Another Obama-Carter parallel: both lost ambassadors to terrorists
Jimmy Carter's Dead Ambassador By Jeffrey Lord on 10.23.12 @ 6:09AM
Background music of appeasement gave both Obama and Carter murdered diplomats.
His name was Adolph "Spike" Dubs.
He was Jimmy Carter's Ambassador to Afghanistan.
Where, on February 14, 1979, Ambassador Dubs was kidnapped and murdered by a pro-Communist Afghan faction known as the Setami Milli. The victim of what might be called the Jimmy Carter Apology Tour -- which preceded the Obama Apology Tour by over 30 years.
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On May 22, 1977, the new American President Carter traveled to the University of Notre Dame where he gave a speech in which he proclaimed:
We are now free of that inordinate fear of Communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in our fear.
Over the next three years Carter repeatedly sent signals to the Communist world -- and unwittingly, to the Muslim world -- that:
Our goal is to be fair to both sides, to produce reciprocal stability, parity, and security.
The results? By 1979, the world was in chaos.
• On January 16, 1979, the Shah of Iran fled his country.
• On February 1, 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran to establish the Islamic Republic of Iran.
• On February 14, 1979, the American Ambassador to Afghanistan Adolph Dubs is kidnapped and murdered by the Setami Milli, a Maoist faction of Afghan Communists.
• On July 19, 1979, the Communist Sandinistas took control of the capital of Nicaragua.
• On November 4, 1979, Iranian Islamic radicals, students, stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran. This time Khomeini did not interfere, the radical Islamics taking 52 American diplomats hostage. They would be held for 444 days.
• On December 24, 1979, the Soviet Union, no longer content to simply have advisers on scene, invaded Afghanistan. Carter pronounced himself "shocked."
In three short years -- from his inaugural in January of 1977 until the close of 1979 -- Jimmy Carter's foreign policy had turned the world upside down, making it a cauldron of Communist revolution and invasion.
Long before Barack Obama, it was Carter who led the original Apology Tour. The result? The Cold War did not cool down, it heated up.
And it is decidedly worth noting that when Obama dismissed Romney's thinking on Russia by saying "the Cold War has been over for 20 years" -- when it was up to Jimmy Carter (not to mention even or especially Carter's 1980 primary opponent the late Senator Ted Kennedy -- Obama's major supporter in 2008) -- liberals of the day demanded America follow a policy that would have kept the Cold War alive and well to this day. When Ronald Reagan defeated Carter, liberals spent the rest of the Cold War vociferously protesting Reagan's successful efforts to win it. Now they boast that it's over, as if their thinking and decades of blundering, costly policies have somehow been vindicated -- and should be repeated.
And the same exact approach Carter employed with the Communist world was applied to the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran -- unleashing the Islamic fundamentalist whirlwind on the world.
This time around the problem is another American president -- Barack Obama. And unsurprisingly, in his September 4th video address to the Democrats in their Charlotte Convention, it was Jimmy Carter who claimed Obama was seen as a "leader among nations."
Said the man who led and left the world in chaos in his single term:
Overseas President Obama has restored the reputation of the United States within the world community. Dialogue and collaboration are once again possible with the spirit of trust and goodwill in our foreign policy.
Seven days later, Ambassador Chris Stevens was murdered by Islamic terrorists.
And the Middle East was in flames, with violent protests breaking out throughout the world.
Why was this happening? And happening again?
Because one more time an American president has led with weakness. With policies that Romney last night correctly labeled a "rising tide of chaos." Chaos. The main link that ties the results of the Carter and Obama policies so tightly together.
• By ostentatiously signing the order to close Guantanamo -- and being unable to keep his promises.
• By releasing a video addressed to the Iranian mullahs asking for a Carteresque "new beginning" in the American relationship with Iran "that is honest and grounded in mutual respect," enabling Iran to "take its rightful place in the community of nations… [not] through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization." In response, Iran continues its work to get a nuclear weapon.
• By insisting his administration replace the word "terrorism" (and others) terms like "man-caused disaster" because, as Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano put it in an interview in Der Spiegel:
… In my speech, although I did not use the word "terrorism," I referred to "man-caused" disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.
• By going to Cairo University and making the Obama equivalent of Carter's "inordinate fear of Communism" Notre Dame speech. Saying, among other things:
… I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.
• By telling his then-Russian counterpart, the outgoing President Dmitri Medvedev to tell Vladimir Putin: "This is my last election. After my election, I'll have more flexibility." To which Romney said of Putin in last night’s debate: "After the election he'll get more backbone" in dealing with Obama.
• By remaining silent as the Iranian people tried to stand up for their freedoms in the "Green Revolution" -- against the very Iranian mullahs who helped end Jimmy Carter’s presidency. Time after time after time Obama has sent signals of weakness to the world.
And on September 11, 2012 -- just as on February 14, 1979 -- the policy of appeasement and weakness that caught up with Jimmy Carter finally caught up with Barack Obama.
In 1979 that foreign policy resulted in the death of Spike Dubs. In 2012, the Ambassador who wound up murdered was Chris Stevens.
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Just like Jimmy Carter, a dead Ambassador has become a symbol of Obama's failed foreign policy.
And there is a reason for it.
That reason? The Obama foreign policy is being conducted exactly like the Carter foreign policy. The Carter Apology Tour, from a speech about the "inordinate fear of communism" to slapping the wrists of the Soviets over the death of Ambassador Dubs to the Iranian hostage crisis, sent a message and produced results, all of them bad. Or, as Romney said last night about the Obama foreign policy in words that echoed the sentiments of Reagan about Carter's foreign policy: "I don't see our influence growing around the world -- I see our influence receding."
It is receding indeed.
To the background appeasement music of Neville Chamberlain's tapping umbrella.
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