Comment E-mail Print Bio Archives

It was perhaps fitting this last week that former President Jimmy Carter again went public with a continuation of the insipid drivel for which he has become so famous. In an interview on NBC, he asserted that conservative opposition to Barack Obama is undoubtedly the result of racism. Sadly, even in his advanced years, Jimmy Carter is still capable of descending to the same levels of idiocy that he achieved in his "prime."

More significantly, the intended beneficiary of Carter's banal commentary, Barack Obama, now holds this nation's highest office, reminding us all that such a grave national misstep as the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976 can be revisited if its grim lessons are forgotten, as apparently is the case. America inarguably repeated its foolishness at the ballot boxes last November. It is beyond naive to ignore the pattern of similarly disastrous results, many of which are already unfolding with the worst yet to come.

At present, it is unclear whether Barack Obama is actually blind to the dire ramifications that the nation will inevitably reap from his actions, or if he truly intends to inflict such harm on it. What is beyond dispute among thinking Americans is that those bleak outcomes are no surprise, given the past history of playing foolhardy games on the foreign relations front, and the consistently disastrous results that ensued.

Like Obama, Jimmy Carter has always been embarrassed by a vibrant and strong America. Consequently, as its leader he could never muster the inner strength to bear a robust national character in front of the rest of the world. Eventually, his own weakness was perceived as America's weakness. Not surprisingly, those evil forces that are ever watchful for any occasion to move against it saw a great window of opportunity during the Carter years.

It is notable that during that tumultuous time, with the Cold War raging, Carter's most significant alteration to America's military apparatus was the cancellation of the B-1 bomber, thus leaving the nation's strategic bombing force to struggle along with the antiquated B-52. Such decimation of the military became a defining trait of the Carter presidency.

Few may recall how Carter managed to thoroughly undo the great firewall that had been erected by President Kennedy to prevent the infiltration of Soviet nuclear missiles into the West during the Cuban missile crisis. While Kennedy's resolve finally forced Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to back down and agree to the removal of his missiles from Cuba in 1961, in the late 1970s, Leonid Brezhnev who was then leading the USSR felt sufficiently emboldened to re-deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba.

On discovery of the missiles by U.S. intelligence, Carter made a big fuss, characterized their presence as "unacceptable," and demanded their removal. But Brezhnev had correctly sized up the invertebrate Carter, and simply dismissed any complaints. This proved to be a safe bet. In the end, Carter did nothing against that act of Soviet aggression, which remained in place until the end of the USSR.

>> Continued -- Page 1 2 3