Jimmy Carter: "When I go to a dictatorship, I only have to talk to one person and that's the dictator, because he speaks for all the people."

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

Thanks for the recommendations I'll have to jot those down.

How many have read "Peace not Apartheid" cover to cover.

I have.

Jimmy Carter is not an idiot--he is a caring person with a long, deep history of interaction in the middle east.

Contrast that with the present President.

My I also suggest reading Madeline Albrecht's book on US foreign policy-very insightlful.

[Ban Hammer 13,346]

Let me make it real simple for you:

1) Carter did not run this country into an illegal war that claimed tens of thousands of innocent lives and destroyed hundreds of thousands more.

2) George W Bush will never be a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

The latter may not mean much in Rush's little bubble but in the real world, it counts for something.

and i'll make it simple for you:

- we are not talking about gwb. this thread is about jimmy carter.

Just wanted to put Carter's accomplishments towards the promotion of peace into proper perspective.

if doing nothing while rome burns counts as an accomplishment, then so be it.

Rome wasn't buring. Until someone else set it on fire.

watching rome (in this case iran) burn to the ground on his watch speaks volumns about his "leadership" abilites.

[panamania79 2]

Jimmy's World

April 15, 2008; Page A18

Former President Jimmy Carter has an interesting way of saying more than he intends. He lusts in his heart. He turns to his 13-year-old daughter for foreign policy wisdom. He titles a book, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid." What Mr. Carter means to say is that he is a flesh-and-blood human being, a caring father, a missionary for peace. What he actually communicates is that he is weirdly libidinal, scarily naive and obsessively hostile to Israel.

Now the 2002 Nobel laureate is in reprise mode. "In a democracy, I realize you don't need to talk to the top leader to know how the country feels," he said over the weekend, responding to a question from an Israeli journalist who noted that Mr. Carter had been snubbed by most of Israel's top leadership and reprimanded by its president, Shimon Peres. "When I go to a dictatorship, I only have to talk to one person and that's the dictator, because he speaks for all the people."

Come again?

Mr. Carter is on a tour of the Middle East, the most newsworthy aspect of which is a scheduled meeting in Damascus with Khaled Mashal, the head of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. More on that below. For now, ponder what he could possibly have meant by this statement. On a charitable view, what Mr. Carter had in mind is that in a democracy it is the people who ultimately make the policy, whereas in a dictatorship it is only the dictator's opinion that counts. Or as W.H. Auden put it, "Only the man behind the rifle [has] free will."

That's not quite what Mr. Carter said, however. He said the dictator "speaks" for "all" the people, just as the people in a democracy speak for themselves. Taken at face value, this is a reflection of every dictator's conceit: that his will is also the general will, whether the people agree with him or not. This is what Fidel Castro meant when he praised Cuba's elections, in which only the Communist Party is on the ballot, as "the most democratic in the world." Perhaps Mr. Carter has harbored similar views about the relative merits of his opinion versus the people's since he was turned out of high office by 44 states.

Yet a dictator does not speak for the people. Properly speaking, a dictator speaks for none of the people. A dictator speaks only for himself, while "the people" are transformed, through force and fear, into an abstraction, an instrument, a rhetorical trope. On the contrary, it is only in a democracy where the government can morally and lawfully be said to speak for the people, since it was morally and lawfully chosen by the people to speak for them. Which means that Mr. Carter has matters precisely backwards: It is in democracies such as Israel where the views of the leadership matter most, and in dictatorships such as Syria where they matter least.

Besides Israel, Mr. Carter's trip will take him to the West Bank, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. What would the logic suggested above mean in terms of his choice of interlocutors?

- In Egypt, Mr. Carter could give an address at the newly established Middle East Freedom Forum. He could call for the immediate release of George Ishak, a lawyer and democracy activist who helps coordinate the liberal Kifaya ("Enough") movement and was arrested by security forces last Wednesday. He could pay a call to journalist Gameela Ismael, the wife of Ayman Nour. Mr. Nour, who contested the 2005 election against President Hosni Mubarak and took 8% of the vote, has spent the past two years in prison on trumped-up charges of electoral fraud.

- In Saudi Arabia, Mr. Carter could raise the case of Fawza Falih, an illiterate woman who was convicted of "witchcraft" and sentenced to death on charges that she used sorcery to render a man impotent. He might also seek out the now famous "Qatif Girl," the woman who was gang-raped by seven men and, as a result of her "crime," sentenced to 200 lashes.

- In Jordan, Mr. Carter might find time for Jihad Momani, editor of the weekly "Shihan," who in 2006 was arrested for reprinting the Danish cartoons of Prophet Mohammed. "Muslims of the world be reasonable," he wrote in an editorial that ran alongside the cartoons. "What brings more prejudice against Islam, these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras or a suicide bomber who blows himself up during a wedding ceremony in Amman?"

- With the Palestinians, Mr. Carter could denounce the Hamas-operated Al Aqsa TV, whose programming includes a Sesame Street-like show that urges its young viewers to "get rid of the Jews."

- In Syria, Mr. Carter could ask to meet with representatives of the National Council of the Damascus Declaration for Democratic Change. A dozen leaders of this pro-democracy umbrella group were arrested in December on charges of "spreading false or exaggerated news which would affect the morale of the country"; Human Rights Watch charges that at least eight of the men signed false confessions under torture.

Will Mr. Carter do any of this? The odds are long. Instead, he will meet with Mr. Mashal, author of the murder of several hundred Israeli civilians and not a few Americans, too. On a visit yesterday to Sderot, the besieged Israeli town near Gaza, the former president denounced the "despicable crime" of Hamas's incessant rocket attacks of the past several years. Yet he continues to defend the view that all relevant parties, including Hamas, must be partners in a negotiation to bring about a peaceful settlement.

Hamas, it is true, fairly won a parliamentary election in January 2006. It is also true that nobody elected Mr. Mashal to his position, that he is another of Auden's men behind the rifle, and that Hamas has never accepted the Oslo Accords that are the legal basis of the Authority they seek to govern, much like other totalitarian parties of yore that participated opportunistically in a democratic process – cf. Weimar Republic. They do not seek an entente with the Jewish state but its elimination. In meeting with a former U.S. president, they seek to burnish their reputations as legitimate Mideast players, not outlaws. Perhaps Mr. Carter knows this, or perhaps he doesn't. Whichever the case, his actions bespeak more than he intends.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1208217509...=googlenews_wsj

Senility is setting in.He'd just better stick to Habitat for Humanity and build nice houses in the ghetto.

[HAL 9000 96]

Let me make it real simple for you:

1) Carter did not run this country into an illegal war that claimed tens of thousands of innocent lives and destroyed hundreds of thousands more.

2) George W Bush will never be a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

The latter may not mean much in Rush's little bubble but in the real world, it counts for something.

and i'll make it simple for you:

- we are not talking about gwb. this thread is about jimmy carter.

Just wanted to put Carter's accomplishments towards the promotion of peace into proper perspective.

if doing nothing while rome burns counts as an accomplishment, then so be it.

Rome wasn't buring. Until someone else set it on fire.

watching rome (in this case iran) burn to the ground on his watch speaks volumns about his "leadership" abilites.

Was this Rome before (in this case) or after Hannibal came to power? There is only so much us Babylonians could have done to prevent Hannibal. Err, I mean, not prevent his rise to rule Rome, in this case.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

The whole Iran thing was deeply messed up before Carter came on the scene.

"In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular Prime Minister, Mohammed Massadegh. The Eisenhower Administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons; but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs."

http://www.fas.org/news/iran/2000/000317.htm

[sandinista! 1,816]

Besides Israel, Mr. Carter's trip will take him to the West Bank, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. What would the logic suggested above mean in terms of his choice of interlocutors?

- In Egypt, Mr. Carter could give an address at the newly established Middle East Freedom Forum. He could call for the immediate release of George Ishak, a lawyer and democracy activist who helps coordinate the liberal Kifaya ("Enough") movement and was arrested by security forces last Wednesday. He could pay a call to journalist Gameela Ismael, the wife of Ayman Nour. Mr. Nour, who contested the 2005 election against President Hosni Mubarak and took 8% of the vote, has spent the past two years in prison on trumped-up charges of electoral fraud.

- In Saudi Arabia, Mr. Carter could raise the case of Fawza Falih, an illiterate woman who was convicted of "witchcraft" and sentenced to death on charges that she used sorcery to render a man impotent. He might also seek out the now famous "Qatif Girl," the woman who was gang-raped by seven men and, as a result of her "crime," sentenced to 200 lashes.

- In Jordan, Mr. Carter might find time for Jihad Momani, editor of the weekly "Shihan," who in 2006 was arrested for reprinting the Danish cartoons of Prophet Mohammed. "Muslims of the world be reasonable," he wrote in an editorial that ran alongside the cartoons. "What brings more prejudice against Islam, these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras or a suicide bomber who blows himself up during a wedding ceremony in Amman?"

- With the Palestinians, Mr. Carter could denounce the Hamas-operated Al Aqsa TV, whose programming includes a Sesame Street-like show that urges its young viewers to "get rid of the Jews."

- In Syria, Mr. Carter could ask to meet with representatives of the National Council of the Damascus Declaration for Democratic Change. A dozen leaders of this pro-democracy umbrella group were arrested in December on charges of "spreading false or exaggerated news which would affect the morale of the country"; Human Rights Watch charges that at least eight of the men signed false confessions under torture.

Will Mr. Carter do any of this? The odds are long. Instead, he will meet with Mr. Mashal, author of the murder of several hundred Israeli civilians and not a few Americans, too. On a visit yesterday to Sderot, the besieged Israeli town near Gaza, the former president denounced the "despicable crime" of Hamas's incessant rocket attacks of the past several years. Yet he continues to defend the view that all relevant parties, including Hamas, must be partners in a negotiation to bring about a peaceful settlement.

Hamas, it is true, fairly won a parliamentary election in January 2006. It is also true that nobody elected Mr. Mashal to his position, that he is another of Auden's men behind the rifle, and that Hamas has never accepted the Oslo Accords that are the legal basis of the Authority they seek to govern, much like other totalitarian parties of yore that participated opportunistically in a democratic process – cf. Weimar Republic. They do not seek an entente with the Jewish state but its elimination. In meeting with a former U.S. president, they seek to burnish their reputations as legitimate Mideast players, not outlaws. Perhaps Mr. Carter knows this, or perhaps he doesn't. Whichever the case, his actions bespeak more than he intends.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1208217509...=googlenews_wsj

the rest of the article besides the dictator commentary is ####### as well. i wonder what purpose it would serve for a bunch of former middle east leaders to visit the united states and berate our leaders about the columbia law school study that says that there are as many as 100,000 innocent people wrongfully convicted and currently incarcerated in the us, or how many innocent men and women have been executed here. that'd go over well. what an intelligent component to introduce to the diplomatic process.

i don't get how carter can possibly be seen as "interfering" in a diplomatic process that is non-existent. i don't get why it's off limits to talk to mashal, but it wasn't off limits for carter to stand here with begin. . i don't get why nixon could meet with mao, or roosevelt and churchill could meet with stalin, or gerry adams could spend multiple march 17ths with us presidents, but the current us president refuses talking to terrorists on the condition that they are terrorists. when and why did that change?