The Worst President of the 20th Century Yaps again

Jmmy Carter, who has spent his retirement years pontificating, came forward with another doozie on Sunday, this time in the International Herald Tribune. Carter fancies himself a senior statesman. Remember it was he who brought us a foreign policy that was incoherent, Bert Lance, interest rates and unemployment rates which finally disproved for good the Phillips curve (both rose to monumental levels), spent part of his time as president approving who would be able to play on the White House tennis courts, his brother Billy - the list is almost endless. Had he any sense of proportion he would have built thousands of houses as a penance for his incompetence.

And it is he that has done great PR in working with Habitat for Humanity but has participated as an observer on several important elections as an observer and certified that the thug in Venezuela was elected in a reasonable way. But because we give our former presidents a pretty nice stipend he has been given the luxury to yap on command.

So it is not surprising that he would express himself on the "morality" of whether the United States has a responsibility to fund the new government of the Palestinians. Carter comments "Because they voted for candidates who are members of Hamas, the United States government has become the driving force behind an apparently effective scheme of depriving the general public of income, access to the outside world and the necessities of life." How bizarre. Do we have an obligation to fund regimes which are run by terrorist organizations? Should we supply the general public of any country with the "necessities of life?"

Indeed, part of the reason that the Palestinians voted to oust the Fatah in the winter was because of the manifest corruption of the prior government. So in one sense the decision to elect the alternative in Hamas could have been a rational decision. But that does not mitigate that the Hamas leaders are part of an organization that refuses to recognize Israel and has been responsible for a series of terrorist incidents where innocents have been killed in both Israel and other places in the world.

Carter claims that one reason for selecting Hamas was the frustration of the people in making progress on peace. He blames the Israelis for the delays. In reality, the last years of Arafat were marked by his reluctance to move forward. The Israelis have offered to revert a substantial portion of the land they took in the six day war - yet Hamas has refused to even recognize the right of the Israelis to exist. Does that sound balanced?

The real questions come down to which strategy will move the Palestinians closer to figuring out how to live with their neighbors. We could assume that funding the new government will assure quicker steps. Carter certainly does, in addition to his idiotic assumption about moral obligations. But there is clearly a case to be made that one can and should separate the funding of the authority from the broader issues of how to you get the Palestinians to the table in a responsible way.

Carter suggests that we should ignore the Palestinian's refusal to recognize the existence of Israel. We have used every method possible to bring about change in the Middle East. Some strategies have been more effective than others. But for good and practical reasons, we should have not only the right but the obligation to withhold our charitable support when a regime does not fit our needs. In the immediate and the long term, Carter would serve himself better by going back to buidling houses and quit trying to run the backbench foreign policy. When he was in the real job he did, at best, an incompetent job so why should we continue to have to listen to his pronouncements after he was bounced after one term?