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Carter's Speech
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I didn't see it, but read the transcript afterward. Sebastian Holsclaw pretty much nails it:


[T]here is something truly galling about Jimmy Carter lecturing America on foreign policy.

Carter wants to talk about the Middle East ablaze? So often we hear liberals complaining about the Iranian revolution as being a response to U.S. meddling, but they never name Carter's government when they talk about propping up the Shah. Carter's response to the Iran hostage crisis was the beginning of the region's favorite image of the U.S. as having technological might, but being unwilling to actually fight after Vietnam. And Carter dares to talk about Middle East peace when he has repeatedly embraced Arafat's even while Arafat was in the midst of terrorism against Israel? The so-called recent progress of Clinton at Camp David was put in to peril not by Bush, but by Arafat even before Bush came to power when Arafat decided to encourage a renewed intifada rather than continue negotiations.

It is the repeated Democratic refusal to acknowledge that responsibility often lies with parties other than the U.S. which makes it so difficult for them to take action.

But the truly shocking line is about North Korea's nuclear menace. When Carter swooped onto the scene in 1994, North Korea did not have nuclear weapons. In his apparent belief that papering over problems is the same as bringing a solution, Carter negotiated the 1994 Agreed Framework in which North Korea agreed to cease all nuclear weapons research, follow through with their pledge for a 'nuclear-free penninsula', and shut down their plutonium-producing reactor in exchange for massive subsidies. For all his talk of 'human-rights' Carter negotiated an agreement for the U.S. to prop up one of the most repressive and torture-embracing regimes in the world in exchange for their promise not to build nuclear weapons. And in exchange for supporting them we gave them enough time to build the nuclear weapons which they did not have at the time of the agreement.


Iran...Palestine...North Korea.

The Axis of Blame.

Yeah, if only Jimmy were back in office, I'm sure he could make peace in the Middle East and get Iran and North Korea to give up their nukes.

[Update: Here's the full speech.]


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