A great deal has been written about the passing of an extraordinarily decent former president; Jimmy Carter. He was indeed an admirable figure in many ways. He walked the walk of his Christian faith, doing for others as he would have them do unto him. Rather than the more typical post-presidential lives we have seen, amassing wealth and influence and building their ‘legacy’, the apparently brilliant nuclear engineer, naval officer and gifted politician chose instead to put on a tool belt and sweat in the sun with hard-working ordinary people who aspired to home ownership and had the gumption to invest sweat for equity in their dream.
What I found so frustrating about the coverage of his passing was the glaring omissions of so many key facts about his administration. While much was made of his ‘breakthrough’ Camp David Accords between Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin, they really did next to nothing for the people there; soon Rabin was assassinated by one of the rabid settler colonial Zionists and Sadat was soon liquidated as well. Any hope for peace was snuffed out along with their lives. Israel scarcely paused doing what it has always done, committing the sometimes slow, other times rapid, genocide of the Palestinians and the one by one destruction of all of Israel’s neighboring Arab countries. All of this has always, for some reason, been backed, unconditionally, by the world’s greatest superpower, the big dog that is wagged by the all-powerful tail of AIPAC and the political contributions of wealthy Israel firsters.
Listening to an old interview with Carter on Terry Gross’s Fresh Air, she asked him about the curious fact that the moment that Ronald Reagan put his hand on the Bible to replace him as president, all of the of US Iranian hostages were wheels up on their way home from Tehran. This, after Carter had spent years negotiating their release; I couldn’t believe that even with the perspective of all those years of hindsight, neither he nor Ms. Gross made mention of the well documented fact that Reagan (or those who ran him) had sent their minions to treasonously negotiate with the mullahs to hold onto our hostages until he won the election, and that he would find some crooked way of repaying the favor with generous supplies of arms for our supposed sworn enemy.
Even though Carter’s presidency was a relatively benign one, in terms of civil rights and the environment, his administration demonstrated the seamless continuity of so many terrible US tendencies that hardly change at all whether the president has a D or an R in front of their name; the regulation of airlines, trucking, banking etc. would have been proud accomplishments for any Republican and ended up, predictably, with profits going to the fatcats and the public paying a hefty price.
His appointment of Paul Volcker at treasury, a true believer in the harshest kind of ‘neoliberal’ economic policies, brought on ridiculously high interest rates and economic misery for most Americans. But arguably the worst influence that he brought into what could have been an enlightened administration, was Zbigniew Brzezinski, a mad dog cold warrior bent on sparing no public expense in his crusade to do everything possible to combat and destroy the Soviet Union, and after that entity folded its cards, Russia. The dismissal of the SALT II treaty was a classic example of how his obsession with doing everything possible to ‘go after’ Russia made us all less safe, just as the whipping up of the most extreme Islamic fundamentalists to battle the Russians in Afghanistan only brought destruction and misery to that poor country (and many years later led to 9/11). Apparently that didn’t matter to Carter and Brezinski, all they cared about was giving the Russians a bloody nose; to give them their own Vietnam.
Apparently, no matter how well-intentioned a new president might be, there must be, like, some ‘very serious’ people who have a little heart to heart talk with each incoming president, to inform them that their first duty must be to go to war with the rest of the world; to be the tip of the spear of global capitalism, systematically stamping out, in however bloody a fashion was called for, any pesky outbreaks of small-d democracy, among those people foolish enough to think that they should have some say over their own land and resources. Of course an incoming president may not want to go along with the full panoply of bloodsoaked political solutions, in which case these Very Serious Men must point out the fact that the one president who actually attempted to stand up to the CIA and the war making machinery of his day, JFK, was, himself, dealt with rather harshly. One might expect something similar to befall one’s own family, should one be too uncooperative.
Interestingly, of the many millions deprived of their lives by the US’ perpetual war for unfettered capitalism, the overwhelming majority have been in the global South, people of black, brown or yellow complexion, while white Europeans have been permitted to institute highly socialistic policies without suffering invasion and mass slaughter by the US Marine Corps.
Indonesia itself lost at least a million people to our capitalist crusade there, and I will never forget the years of helplessness as we send more and more arms to fuel their genocide on the East Timorese.
Just about every Central and South American country has, at one time or another, suffered a bloody US sponsored coup d’état, and in Africa, Carter doggedly supported Jonas Savimbi’s bloodthirsty Unita guerrillas, enemies of the anti-apartheid ANC.
Perhaps all of Jimmy Carter’s admirable post presidential work, supporting democratic elections worldwide, helping to provide food medicine and shelter etc. was his way of atoning for all the horrors that he apparently felt obliged to commit as president. Kudos to him for that. May he rest in peace.
For this and other columns;
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