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Jimmy Carter seems like a decent person.

17 points

6 months ago

You just can’t lead a nation without becoming capable of great evil.

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ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works

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5 points

6 months ago

Yup. One of the very few who had the capability and likely didn’t use it.

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22 points

6 months ago

Which of course led to him being single term because he wasn’t ruthless enough for a voting public that would rather have a former actor run the country into the ground while paying loveable grandpa to hide the evil.

But that wasn’t because he couldn’t lead the country, just that the public loves to fall for confident blowhards that tell them what they want to hear.

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https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/18/jimmy-carters-blood-drenched-legacy/

3 points

6 months ago

There isn’t a single US president in living memory without a litany of war crimes on their head, and probably going back further but I don’t particularly feel like going back to pre-WWII history because just why bother at this point?

https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/11/jimmy-carters-blood-drenched-legacy-2/

Jimmy Carter was good at lip-service, not in reality. And honestly, I don’t even think it’s because he was a particularly nasty person - although I wouldn’t be surprised, he was a politician - it’s just the job forces you to become a war criminal. That’s what happens when you volunteer to supervise the war crimes factory.

EDIT: Actually, if you want to go back further, read one of the US military’s most decorated generals on what the military’s true purpose is, written in the interwar period: https://archive.org/details/WarIsARacket

Edit 2: before anyone else wants to pile on this and call it all bullshit because they read one item and it wasn’t genocidal enough for them, at least read as far as East Timor, 1977. The list is chronological, if you get bored after the first item I’m sorry, but I’m not spoon-feeding you the whole article.

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Hobo@lemmy.world

0 points

6 months ago

If those are the worst examples you can come up with the man was basically a saint. What a bullshit hit piece. I am now dumber for having read it.

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2 points

6 months ago

“Basically a saint” because he only sent aid to juntas and brutal genocidal regimes as opposed to what, exactly? Ordering the bombs dropped himself? I notice you didn’t even answer a single charge, just called it all bullshit. Why? I guess we should all just trust your judgement on the matter and call it closed?

Also, if you think he was “basically a saint” even though his administration still backed genocide, then I think you’re kind of accepting my premise that “That’s what happens when you volunteer to supervise the war crimes factory.”

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0 points

6 months ago

So he has blood on his hands for not getting involved and for getting involved when both sides are likely to commit atrocities.

What a ridiculous bar to set.

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-2 points

6 months ago

What are you talking about? Please be specific. All I’m getting are vague “nuh-uh” answers. If you want to actually convince anyone that you have a point, you need to make it.

The ~~first charge~~ (edit: it was the third charge, I do apologise for expecting anyone to read more than a few paragraphs), was his support for Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor. That’s not a “both sides” kind of issue. It’s an invasion and ensuing genocide. It’s not hard to judge what the right thing to do is there, but the US chose their global strategic goals over not genocide.

So like… what are you talking about? Please be specific.

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https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/18/jimmy-carters-blood-drenched-legacy/

4 points

6 months ago

The first example was Zaire, so if you don’t even know what you are linking I’m not going to go through it line by line.

William Blum writes in Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II that Carter, who had been in office for only two months, was reluctant to involve his administration in a far-reaching intervention whose scope and length could not be easily anticipated.

However, Carter did provide “non-lethal” aid, while he did not protest as European countries offered military aid, and Morocco sent several thousand of its US-trained military forces to aid Mobutu.

“President Carter asserted on more than one occasion that the Zaire crisis was an African problem, best solved by Africans, yet he apparently saw no contradiction to this thesis in his own policy, nor did he offer any criticism of France or Belgium, or of China, which sent Mobutu a substantial amount of military equipment,” writes Blum. [1]

He didn’t criticize, what an absolute bloodthirsty monster!

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-2 points

6 months ago

I apologise for getting a minor detail wrong about the order of items in the list, I underestimated how critically important the order of items in that list was to you.

For instance it seems like you saw a chronological list and when the very first item - which is actually quite damning and from which you omitted the inciting incident of a CIA-backed assassination - wasn’t a full-on war crime, you decided it was all frivolous. I can see why it’s so easy to get someone like you to ignore war crimes when you’re that unwilling to even read about them. I called out East Timor by name and you still ignored it. I can’t hold your hand through the entire article. History is for people who are willing to do some reading.

Anyway, if you go just a few items down the list, you read this:

The genocidal slaughter reached its peak in 1977, On March 1, 95 members of the Australian Parliament sent a letter to Carter claiming the Indonesian troops were carrying out “atrocities” and asking the American President “to comment publicly on the situation in East Timor.” [3]

The response was crickets. Carter ramped up aid with funding and weapons to the murderous Indonesian regime, brazenly flaunting the human rights requirements imposed on American aid.

So that’s a war crime, even by the extremely lax rules imposed by the US on themselves and to which they will never hold themselves accountable.

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0 points

6 months ago

Oh look, you edited your first post with a snide remark!

What are you talking about? Please be specific. All I’m getting are vague “nuh-uh” answers. If you want to actually convince anyone that you have a point, you need to make it.

The ~~first charge~~ (edit: it was the third charge, I do apologise for expecting anyone to read more than a few paragraphs),

Then you offer an ‘apology’ for getting a detail wrong…

I apologise for getting a minor detail wrong about the order of items in the list, I underestimated how critically important the order of items in that list was to you.

I do not accept your apology.

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