Jimmy Carter

Sorry, I didn't recall your post from last week.--Percy

Percy, when you reach the point where you are characterizing a challenge question as the exemplar of "making extreme claims and extremely biased statements (e.g., "So there were big positives to Reagan's presidency that I missed? Pray tell.", et al.)", you should at least feel a bit of stretch. Didn't you?One major accomplishment would have been a far more effective reply.And I didn't characterize you as an outlier; I characterized you as wrong about Reagan. Lots of people are wrong about Reagan. I expressed my disagreement with your more positive outlook, and you explained how people like me are fundamentally fucking up the world.In the event, neither of our opinions about Reagan matter much. I am puzzled that we both turn from this exchange feeling mischaracterized, but I guess that's politics.

Percy, hello?RAZD asks: All I can think of is his quip about the new National Geographic building, saying "I'm glad you guys found a place to put all your National Geographics."Hello? Percy - you are CHALLENGED to provide ONE good thing he did. Not a general argument - just 1 thing. What was it? Tell us?Oh, here it is: "he made the dumb rightwingers feel good."Carter never made us radical leftwingers feel good. He was & still is a Christer.Edited by xongsmith, : forgot 1 word

You posed a sarcastic rhetorical question expressing your opinion of no "big positives to Reagan's presidency." You lived the Reagan presidency. If you're so biased you can't recall "one major accomplishment" then what's the point of pursuing this with you and Rrhain and RAZD? If I *were* interested in discussing Carter/Reagan then it would be with people willing to weigh the pluses and minuses of their administrations, not with people who insist that one had no pluses and the other no minuses.I'd turn it about on you and ask you to demonstrate your lack of bias by naming some Reagan "big positives." You know, the ones you're going to weigh against the "big negatives" so that you can see how it comes out in the balance. Surely the passage of more than 25 years since his presidency ended has lent you some perspective.--Percy

You're repeating Omnivorous's rhetorical question, so I have the same answer. Please see my previous post.--Percy

Stuart E. Eizenstat editorializes in today's New York Times on the outstanding accomplishments of Jimmy Carter's presidency, and also explains why so many today view it so negatively (Jimmy Carter’s Unheralded Legacy):

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Given these lasting achievements, why is the Carter presidency viewed with such disdain by so many? The answers lie in two areas, one in his style of governing and his unbending character, and the other in external events. Losing a fight for a second term in a landslide automatically casts a cloud. President Ronald Reagan’s positive, hopeful approach also contrasted with Mr. Carter’s penchant to be the bearer of unpleasant truths, to ask for sacrifice in a way that shaded into the image of a public scold.

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Mr. Eizenstat has some wonderfully true and positive things to say about Jimmy Carter and his presidency while also displaying some perspective, balance and objectivity. Jimmy Carter's best qualities were the very ones that served him worst as president. They served him much better later. In those dark days following the 1980 election how could he ever have guessed that the best by far was yet to come.--Percy

Of course, the difference in this case is that you're claiming the US was helping Somoza set up the military opposition to the Sandanista regime at the same time as they were enthusastically supporting the Sandanista regime.In fact, the US never enthusiastically supported the Sandanistas. What they did, under Carter was provide aid to the new government (which briefly attempted to be a government of national unity before it transformed into a one-party state) with the intention of preventing the new Nicaraguan government from turning to the Soviet Union for support and becoming another staunch Soviet ally on the US's doorstep. This policy was obviously abandoned by Reagan's adminstration, which opted to overthrow the Sandanistas by force.I'm unaware of any evidence of US support for the counter-revolution prior to 1981.

Hey Caf,Hmmm, I re-read my posts several times. Where did I write or imply the US was helping Somoza and the Sandanistas at the SAME TIME?Here's a quick timeline . . . Admittedly, I placed Carter's support for dictator Daniel Ortega as the last and least impressive item on my list because of the very small time that Carter's and Ortega's regimes overlapped. Nonetheless, it still seems you feel I overplayed Carter's involvement and Ortega should be fully removed from my "Carter's support of dictators list?" Correct?

You wrote (or rather quoted someone else) that "the C.I.A. under Carter helped to re-establish Somoza's army as a terrorist force against the people of Nicaragua." There's no evidence of this (that I know of). Carter lobbied for the retention of some of Somoza's national guard in the new regime, to try and make sure Nicaragua did not become a Communist ally, but I don't know of any evidence that he actually funded or supported them (unlike Reagan). Yes, and also that you (or your source) overplayed Carter's support for Somoza. While he did try and maintain Somoza's regime in power, he accepted when it became clear this was not possible. This was not a popular attitude with some in the CIA, and they were given a free hand under Reagan, with rather horrifying results.I don't know enough to comment on any of the rest of your list.Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.

Hmm, I am wondering if I could further argue my point by paraphrasing the findings at the Nuremburg Trial:

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aggression is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

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Thus: If Carter didn't enthusiastically support dictator Anastasio Somoza, then conditions that would eventually allow Daniel Ortega to oppress, torture, and murder would not have happened.(Similar to: If Bush Jr. didn't immorally and illegally invade Iraq, ISIS would never had been created. Therefore Bush Jr is directly to blame.)But, in addition to your argument, the more I read about Nicaragua in the 1970s, I am finding myself being more sympathetic to the Sandanistas ORIGINAL humanitarian goals, sooo . . . I'll remove Daniel Ortega from my list of Carter-supported criminals:1. Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud
2. Osama Bin Laden
3. Anastasio Somoza
4. General Suharto
5. Pol Pot
6. Shah of Iran
7. Augusto Pinochet
8. Ferdinand Marcos
9. Robert Mugabe
10. Daniel Ortega Surely you jest Pops. My goodness, you just wrote "[Carter] DID try and maintain Somoza's regime." One could similarly argue that since Carter has accepted it is no longer possible to support any other oppressions, tortures, or murders by the monsters on my list, those names should also be removed too?Good grief, . . . no.

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When [Somoza's] rule was challenged, by the [popular, left-wing] Sandinistas in the late 1970s, the US first tried to institute what was called "Somocismo [Somoza-ism] without Somoza" - that is, the whole corrupt system intact, but with somebody else at the top. That didn't work, so President Carter tried to maintain Somoza's National Guard as a base for US power.

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The National Guard had always been remarkably brutal and sadistic. By June 1979, it was carrying out massive atrocities in the war against the Sandinistas, bombing residential neighbourhoods in Managua, killing tens of thousands of people. At that point, the US ambassador sent a cable to the White House saying it would be "ill-advised" to tell the Guard to call off the bombing, because that might interfere with the policy of keeping them in power and the Sandinistas out.

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Our ambassador to the Organisation of American States also spoke in favour of "Somocismo without Somoza," but the OAS rejected the suggestion flat out. A few days later, Somoza flew off to Miami with what was left of the Nicaraguan national treasury, and the Guard collapsed.

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The Carter administration flew Guard commanders out of the country in planes with Red Cross markings (a war crime), and began to reconstitute the Guard on Nicaragua's borders.

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The contra war in Nicaragua - Noam Chomsky | libcom.org

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Read that again: "The Carter administration flew Guard commanders out of the country in planes with Red Cross markings (a WAR CRIME)"I would be embarrassed to publicly say Carter was a good president.Edited by dronestar, : better message subtitle

Surely the easiest way to put an end to this entire line of arguments would be to name your favorite Reagan achievement. One single sentence or two would have derailed an entire argument.With regard to bias, essentially none of us can claim to be completely objective on this issue, but such a state is not even necessary for a debate. Why would not a proper thing to do here be for each side to present their own case even if the two sides did post mostly pros or cons according to their own bias?

I'm just curious, can you name one president that you wouldn't consider a war criminal?ABE: I mean, since the term was coined.Edited by Cat Sci, : No reason given.

Percy responds to me:

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Clearly you and many others think very highly of Jimmy Carter's presidency, but I think the Wikipedia section on Carter's public image and legacy is a pretty fair assessment, and it's pretty much in line with my own opinion.

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Wikipedia is not a source.But that said, you seem to be confusing popularity with reality.You did read my post before responding, didn't you? You seem to have missed the end: You do understand what that means, yes? When Bush II left office, his approval numbers were down around 30% and now it's about 50%. Do you really think his popularity has changed anything regarding the effects of him being President?The reason I think highly of Carter's presidency is because the things that he accomplished and the policies he worked to institute were good and effective. Not everything, of course. But on the whole, he was in the right direction. We needed more of it, not less.

Excellent question--but I'd remove the ABE clarification.The notion of "war crimes" is the product of attempts to mitigate the consequences of warring nation-states. But as long as we have a world of self-interested, unconstrained sovereign nations, we will have war. As long as we have national wars, "Everything is fair...in war" will prevail over risking a high-minded defeat.When you swear a leader to absolute fealty to the nation, then that leader will make decisions based on the perceived best interests of the nation; the rights and interests of other peoples are secondary, at best.Given our history--the genocide of native people, expansion, colonization, civil war, regional wars and world wars--it is difficult to imagine any president clearing the bar. Human nature and nation-state structures produce the same result globallyI cannot recall a time when moral considerations guided our alliances and strategies. "He's a bastard but he's our bastard" has always applied.We won't change human nature. We can hope to survive long enough to evolve socially beyond nations, but we're running out of planet.

No, but I think I do observe in this thread some confusion of opinion with reality. Well said and nicely balanced. I would characterize Carter differently and say that his efforts were marked by good intentions that failed to take worldly realities into account. The same proclivities that make him a great humanitarian doomed him as leader of the free world. President was the wrong job for him.--Percy