Jimmy Carter made all the same mistakes in Iran and he paid when he failed to be re-elected. Religious elements in Egypt may cause the same ending for Obama. We will see if the nineteen Americans imprisoned there will get a fair trial or a kangaroo circus. We suspect the latter. If so, will Obama pay?
Robert Spencer does a great job comparing the two events in the following article. His final words are scary.
What do you think?
Conservative Tom
Jimmy Carter All
Over Again
Robert Spencer - FrontPage Magazine, February 7th, 2012The Egyptian Government has released the names of nineteen American citizens that it intends to prosecute for their role in fomenting anti-government protests – a charge they deny. Protests from the American Government have so far been futile, met with sneers of contempt.
The echoes are unmistakable. On November 4, 1979, Iranian thugs stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage. Jimmy Carter’s government wrung its hands in futility for the next fourteen months, until finally the Islamic Republic released the hostages on January 20, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan took office as President of the United States.
The bitter irony in all that was that Carter had betrayed the Shah of Iran, a longtime U.S. ally, and thereby paved the way for the ascent to power of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian mullahcracy that has ruled Iran ever since. Rather than feel gratitude toward Carter, however, Khomeini viewed his abandonment of the Shah as a sign of weakness, and pressed forward with his jihad against the Great Satan.
Iran has maintained a hostile posture toward the United States ever since then, including gleeful predictions of our nation’s imminent demise. Just days ago, Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, declared to an enthusiastic Tehran crowd that “in light of the realization of the divine promise by almighty God, the Zionists and the Great Satan (America) will soon be defeated….Allah’s promises will be delivered and Islam will be victorious.”
As the Iranian regime inches ever closer toward constructing nuclear weapons, as even Hillary Clinton has acknowledged it is trying to do, these words become more than just empty braggadocio and saber-rattling. The U.S. and Israel have one man to thank for the advent of a genocide-minded regime that considers them both the most implacable of enemies, is not deterred by the prospect of millions of its own people dead, and is racing toward completion of a nuclear weapon.
That man, of course, is Jimmy Carter. And from the looks of recent events, he is back in the White House.
In June 2009, when Barack Obama made his notorious appeal to the Muslim world from Cairo, he specifically stipulated that leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood be allowed to attend – despite the fact that at that time the Brotherhood was still an outlawed group. Last March, as the “Arab Spring” uprisings toppled the sclerotic and brutal regime of Hosni Mubarak, Obama hailed “the peaceful transition to democracy in both Tunisia and in Egypt.” As the regime fell, Obama exulted: “We’ve borne witness to the beginning of new chapter in the history of a great country and a longtime partner of the United States.”
At the same time, Obama signaled his willingness to open talks with the Muslim Brotherhood, and gave every indication that he would not oppose the establishment of an Islamic state in Egypt.
Now, as Egypt rushes headlong toward becoming a Sharia state and adopts a posture of increasing hostility toward the United States, Obama is scrambling to hold at bay the forces he is largely responsible for unleashing.
The parallels are so close, they’re almost eerie. The Shah of Iran was no champion of human rights, and neither was Hosni Mubarak. That gave the opposition groups to both an opportunity to appeal to the world’s conscience as the great hope of their people to live at last in dignity – an opportunity that both exploited with great aplomb. Both the Shah and Mubarak were relatively secular rulers who for decades successfully held at bay the pro-Sharia Islamic supremacist forces that despised and longed to topple them. Both had mutually beneficial relationships with the United States – not perfect ones, by any means, but alliances of convenience that fostered stability in troubled regions.
Both the Shah and Mubarak then ran afoul of leftist Democrat presidents who positioned their betrayal of these undeniably less-than-perfect allies as a responsibility necessitated by their commitment to human rights. These presidents appeared naïve to many, but may not have been simply wrongfooted by events: Jimmy Carter praised the Ayatollah Khomeini as a fellow “man of faith,” and Barack Obama’s Muslim upbringing (quite aside from the ever-swirling rumors about his actual religious affiliation) appear to have given him a warmly positive view of Islam and Sharia. Both, in other words, may have viewed the demise of the relatively secular regimes that the U.S. had supported before they became president as a positive development, an expression of the self-determination of the people of each country, and the installation of the rule of a religion that was – they believed – truly moderate, peaceful and tolerant at its core.
This is the Egypt, and this is the Middle East, that Barack Obama has given us. And in the coming weeks and months, he will find that the forces he has helped unleash will be impossible to contain.
Jimmy Carter was soundly defeated for a second term in the 1980 presidential election. But when Barack Obama took office in January 2009, Carter in effect came back to the White House. It is significant in this connection that Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Advisor and so viciously anti-Israel that he has declared that U.S. aircraft in Iraq should violently impede an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, has advised Obama extensively on foreign policy issues.
As bad as the situation in Egypt is today, however, by far the worst aspect of Barack Obama’s Jimmy Carter reprise act regarding that unhappy country is that no Ronald Reagan appears to be on the horizon.
He writes: "The bitter irony in all that was that Carter had betrayed the Shah of Iran, a longtime U.S. ally, and thereby paved the way for the ascent to power of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian mullahcracy that has ruled Iran ever since."
ReplyDeleteI wonder whether this guy realizes that the event that provoked the Iranian students to take the hostages was that Carter allowed the dying Shah to come to the Mayo clinic for cancer treatment.
He writes: "Jimmy Carter’s government wrung its hands in futility for the next fourteen months, until finally the Islamic Republic released the hostages on January 20, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan took office as President of the United States."
I wonder whether this guy realizes that Carter, instead of just "wringing hands in futility," attempted a daring military rescue of the hostages not unlike what Obama just did with the Navy SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden to successfully rescue hostages in Somalia. I am sure he would do the same thing in Egypt or anywhere else if they tell him there is a way to do it without getting the hostages killed in the process. Obama has been willing to do these kinds of covert operations. In fact, everyone in the administration (except Leon Panetta) advised him not to do the bin Laden operation.
I also wonder whether this guy realizes that, instead of just "wringing hands in futility", Carter had the release of the hostages successfully negotiated with a signed agreement before he left office. The Iranians waited to physically release them until a few minutes after Reagan was sworn in to deprive Carter the satisfaction of technically getting the hostages out during his own term.
I am really not very interested in this stuff, but if the guy is pretending to write accurately about it, he should at least get his facts straight.
--David
P.S. How about posting some of your thoughts about the Republican primaries? Is Romney going to get this wrapped up before June?
Obama might have signed off on the authority to go after Bin Ladin, after the Bush Administration had laid the groundwork and the teams to find him. We wonder how gleeful Obama would have been if the downed helicopter had occurred before the raid? He took all the glory for the success, would have he taken the responsibility for its failure? I doubt it.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the Republican primary season, Santorum seems to be gaining some traction lately. Don't know if he is another quick rise and fall or if he will stick. The caucuses today
will give us some more direction.
Newt says he is in until the convention, however, if he bombs today, we might see him hit the exits. But he is hard headed enough to continue to fight.
Obviously, Romney has the lead and probably will continue until the convention. Will he have enough votes there, we will see.
I would hope that the convention would be deadlocked and that we could find someone who really could take on Obama. Am not sure that is Romney.
I think the point that Mr. Spencer was making was that you cannot make nice to people and think you have some sway with them. Carter abandoned the Shah and then tried to make nice to Khomeni. It did not work then and has not worked over the past 30+ years.
ReplyDeleteObama abandoned Mubarak and tried to make nice to the Muslim Brotherhood. I believe they will treat out citizens with the same deference and respect that the Iranians did in 1979.
The irony is that you have two very weak Presidents who think that talking is the way to make friends. In that part of the world, talking is the venue you use when you have no power. Power is important and talking is not.
Should we allow Syria fall, even though he has not been a friend or should we prop him up?
This is why I am a Ron Paul supporter and you are not. If the people of a country are fed up with decades of dictatorial repression, overthrow the government, and have a democratic election -- which is what happened in Iran and Egypt -- that is their internal business. But this guy thinks that, if the United States military does not come in and try to intervene to rescue a corrupt dictator like the Shah or Mubarak (which would have failed anyway), then we are "betraying" or "abandoning" them.
ReplyDeleteI don't think our government has done many favors for Iran over the last 30 years (except get rid of Saddam to enable a Shiite government in Iraq friendly with Iran). On the contrary, we are leading the way in putting severe economic and financial sanctions on them. Nor have we done anything to assist Egypt since their revolution.
As for Syria, it is the same story. We cannot, and should not, attempt to prop up this government. In the long run, their country will recover better if we just leave the Syrians to take care of their own affairs. Sorry to sound like Ron Paul again, but Obama has no more constitutional authority to start a war with Syria tomorrow than he had with Libya, or Bush had with Iraq. If we launch wars against every repressive dictatorship or Islamic state, we can be at war continuously to the end of the century.
If Gingrich, Paul, and Santorum can combine to keep Romney below the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination and Romney is losing to Obama in the polls at the time of the convention, it could get interesting. Of these 4, who in your opinion would have the best chance of winning in a brokered convention? We may find out!
--David
So David, let's for a second do a little hypothetical discussion. Say Canada elects a candidate who throughout the campaign says that if elected: 1) He will cut off all traffic from the US 2) He will declare war on the US 3) He will assassinate all people named David and of the same religion as David is in the world and 4)He will force your home town to take all the garbage that his town creates. You would have no problem with that?
ReplyDeleteHow many different ways can I say this? Canada is a sovereign country and they have a right to elect anybody they want and pass any laws they want. I may not approve of it, but that does not give me the right to invade their country. That is the crux of Libertarian non-interventionist foreign policy. On the other hand, if his army crosses our border, then we have a right to self-defense. Their freedom ends at my border, and vice versa. The fundamental principles of Libertarianism are simple and natural.
ReplyDeleteSantorum won three primaries last night. If he can get some funding, that will keep him in the race. Gingrich is too mad to quit. Ron Paul isn't going anywhere, either. Romney is still the betting favorite, but it's going to go on awhile.
--David