Jimmy Carter’s Good Intentions

     Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II get way too much credit for winning the Cold War. Jimmy Carter gets way too little. Carter doesn’t get enough credit either for replacing the Cold War with the War on Terror. Just think back to 1979. That year produced not one but two monsters that haunt us today; the Iran hostage crisis and the Afghan Mujahideen, both of them on Carter’s watch.
     First the hostage crisis: Anyone old enough to remember it probably has an enduring image of Carter helplessly flailing at student revolutionaries who invaded the American embassy in Tehran and held its staff for more than a year. Every major news outlet in the world counted the days, all 444 of them, with the headline “America Held Hostage,” or something like it. It was Muslim Iran twisting the lion’s tail and paying no price for it. Not that Carter had a lot of options; the American military had been all but emasculated after Vietnam. The darkest moment of the entire escapade came when a military rescue expedition collapsed in chaos with helicopters colliding in blinding desert sand. That was the low point for us. Carter left office complaining of an “American malaise.” It took Reagan to restore the nation’s pride. The trouble is too many Muslims don’t see Reagan. They still see Carter, representative of a giant, but a spineless one. The image has been reinforced often enough to keep it alive in spite of an American record that is pretty remarkable when you think about it. The 25 years since Carter left have seen American forced or inspired regime changes in Granada, Panama, the Philippines, Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq; not to mention the spectacular expulsion of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in the Gulf War. Still the image remains. It’s amazing how much harm can be done by any sign of weakness, as in say Somalia.
     Carter was a victim in Iran but the creation of the Mujahideen was a calculated act of war. He could not have imagined that it would bring the Soviet Union to the brink of the collapse finally precipitated by his successor, and yes the Pope. When Carter and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski decided to sponsor the Afghan resistance they knew the Russians would likely intervene, in fact they were counting on it. They weren’t interested so much in Afghan independence as in handing the Soviets their own Vietnam. Did it ever. By 1988 when they agreed to withdraw the Mujahideen were an inspiration to radical Muslims throughout the world. The Berlin Wall fell the following year. We may credit Reagan and the Pope but jihadis credit God. He was back in the field and had led a rag tag band of holy warriors to victory over a super power. Now He would finally lead an Islamic army to complete their rightful conquest of the world.
     Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 and to give credit where it is due he has worked hard for peace. Nevertheless most of those efforts have come a cropper. Only the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel have been a lasting success. Those perennial belligerents have refrained from open conflict. But today’s Al Qaeda is the heir to Carter’s Mujahideen and he has been a major contributor to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. North Korea and Iran are both now on the verge of threatening the world with bombs in the hands of madmen. Jimmy Carter’s legacy isn’t one of peace. It is of war and the threat of cataclysm.