This week it was reported that 14 people resigned from the advisory board of the Carter Center in protest to Jimmy Carter's new book ""Palestine: Peace not Apartheid". Read the story here: http://www.cnn.com/...
President Carter has been villified for taking a hard line against Israel and the US for their lack of any progress in finding a solution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. And he has been critized by repugs since leaving office, most recently by Gerald Ford as a "disaster".
Yeah right, Gerald Ford calling Carter a disaster. Don't get me started on how the recently Sainted Ford (who healed the nation, not) actually permanently divided this country by pardoning Nixon. A division which only gets worse every election cycle. By proving the United States isn't really a nation built on the rule of law after all. Proving that some people, namely presidents, are really above the law. He brought us Rumsfeld and Cheney and that crew has now built upon Ford's legacy and elevated to an artform the act of proving that our current president is above the law. But I digress. More to follow:
The 14 people who resigned from the Carter Center sent a letter accusing Carter of:
abandoning his "historic role of broker in favor of becoming an advocate for one side." Carter's book confused "opinion with fact, subjectivity with objectivity and force for change with partisan advocacy," the letter said.
So Carter has become an advocate for one side? Not Bush?
My opinion is that Jimmy Carter is one of the best foreign policy leaders that this country has ever seen. He's the only president to broker a lasting peace of any kind between Arabs and Israeli's. Egypt and Israel still enjoy peace today because of Jimmy Carter.
A lasting peace between Israeli's and Palestinians is one essential ingredient to solving all of the problems in the Middle East, including Iraq, and Iran. Maybe the most important. But George Bush(for my money the worst foreign policy leader of our country's history) has been awol on leading any peace process.
Now to be clear, Jimmy Carter never says the Palestinians are angels, and neither do I. He never absolves the Palestinians from their own sins and neither do I. He just makes the point that most of the repugnant acts perpetrated by the Palestinians, are in reaction to how Israel treats them. So let's go to the latest video tape.
On ABC World News Sunday night a video was played showing fact not opinion on how Israeli settlers in Hebron really treat Palestinians there. Here's a link to the video. Watch it and weap as I did.
http://abcnews.go.com/...
The video link actually states that "Israeli's are abusing caged Palestinians." Let me make clear, these Palestinians are not in prison. They are a family living inside their own home in Hebron, and they have erected a cage around their home to protect themselves from Israeli settlers. The settlers are protected by the Israeli army. In the video, army personnel can be seen standing by and doing nothing as the Israeli settlers hurl insults and abuse at the Palestinians inside their home and call the women "whores". This is fact. This is happening.
And they call Jimmy Carter crazy for daring to say that the Palestinian people are treated as badly as were the blacks in Aprathied South Africa. Sheesh.
What President Carter has long known, and indeed what most Americans have long known, is that peace in the Middle East is not merely a laudable goal, but a necessary prerequisite to World Peace. There will never be peace without justice.
So when you wonder "...what the hell is happening in that part of the world, and why do they hate us so much?", just ask yourself why George Bush has never spoken out against any of the Israeli acts of violence against the Palestinians? He's only ever spoken out against the Palestinians. In five years in office, he's never once publicly scolded Israel about anything. In his mind Israel can do no wrong. It doesn't take a Rhodes scholar to figure out why most of the Arab world hates our guts. They know our government stands behind Israel.
Carter was and is an honest broker. Bush, not so much.