we benefit from pointing out every mistake made by all of our leaders with no offers of how those mistakes can be rectified?

Basically, if you're going to ride on the "so-and-so sucks because of THIS," I want to know what your solution to "THIS" is; it's incredibly easy to bash any elected official for making horrific compromises or bad decisions because so many of them have to make them in order to have any chance of getting anything done. How do you get out of that cycle?

Well, we don't - but all Morbius (natural contrarian as he is) did was mention things that we all know are true. And nothing can be done to rectify those mistakes, which is why taking a life is such an enormous act. The sooner humanity stops worshiping strongmen and killers, or at best forgiving them in the warm glow of hindsight, the better off we will be.

x-post well, a lot of the things carter did, especially in south america, were not things that needed solving, unless you're a right wing cold warrior.

all morbs did was object to people with power exercising it, deeming them unwashably stained with sin for the results that followed, no matter their intentions

DO you thing they should not be held accountable, or that we have any righ to forgive them on behalf of the people that suffered?

...

Do you have a response to my question that isn't a specious ad hominem?

Um, I don't think I ad hominined anyone, but if I did I apologise.

Anyway, I'll let the Dr talk for himself - I just find the idea that people in power should be judged by a different standard of morality to be troubling.

gandhi was easily a much bigger homophobe than carter but i guess that doesnt bother morbzy

I think it's really bizarre to think that someone whose decisions directly impact the well-being of millions of people should be held to the same standard of morality as someone whose decisions directly impact tens of people, particularly when the first person is regularly put into situations where, no matter what the decision is, the end result will be negative for some subset of people numbering in the millions. If your viewpoint is that no person in power should ever be held up as an example of morality, say so. If it's not, explain why bad decisions made while President outweighs multiple good decisions made in the decades following.

How do you get out of that cycle?

With a different system. Democracy would be a good one, with modified isolationism as foreign policy. That's never gonna happen.I've said before I gave up on this goddamn country of idiots and selfish bastards at least 15 years ago, so no, I don't have anything "constructive" to say in that sense.

Contextualize Carter funding death squads all you want, just don't make him into some cuddly lifelong humanist.

and what, go sit on a chainsaw.

I think Carter was kind of a failure as a President and realized it, hence spending the rest of his political career making up for it via his humanitarian stuff.

Morbs, if all you have to say is non-constructive bitterness, why even bother? The only thing you're accomplishing is getting everyone to roll their eyes and say "Shut up".

I still love this guy! He gives me hope for this world and the human race and not too many people do that.

c'mon Dan, "everyone."

Carter's been OK as an ex-president.

we should have a poll

do you think morbz politics posts are

o tedious & pointless
o changing the world

Don't misunderstand me Dan - I think Carter is probably a pretty good guy on the whole. And it is impossible for any leader to measure up to any standards of morality (ordinary people too, of course). But if he isn't haunted by the (perhaps necessary, though in the case of SA I don't think so) lives of the people his decisions affected he's no kind of leader. And I think we owe it to ourselves and the rest of humanity not to forget about them either. But the fact that I think that when we talk about the good things Carter did we should remember the bad in no way rules out discourse about power/morality/leadership; I think it's vital to it.

HOLLA AT ME MAUREEN DOWD

We have done virtually everything we can with respect to carrots, if you will. It’s time for squash. Not to mention mushrooms, clouds of them.

I have no idea who that is, btw /scottish

I have Google Alert set for "ILXor changes world"

I'd be curious to know how Carter views his presidency; my suspicion would be that he thinks he did the best he could and that much of the popular assessment of his legacy is unfair. And as much as I view his presidency in a negative light, and as much as his sanctimonious ego annoys me, and as much as sometimes he seemed to be crusading for a Nobel, Jimmy has worked very hard trying to good things in the past 30 years.

I can only hope I'm that well-spoken at 89.

So the former GA governor Carl Sanders, who lost to Carter in the 1970 Democratic gub primary, just died. (He was considered "moderate" in the late '60s though he called mixed-race marriage an abomination.) Apparently Carter ran a pretty race-baity campaign against him, praising Lester Maddox etc, even tho he didn't carry this over to governing when he won. Anyone have a good source/summary on this? Online info I can find comes mostly from assorted wingnuts and/or transparent racists.

Randy Sanders. " 'The Sad Duty of Politics': Jimmy Carter and the Issue of Race in His 1970 Gubernatorial Campaign"
The Georgia Historical Quarterly. Vol. 76, No. 3, Fall 1992, 612-628

Well worth finding. JSTOR access, if that helps. Wish I could upload some of the images, esp. this one cartoon that has not been posted to the www

I'll check the NYPL sometime, thanks.

upthread:

removing (saddam) hussein will do more for peace than anything carter ever did.

― keith (keithmcl), Friday, October 11, 2002

^^another failed prophecy by a random googler

removing hussein will do more for peace than anything carter ever did.

― keith (keithmcl), Friday, October 11, 2002 6:18 PM (12 years ago)

heehee

weird thread, though, especially the discussion in late oct 2007. morbs pointing out that carter made some terrible decisions that led to many people dying was immediately criticized because a) other presidents' decisions have led to people dying, b) he didn't offer solutions to rectify carter's mistakes (??), c) since presidents' decisions affect many more people, they must be judged on a different scale of morality, d) he's morbs.

pointing out that something bad happened, with or without including possible solutions or suggestions to how the problem could have been avoided, is fine in my book. the vast majority of people have no clue that jimmy carter did terrible things. there's a value in pointing it out, even if you don't have a supplementary alternative history policy recommendation paper to accompany the post. a segment of the ILX politics cohort may be well aware of carter's more regrettable actions, but it's ridiculous to think that many others do. jimmy carter was a peanut farmer. jimmy carter is an exceedingly nice man that i met in an airplane a few years ago (he shook everyone's hand!). jimmy carter told everyone to turn down the ragodammned heat and put a sweater on for crissake, and installed solar panels on the white house roof. jimmy carter's administration strongly advised actions that led to the biggest massacre in south korea since the korean war. the fact that he was in the most powerful position on earth does not mean that it's pointless to cite terrible things that he did. the fact that very powerful people are sometimes put in situations where a decision could lead to the death of innocents doesn't mean that it's pointless to criticize the decision.

(it may annoy people if a particular poster frequently focuses on the terrible things that a president did, but if that's the case, why not criticize the poster on those grounds rather trying to make some sort of argument that the poster shouldn't be allowed to talk about the terrible things at all?)

anyway, lighten up 2007 ILX

this deserves a longer answer, but i guess i've come to feel, after growing up on the hard left's interpretation of recent u.s. history and later reading more in-depth books about those subjects, that i don't find the kind of critiques that cockburn specialized in to be especially convincing or interesting anymore. cockburn lists a lot of things that sound pretty bad, but he doesn't give us a lot of context or any detailed analysis of why those things happened, so carter's actual role in those events. like, did carter specifically sign off on the massacre in south korea? how did he justify supporting the regime in indonesia? i'd like to know the answer, but i don't feel like the cockburn/chomsky 'all presidents are war criminals' line is terribly useful in terms of understanding recent history, since it seems to attribute everything bad that happens to the personal character flaws of a person who can be kicked out of office every four years, as opposed to (say) the more-or-less permanent power of the CIA, the pentagon, and the other institutions that are actually responsible for the "continuity in empire" and atrocities that cockburn talks about.

it seems to attribute everything bad that happens to the personal character flaws of a person who can be kicked out of office every four years

yeah, I don't see it this way at all. "Personal character flaws" really don't seem to enter into it all that much since presumably 'different' personalities like Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Dubya, Obama do remarkably similar things, cuz they've all chosen to put on the executioner's hood that goes with the job.

Some of the tortured prose employed above in 2007 v reminiscent of Buck Turgidson's "We have two regrettable but nevertheless distinguishable scenarios..."

not a fan of most of those guys, but imo there is a clear difference between the attitudes that carter and (say) reagan had toward foreign policy and the national security state. this piece by mark ames has a lot of details about the differences between the two administrations that i haven't seen anywhere else (the carter stuff starts near the middle, but the entire piece is indispensable reading imo):

https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/assassinations/

haha, probably not going to be able to check out that link at work

haha, ironically i think almost everything on that site is actually safe for work, unless maybe you work for the defense department or something

yeah i'm sure it's fine but a lot of URLs are screened for their titles alone so i'm sure it's blocked. anyway i'll check it out when i get home!

When are the military exploits and collateral foreign carnage brought by Bush II, Bush I, Reagan, Nixon excused via the more-or-less permanent power of the CIA, the pentagon, etc.?

This rationalization is offered solely to deflect discussions of the actual Obama, Clinton, Carter admins.

i'm not rationalizing it, and i'm not trying to 'deflect' any discussions. i'm interested in the actual political history that cockburn smugly elides with his "they're all the same, those bums!" routine.

The best book about the CIA in Central America and its involvement in the October Surprise (which looks more credible every year) is Robert Parry's Secrets and Privilege. He's the AP reporter who uncovered the CIA assassination manual in Central America, among other horrors.

wait, which year's October Surprise is that?

"They're all the same" is one routine. Another routine is "the Republicans like to do it, the Democrats only do it because [some excuse]." The first routine only sounds the most cynical; the latter routine is so much worse.

http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2015/08/12/jimmy-carter-i-have-cancer/

This is a man who has lived a good, long, rich and decent life, and who has been slandered in history by people not morally fit to tie his shoes.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a37130/jimmy-carter-has-cancer-ronald-reagan-iran

:(

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/08/20/former-president-jimmy-carter-says-cancer-has-spread-to-his-brain/

since he appears to have become a much better person since he was president, i expect he'll handle this with dignity and courage.

hmm seems like hes fucked

said Reagan in 1980

http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/every-single-movie-that-jimmy-carter-watched-at-the-whi-1728538092

The Island of Allah (1956) and Herbie Rides Again (1974) - May 21, 1977

I've never heard of 'The Island of Allah' - does it make a good double feature with 'Herbie Rides Again' or did Carter just give up on the former after the first ten minutes and decide to put a Herbie film on instead?

we both saw The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu in summer 1980

he did not watch Airplane! until the week after he lost to Reagan.

This is almost like Barry Bonds setting a new HR record only three years after McGwire--too soon, Jimmy, too soon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us/politics/how-old-is-jimmy-carter.html

(But congratulations anyway.)

didn't he beat stage 3 brain cancer or something like that?

brb searching for the wormhole to the parallel universe where he runs and wins a second term next year

Compared to George Freaking Herbert Walker Bush being the longest-lived president, I'll take Jimmy Earl Malaise Carter every day of the week. But, because there is no Just God behind this kind of stuff, in a couple of decades it could be someone even more hated than Trump is.

Carter is a bad retail politician but he is by no means stupid or unwilling to kill you. I think anger keeps him alive, I mean real biblical anger, which is a rare thing. https://t.co/e8g7b1rmGu

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) October 1, 2019

I'd say faux Nixon is really overreaching on that one. I'm pretty sure faux Nixon has never spent one minute in the same room as Carter and has no better insight into him than my Aunt Fanny.

if you think Carter didn't have a killer political instinct, research his 1970 campaign for governor

There are five assertions in that tweet. I don't quarrel with that particular one since his public record upholds it. The last two are just Wile E. Coyote running past the edge of the cliff.

new biography out

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/18/jonathan-alter-jimmy-carter-donald-trump-reagan-bush-clinton-obama

Question that has interested me for a long time: when did pop/rock & roll musicians cross over into the world of celebrity and power (you can add money, too, but some had already made that leap before they made the other). Specific oddity that got me interested: none of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, or Bob Dylan were at Truman Capote's famous party in 1966. It's like there's a line there, and by the late '70s that line had been obliterated.

I'd never thought about it, but Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President makes it clear that his presidency was key to that transformation. (Saw it in a theatre tonight; it should play on CNN soon.) Dylan, for one, talks about his first invite to the White House, and how--as Carter quoted his songs back to him--he realized this was the first time his work had crossed that barrier.

I wouldn't say it's a great film, and--understandably--it deifies Carter, but lots of amazing footage (Dizzy Gillespie inviting Carter up to sing "Salt Peanuts") and a good time capsule of those years. Carter's inauguration--the ceremony, then the party later--is especially striking in view of present circumstances.

Nothing to do with Carter, but I think of the shift of rock stars into celebrities being marked or heralded by some of the giant tours a little earlier: Rolling Stones in '72, Dylan/Band and also CSNY in '74. Maybe Alice Cooper fits in there somewhere too. Descriptions you read of these shows often mention movie stars and other personalities hanging around backstage or after the show, which as you say probably wasn't quite the case five or ten years earlier.

There was that strange time in rock between '74 and '77 where a lot of musicians embraced a putative sophistication that looks and feels now like an old issue of Cosmopolitan.

Definitely the '72 Stones tour--was going to mention that. There are shots in Cocksucker Blues of Capote (and maybe Warhol) milling about backstage. In the Carter film, Jerry Brown's campaign--enlisting the Eagles and, of course, Linda Ronstadt--also had a hand in this.

One annoying thing about the Carter film: along with Dicky Betts and Willie Nelson and Niles Rodgers and Trisha Yearwood and lots of people that make sense, there's five minutes of Bono. (Who might make sense too, but it's Bono.)

I'd say the Beatles receiving MBEs in '65 was a step in this process, and then the Stones hanging out with and being shot by royal photographer Cecil Beaton in '67 was another, plus Jagger being good friends (at least) with Princess Margaret from '67 or so.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/howard-kaylan-storms-the-white-house-in-shell-shocked-my-life-with-the-turtles-exclusive-book-excerpt-179284/

Kennedys/Rat Pack is the beginning of this.

Beats Thatcher/Tarby/Cilla Black any day.

I was thinking more specifically of the rock and roll end of it, but for sure, Kennedy/Rat Pack clears the way for that. I'd say the bookends are Warhol and Dylan's orbits intersecting in '66 and Studio 54 a decade-plus later. Rod Stewart's great line from "You Were It Well" in 1972--"Madame Onassis got nothin' on you"--he's still like a kid there with his nose pressed against the window, pining for an invite into that world; five or six years later, he is that world.

(I always want to issue a personal apology when I hijack someone's thread. Sorry, Jimmy Carter--congratulations on your Nobel Peace Prize.)

Entering hospice care apparently.

https://www.cartercenter.org/news/pr/2023/statement-on-president-carters-health.html

Sad news.

The source here is a spook (is that ok to say?) but it was an interesting context on Carter’s continuing historic role after leaving the White House.

Thread on Jimmy Carter and 1994 North Korea nuclear crisis.
In August, 1994, I was one of a small team of intelligence officers asked to brief the former President prior to his mission to Pyongyang. Carter had essentially volunteered for the task…much to Clinton’s consternation.

— Frank Jannuzi ☮️ (@FrankJannuzi) February 19, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html