Let's blame the peanut farmer
By MICHAEL REAGAN
Syndicated Columnist
Everybody's playing the blame game these days. The current target is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who seems to be standing in for President Bush the man who his enemies say is responsible for everything that's gone wrong since the flood. ("Bush lied about the need to build an ark.")
South of our borders we have a nut job running oil-rich Venezuela and threatening to do all kinds of nasty things to us. In North Korea we have another nut job building nukes and rattling sabers, and in Iran there's still another whacked-out leader threatening to blow Israel off the map.
Believe me, Rummy had nothing to do with any of that, nor did George Bush. If you're looking for someone to point the finger at, look no further than James Earl Carter. It's possible to lay every one of these problems at the door of the Georgia peanut farmer and self-anointed evangelist for world peace, understanding and good-will and promoter of universal love-ins with dictators who hate us.
Let's begin with Iran, a boiling cauldron of hatred for everything associated with Western civilization. Recall that when Jimmah took office, Iran was under the role of a strong ally of the United States, the Shah. Like most Middle Eastern potentates, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, ruled with an iron hand. Under him, Iran was not the kind of democracy we're now promoting.
The Shah, however, also was the staunch friend and ally of the United States. He saw to it that the oil kept flowing in our direction and kept his military in good-enough shape to protect our interests in the area.
Thanks to Carter, Iran today constitutes a grave threat to the United States and to world peace. He allowed the creation of an Islamic Republic bent on imposing the most repressive form of Islam on the entire world.
Then we can turn to Venezuela, now locked in the grip of a Castro-clone and fervent communist Hugo Chavez, who is creating a heavily armed communist dictatorship on our southern doorstep. When Chavez faced a recall election, Cater was on hand to monitor the election, which turned out to be rigged to elect Chavez from the very start.
In 1994, when Bill Clinton was facing down North Korea's Kim Il-Sung, father of current dictator Kim Jong-Il, he sent Carter to strike a deal on his development of nuclear technology.
The deal Carter made allowed the North Koreans to work behind the scenes to build nuclear weapons which now threaten world peace. When he came back from North Korea, he told CNN's Judy Woodruff, "I think it's all roses now..."
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