Now this pisses me off!
Carter Seeks Vote in U.N. Against U.S.
By Benny Avni - Staff Reporter of the Sun
March 3, 2006
President Carter personally called Secretary of State Rice to try to convince her to reverse her U.N. ambassador’s position on changes to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, the former president recalled yesterday in a talk in which he also criticized President Bush’s Christian bona fides and misstated past American policies on Israel.
Mr. Carter said he made a personal promise to ambassadors from Egypt, Pakistan, and Cuba on the U.N. change issue that was undermined by America’s ambassador, John Bolton. “My hope is that when the vote is taken,” he told the Council on Foreign Relations, “the other members will outvote the United States.”
So, apparently former President Carter made a promise to foreign governments to work against the policy of the American government! Further, he expressed the hope that the foreign policy of the government of which he is a citizen and of which he was once the chief executive, would be defeated by the actions of other governments!
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While other former presidents have tried to refrain from attacking the sitting chief executive, Mr. Carter’s attacks on President Bush have increased. The episode he recounted yesterday showed how he tried to undermine officials at lower levels in an effort to influence policy.
The story, as Mr. Carter recalled, began with a recent dinner for 17 he attended in New York, where the guests included the president of the U.N. General Assembly, Jan Eliasson; an unidentified American representative, and other U.N. ambassadors from “powerful” countries at Turtle Bay, of which he mentioned only three: Cuba, Egypt, and Pakistan. The topic was the ongoing negotiations on an attempt to replace the widely discredited Geneva-based Human Rights Commission with a more accountable Human Rights Council.
“One of the things I assured them of was that the United States was not going to dominate all the other nations of the world in the Human Rights Council,” Mr. Carter said. However, on the next day, Mr. Carter said, Mr. Bolton publicly “demanded” that the five permanent members of the Security Council will have permanent seats on the new council as well, “which subverted exactly what I have promised them,” Mr. Carter said.
And on whose authority did Mr. Carter “promise” them any damned thing?
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“So I called Condoleezza Rice and told her about the problem, and she said that that statement by our representative was not going to be honored,” he said. But despite Mr. Carter’s assessment that there are “a lot of people” in Washington who oppose Mr. Bolton on the Human Rights Council, Mr. Bolton’s opposition to the proposed new structure became American policy.
Perhaps Mr. Carter’s assessment is best reflected by the first three letters of the word.
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Publications not known for their support of the Bush administration or Mr. Bolton, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, recently backed the ambassador’s policy on the Human Rights Council, saying in editorials that the compromise hashed out by Mr. Eliasson is an inadequate fix for the existing structure.
Mr. Bolton’s spokesman, Richard Grenell, told The New York Sun yesterday that it is “naïve” to think that Mr. Bolton has “a different position than the rest of the United States government on this issue.”
Perhaps if Mr. Carter had not been an naïf in the first place, he wouldn’t have been a one-term president.
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Asked yesterday about his views on religion, Mr. Carter said, “The essence of my faith is one of peace.” In a clear swipe at Mr. Bush’s faith, and to a round of applause, he then added, “We worship the prince of peace, not of pre-emptive war.” Mr. Carter then went on to attack American Christians who support Israel.
He also reiterated his known view that most of the problems in the Israeli-Arab front derive from Israel’s settlement policies and its building of a defensive barrier in what he insisted on calling “Palestine.”
“From Dwight Eisenhower to the road map of George W. Bush, our policy has been that Israel’s borders coincide with those of 1949,” Mr. Carter said, adding, “All my predecessors have categorized each settlement as both illegal and an obstacle to peace.”
Considering that Israel did not possess Judea, Samaria and Gaza before 1967, it seems somewhat unlikely that Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy had any official position on the settlements.
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On April 14, 2004, President Bush said in a speech, “In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.” He later cemented that statement in a letter to Prime Minister Sharon, which became the stated American policy on Israeli settlements.
The host of yesterday’s event, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, who has served several presidents in key Middle East roles, including most recently Mr. Bush, told the Sun yesterday that while American officials frequently defined settlements as an “obstacle to peace” they refrained from calling them “illegal.”
Translation: former President Carter doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But that’s not exactly news.
Jimmy Carter is a free citizen of a free republic, a republic in which freedom of speech is guaranteed by the Constitution. Thus, he is free to say any damned fool thing he wishes. But when he deliberately advocates the defeat of American policy, when he presumes to make promises for an American government of which he is neither the leader nor a representative, I feel it’s time for me to exercise my freedom of speech, and say that Mr. Carter is an idiot, an embarassment, and a disgrace to the office he once held.
Update: Saturday, 5 March 2006 — Thanks to Sister Toldjah, for the link to the transcript to Mr. Carter’s remarks.
Rovin:
This is really going to piss off the Democrats when Bush orders Carter to be arrested for treason.
I don’t care how much anyone dissagrees with the policys of our government, but to assist in undermining those policys with a foriegn government is an act of treason.
Carter is not only an embarrassment to his former office, he has betrayed his country.
3 March 2006, 5:27 pmHarry Arthur:
Perhaps Jimmy and Al can share a padded cell. They’re both apparently quite insane.
3 March 2006, 5:54 pmYorkshire:
Jimmy needs to be declared incompetent and put away. Or charge him as the traitor he is.
3 March 2006, 8:23 pmArthur Downs:
Remember that Carter was a Liberal who used a southern accent to lull dull-witted voters in believing that he was more mainstream than he was. He was defeated for reelection by an amazing landslide and has made a career of rehabilitating his image.
Quite a few believe the tale that he commanded a nuclear submarine.
I do believe his claim that he discussed nuclear proliferation with Amy.
I would rather smoke a cigar with Clinton than endure sipping lemonade with Jimmah.
3 March 2006, 8:35 pmDana:
Any cigar in particular? And would you wish to see the humidor in which it had been kept?
3 March 2006, 8:37 pmFlopping Aces » Blog Archive » Jimmah And Kofi Sitting In A Tree:
[...] Common Sense Political Thought [...]
3 March 2006, 10:28 pmArthur Downs:
Dan sez: Any cigar in particular? And would you wish to see the humidor in which it had been kept?
I might smell it carefully before smoking it, just out of curiousity.
Didn’t Clinton meet with Arafat just after the cigar incident and did he not ask if the cigar was halal?
4 March 2006, 4:47 pmBlue Star Chronicles:
Has Jimmy Carter had a Brain Scan Lately?
I do think he is possibly having some dementia. He is being used by enemies of the country. He speaks of his meetings with U.N. officials and talks of his predecessors as though he is still President.
6 March 2006, 2:49 amBlue Star Chronicles » Blog Archive » Has Jimmy Carter had a Brain Scan Lately?:
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9 March 2006, 11:27 pmBlanche Ciccone:
I, like many of you, watch the History Channel on cable tv, quite a bit. I’ve noticed for the longest time, that time references from the birth of Christ, are no longer followed by A.D. (Anno Domini or In the Year of Our Lord). The History Channel uses the politically correct C.E. to differentiate historical data after the birth of Christ. C.E. stands for “common era”. It has a decidedly futuristic, one-world-like tone about it, concocted for politically correct consumption and it is a subtle way of removing any recognition of Christ or God.
Today, we were working on the 2007 Schedule of Classes at school and there it was, in the computerized draft. All courses that had formerly had A.D. in their title, were now changed to C.E. Academia is on board!!
Some assaults on Christianity are not at all subtle. Like the DaVinci Code and the article in Newsweek that cliams that Christ and John the Baptist conspired to form a religious following that would glorify them in perpetuity, they are two-by-four hits to the head. Using C.E. instead of A.D. is subtle. Who, for instance, instituted this change of expression? Who approved it? Who decided it was okay? The why is one question we don’t need to ask. We know why.
3 May 2006, 12:42 pmBlue Star Chronicles | Has Jimmy Carter had a Brain Scan Lately?:
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4 May 2007, 2:57 pm