Don't Help
I see in our local press (I live in Israel) that the Egyptians are running an unconfirmed story that Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter are headed to Gaza to try to free Gilad Shalit and to weigh in on the Israeli blockade.
Setting aside the appropriateness of handing Hamas the p.r. coup of two former U.S. presidents coming to them to negotiate (which, among other things, would further legitimize the war crime of Shalit’s kidnapping and now four-year solitary confinement), I have to take issue with at least 50% of the talent roped into this alleged mission: namely, Carter.
Few things cause this otherwise mild-mannered suburban mother of three to become quite as incandescent as being lectured on the Israeli-Palestinian problem by Jimmy Carter. One of the signal events to which the emboldenment of fundamentalist Islam can be traced was Carter’s supine response to the mass hostage-taking at the American Embassy in Iran in 1979. Couple that up with his brightly forthright bias against Israel, and you have a person I would argue is uniquely ill-equipped to come wading into our local quagmire and offering helpful suggestions. It’s breathtaking that he of all people purports to have any business advising anyone, let alone us, about a hostage crisis, but they apparently breed some serious chutzpah in Plains, Georgia.
To quote Max Bialystock to Leo Bloom, “Don’t help.”
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Re: Don't Help
Judith, something that often occurs to me--although it is uncomfortable for those of us who love Reagan to admit--is that there were really two signal events to which that emboldenment can be traced. The first, as you note, was Carter's flaccid response to the hostage-taking (and indeed to the entire Iranian Revolution). But the second, alas, was the US withdrawal from Lebanon in the wake of the 1983 Marine barracks bombing. No presidency is perfect. But anyone who is intellectually honest must admit that this was a catastrophic mistake.
Re: Don't Help
Agreed, without question. I understand, though, that Reagan favored retaliatory action but Weinberger managed to nix it. Is that accurate? (I don't mean to minimize Reagan's responsibility here -- the Marines' worst single day since Iwo Jima happened on his watch, and his ultimate response was to run away -- but I don't know the full history, and would like to.)
May '10
Re: Don't Help
It is possible to look at this another way. Since Carter is, by my reckoning under perfect statistical control, having been wrong on every major foreign affairs issue, the logical extension is that he is yet again wrong on Israel and Hamas. Thus his pompous, obnoxious participation lends credibility to Israel's positions.
Re: Don't Help
Hmm. That's an interpretation I can definitely get behind, Steve. I like it.
Re: Don't Help
I know it was widely reported (I'm not sure what the source was) that Weinberger called off plans to attack the Sheik Abdullah Hezbollah terrorist camp in Baalbek, which housed the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. I wonder how different the world would be now had those plans been carried out?
Jun '10
Re: Don't Help
Welcome to the circle, Judith.
The thing that irks me most about the "Palestinian question" is the standing given to Yasser Arafat. He was nothing more than a thief, a thug, and a murderer. Bill Clinton should never have invited him to the White House. I don't care about the politics. Policy should be guided by moral clarity; the politics are secondary.
Of his many crimes, and they are legion, the worst thing Arafat did was poison his people with a hatred that now lives in the marrow of the Palestinian people. Hatred builds nothing; it can only destroy. Israelis and Palestinians lived and worked side by side when I visited Israel in 1988. The Palestinians traveled daily from Gaza and the West Bank to work at jobs in Israel. That all ended when bombs began to explode in Israeli cafes, shopping centers, and bus depots.
The answer to the Palestinian question could have been answered had Arafat been a Gandhi. A campaign of peaceful non-violence would have appealed to the moral sense of the Israeli people. The people of the region are today left with a bitter harvest. It didn't have to be that way.
Re: Don't Help
Thank you for the welcome, Paules.
Yes, yes and yes. It's a terrible tragedy, terrible for all of us. There should be Palestinian hi-tech companies on the NASDAQ, listed right next to the Israeli ones. There should be Israeli-Palestinian charter schools in Tel Aviv and Ramallah. Israelis should be flocking to Palestinian wine bars on Shenkin Street (and I assure you, if they were there, we would). Instead we've got Hamas summer camps where eight-year-old Palestinians spend their days singing songs about jihad and dressing up as suicide bombers, and an Israeli left with the spirit crushed out of it. And it all leads back to Arafat's door.
Jun '10
Re: Don't Help
From: Michael Medved: My Eight Minutes With Jimmy [Carter]
In addition to Mr. Carter’s appalling distortions of history, his new book [We Can Have Peace In The Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work] delivers some unintentional hilarity as he describes his budding friendship with the terror-masters of Hamas. As the former President solemnly and hopefully recounts, “We pursued the concept of non-violent resistance of Hamas leaders and gave them documentation and video presentations of the successful experiences of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, and others.” Reading this sentence, I considered asking the former president whether he ever got a movie review from the Hamas chieftains on the non-violent videos he gave them. In view of the continued daily rocket fire on Israel (in blatant violation of yet another one-sided cease fire) I suppose that the terrorists considered the edifying entertainment from Mr. Carter and ultimately rated it with two bombs down.
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelMedved/2009/02/04/my_eight_minutes_with_jimmy/page/full
May '10
Re: Don't Help
Perhaps association with Mr. Carter will end up tarnishing President Clinton's reputation.
Jul '10
Re: Don't Help
Perhaps. But on the other hand, association with Bill Clinton doesn't seem to have tarnished Bill Clinton's reputation.
Jun '10
Re: Don't Help
Paules, you should have added that Arafat was also a pederast. Anyone who would do what he did to underaged boys deserved to die of AIDS, which he did, but you would never know that by reading The New York TImes of watching the BBC. The man was vile in all ways not just in appearance.
May '10
Re: Don't Help
Don't forget Carter's reaction to the Pakistani government's complete failure to help 100+ Americans and others in a vault beneath burning rubble for hours when a Pakistani mob burned the U.S. Embassy to the ground (believing that we had seized the Great Mosque at Mecca [though no one knew it outside Saudi Arabia, it was a group of millennial radicals proclaiming the Mahdi]), killing two. That reaction? Nothing. Thanks to the Pakistani government for their non-existent help.
May '10
Re: Don't Help
My memory on this may be wrong, but I think G. Schultz said you can't retaliate (for the Marines bombing) if you aren't really sure who is responsible and can make a good public case for it.
May '10
Re: Don't Help
~Paules, I couldn't agree with you more! Yasser Arafat was a wicked scoundrel who started the current anti-Israel violence. It makes me sick to see how the West has idolized him. Might as well start idolizing Che Guevara. Oh, wait.
When I went to Israel in '89 (during the first intifada), tensions were so high that my archeology group got stoned (with rocks, not drugs) visiting an archeological site on the West Bank. Even though I grew up in a Latin American country fraught with violence, I never felt so near death as that time I was running for my life with rocks falling around my feet.
And just the year before, the Arab family whose hotel we were staying at in Jerusalem was very involved in civil life with non-Arabs. The owner of the hotel was even on the police force of Jerusalem. But when the intifada was declared, all Arabs had to disassociate with the establishment or face the wrath of Arafat's minions. In fact, while we were staying at the hotel, some yahoo threw a rock through a window because the family was housing Americans - spawn of The Great Satan.