A little trip down memory lane can be relaxing...OR NOT.
You Didn’t Ask for It, You Got It: Carterpalooza!
May 3, 2002
nationalreview.com
All right, I’ve got Carter on my mind, so look out. Why Carter? Didn’t he leave office in 1981 (the same day the mullahs decided to spring the hostages, lest RR send a few up their gazoo)? Yes, but he’s back in the news, yapping absurdly about the Middle East and getting ready to visit Castro down in Cuba (May 12 to May 17).
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In The Unfinished Presidency, Brinkley writes, “There was no world leader Jimmy Carter was more eager to know than Yasir Arafat.” The former president “felt certain affinities with the Palestinian: a tendency toward hyperactivity and a workaholic disposition with unremitting sixteen-hour days, seven days a week, decade after decade.” Neat, huh?
At their first meeting — in 1990 — Carter boasted of his toughness toward Israel, assuring Arafat at one point, “. . . you should not be concerned that I am biased. I am much more harsh with the Israelis.” Arafat, for his part, railed against the Reagan administration and its alleged “betrayals.” Rosalynn Carter, taking notes for her husband, interjected, “You don’t have to convince us!” Brinkley records that this “elicited gales of laughter all round.” Carter himself, according to Brinkley, “agreed that the Reagan administration was not renowned as promise keepers” (this, to Arafat).
If you are sickened by the thought of a former U.S. president and a former First Lady of the United States and the career terrorist Yasser Arafat all sitting around bashing Ronald Reagan . . . you and I think alike.
Mary King was Carter’s key aide and emissary. She once took a flight with Arafat, and “Arafat noticed that I was tired and insisted that I take his customary seat on his plane because it reclined in a certain way, so that I could sleep. I used my handbag as a pillow. After some time had passed, I noticed that a pillow was being ever so gently substituted for the handbag. Arafat himself was trying to place the pillow under my head without waking me. This reflected a caring side to his character which has rarely been evident to the international public as a whole.”
Here, folks, we are in Amb. Joseph Davies territory. Remember him? “He gives the impression of a strong mind which is composed and wise. His brown eye is exceedingly kindly and gentle. A child would like to sit in his lap, and a dog would sidle up to him.” Davies spoke these words about Stalin.
When Saddam Hussein invaded and raped Kuwait, Mary King cabled her boss, Carter: “Saddam learned from the Israelis that might makes right — they took most of Palestine by force and 20 years later occupied the West Bank and Gaza.” That’s the Carter mindset: no thought to the wars of attempted annihilation waged against Israel, which made such occupation thinkable or necessary.
After Carter had that first meeting with Arafat, he went home and promptly served the PLO head as PR adviser and speechwriter. What do I mean? Listen to Brinkley: “On May 24 Carter drafted on his home computer the strategy and wording for a generic speech Arafat was to deliver soon for Western ears . . .” Said Carter, “The audience is not the Security Council, but the world community. The objective of the speech should be to secure maximum sympathy and support of other world leaders . . . The Likud leaders are now on the defensive, and must not be given any excuse for continuing their present abusive policies.”
Carter went on,
A good opening would be to outline the key points of the Save the Children report. . . . Then ask: “What would you do, if these were your children and grandchildren? As the Palestinian leader, I share the responsibility for them. Our response has been to urge peace talks, but the Israeli leaders have refused, and our children continue to suffer. Our people, who face Israeli bullets, have no weapons: only a few stones remaining when our homes are destroyed by the Israeli bulldozers.” . . . Then repeat: “What would you do, if these were your children and grandchildren?” . . . This exact litany should be repeated with a few other personal examples.
Things are a little clearer now.
Carter’s op-ed piece for the New York Times last month — April 21 — was a nasty piece of work, an apologia for Arafat (despite a pro forma and unconvincing attempt at “balance”) and a mendacious attack on Sharon and Israel.
His hatred for Sharon is deep, obvious, and personal. At times he seems to use the man as a proxy for Israel: in other words, it’s okay openly to despise Sharon, if it’s slightly less okay openly to despise Israel. He refers to Sharon’s — Sharon’s — “invasion” of Egypt and his “invasion” of Lebanon. Of course, Meir was prime minister in the one instance, and Begin was prime minister in the other. Sharon was a general or defense minister. Carter also forgets the annoying little detail that Israel is a democracy, and that the people of that country democratically elected Sharon their prime minister. This is in sharp contrast to the Arab states, plus the P.A., that Carter admires and excuses.
Although he does view Arafat as a democratically elected leader: The 1996 elections in the P.A., he writes, were “democratic,” “open,” “fair,” and “well organized” (they were well organized, all right). Needless to say, those elections were like any other in the Arab world, which is to say, rigged from beginning to end. I hope you all enjoyed former CIA director Jim Woolsey’s quip to Joel Mowbray, writing on NRO last week: “Arafat was essentially ‘elected’ the same way Stalin was, but not nearly as democratically as Hitler, who at least had actual opponents.” Arafat’s “opponent” was a prop.
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