It’s amusing how many obituaries of Jimmy Carter mention ruefully that it was Carter’s idea, inspired by Zbigniew Brzezinski, to support the Afghan mujahidin against the Soviets. It seemed like such a great idea at the time, but look at Afghanistan today. Brzezinski was widely hailed as a strategic genius and moral prophet for devising that jihad, like Robert McNamara before him, and Paul Wolfowitz after. Three wizards. Three catastrophes.
Naturally, none of these obituaries draws any lessons for the present or future—for our adventures in Ukraine, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, or Yemen. That would be in poor taste. We wouldn’t want to speak ill of the dead. Better to pile up the corpses for others to mourn, forget the past, and sleepwalk our way to our next adventure. What could the past possibly teach us about the present?
It took decades before Americans could speak candidly about LBJ’s legacy in Vietnam. We’re only now starting to wake up to Bush’s legacy in the Near East. Carter did enough PR for himself in the years since his presidency to obscure the fundamental truths about his foreign policy pretty much forever. Biden isn’t half as smart as that, but I’ll probably be dead before people finally figure out that Biden’s legacy is the same as his predecessors—oceans of blood, measureless contempt, endless disaster. There’s no mourning the passing of such people, just the anticipation that they’ll finally kick the bucket, and relief when they do.
I grew up during the Carter presidency, and was indoctrinated in the dogma that he was a benevolent, kindly old man. I know better now. I’m glad to see him go. I wish they all would.
PS., I just encountered this 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski on Afghanistan in Le Nouvel Observateur (ht: Ben Burgis). The interview makes clear that Brzezinski had “no regrets” about his Afghanistan policy because (a) his belief-system was structured by the axiom that European lives are more valuable than Asian ones, and (b) he was, despite his contrary pretenses, a reservoir of bottomless, unapologetic ignorance in his supposed field of expertise.
Only an imbecile could have said and believed what Brezezinski did in 1998, but that didn’t stop him from being one of the admired architects of American grand strategy. Even if we excuse Brzezinski’s ignorance, the ignorance itself remains, and should sober anyone who puts faith in the “expertise” of American foreign policy “experts,” whether in the 1970s or the 2020s.
Policy of Truth 
What do you think of Carter’s book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid?
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I know the thesis, but haven’t read it. It isn’t high on my to-read list. I don’t expect to be enlightened by it. Carter’s view is the conventional one that I myself held for decades but eventually had to abandon, namely: “There is justice on both sides of the dispute, and the Israelis must make concessions re the West Bank, but ultimately, we all must accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State.” At a deeper level, Carter can’t imagine a world in which some the Jews do not play the providential role set for them by Christian theology and eschatology. Well, I don’t accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State, and not only don’t accept that part of Christian theology and eschatology, but regard it as a positive threat to human existence. So Carter and I are not on the same page.
Since I haven’t read the book, I can’t assert all of that with full confidence. I’ve read his Blood of Abraham, in fact swore by it as a young person, and all of what I’ve just attributed to Carter is there. I find it hard to believe that the newer book contradicts the older one (and all of the summaries I’ve read), but you never know. So call it a confident bet.
But no matter what the book says, Carter’s actual policies were just an expression of the same policy that the US has held in continuous form since 1948, more intensively since 1967, yet more intensively since 1982, and even more intensively since 2002 and then 2023. The policy is: Defend the Jewish State at virtually any cost, and neutralize its adversaries.
That’s it. Whether the underlying reason is theological, or guilt-based, or strategic, or whatever, that’s the whole policy. Every president since Truman has held that view, and acted accordingly, including Carter. No matter what they say for public consumption, that’s what they believe, that’s what they’ve done, and that’s what one has to expect that they will do. They all accept Zionism. They all accept Zionism’s role as an imperial outpost of the West. They all accept that the United States is its imperial guarantor. And no matter what bullshit they shovel about their solicitude for the Palestinians, they regard the Palestinians as dispensable, in just the way, and for just the reason, that nineteenth century Americans regarded the Cherokee or Sioux as dispensable. Such people don’t fit the moral ontology of the West. Either they must conform, or they must die. And many refuse to conform. So die they must.
Carter’s great “achievement” is Camp David. All that Camp David did was to take Israel’s two largest, most proximate and powerful adversaries–Egypt and Jordan–out of the contest. He freed both of them up to throw the Palestinians under the bus, which they promptly did. That was the first step of the rest of the policy, which was to neutralize every potential threat to Israel around it. So Carter’s successors saddled the Palestinians with a quisling government, then went to war with every nation around Israel, except the ones that (lacking even minimal scruples about anything) could be bought off–the Saudis, the Gulf Emirates, etc. As with deregulation, Carter is the one who got that ball rolling. Oslo was the next logical step from Camp David, and was conceived that way by Clinton. I would be impressed if Carter had asserted the truth about Oslo–that it was a wholesale scam from beginning to end that built on the betrayal involved at Camp David. But no American politician can say that. Few Americans can say it, politician or not.
I’m ambivalent about coming down too hard on Carter because I held views just like his, indeed under his influence, for so long. But perhaps that just entails coming down hard on the both of us–Carter and Young, Dumb Irfan.
At this point, however, I don’t have patience for Carter-like views. Contrary to what he says, Oslo and the Roadmap are and always were garbage. There’s a straight line from Oslo to the PA’s attacks on the militants in Jenin right now. I don’t mind being candid about this: I’m with the militants. The PA should be overthrown. Israel should be overthrown. Neither of these entities has any right to exist–not for one minute longer, to paraphrase Howard Roark. I don’t care who bans me for saying that, or from what. It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of imperialism.
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Just in case you think I’ve gotten carried away here with my rhetoric, someone might wonder: how can I possibly say of Carter that “no matter what bullshit they shovel about their solicitude for the Palestinians, they regard the Palestinians as dispensable, in just the way, and for just the reason, that nineteenth century Americans regarded the Cherokee or Sioux as dispensable”? Isn’t that an exaggeration? No, it isn’t.
It follows from Carter’s apologetics for the Oslo Accords. It’s indisputable that he defends them. But no matter what Carter says about “peace not apartheid,” it is impossible to defend Oslo and not be committed to apartheid. Oslo is apartheid. All of the guarantees of security in Oslo are written as though Palestinians pose a security threat to Israelis, but not vice versa. The whole document is written as though Palestinians have no need of security at all. It’s just their lot to be sitting ducks for the Israelis, and it’s just the entitlement of Israeli Jews to weaponize the specter of the Holocaust, exploit it, and get their way on any demand that can be sought by invoking “security.” Until you read Oslo with a fine tooth comb, and then live it, as I have, you can’t imagine the cynicism of its architects. But a few Israeli bullets aimed your way will cure that illusion pretty quickly.
The people who drafted Oslo wrote it in the full awareness that what they were doing was a blatant contradiction. “Let’s give Israel a security-based veto over Palestinian rights while claiming that we’re securing Palestinian rights.” That is what Oslo is, and all that Oslo is. And Carter was totally on board with it. I don’t know if he was delusional enough to endorse the contradiction, or canny enough to fake the sort of Christian ingenuousness that suggests that gosh, he just didn’t know. Machiavelli does, after all, sing the praises of appearing dumb, and there’s a bit of that in Carter–pious stupidity. But either way, the fact remains: Oslo is a one-sided suicide pact whose results we can see before our eyes. It’s the American-trained Palestinian Authority that’s training its guns on Al Jazeera and on the militias defending Palestinians against Israeli genocidaires. In other words, it’s American guns against truth and justice. Where was Carter on any of that? Nowhere. That says all one needs to know about Carter.
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