Sunday, Dec. 3, 2006 | 7:41 a.m.
Jimmy Carter still doesn't get it.
Former President Jimmy Carter, I believe it is accurate to say, has been a far better ex-president than he was a president of the United States. Simply put, the Carter administration was a disaster on almost all fronts - the economy, national and international affairs.
Whether it was the Iran hostage debacle, or the overriding focus on human rights abuses around the world to the detriment of U.S. national security interests, or the runaway inflation that gripped our country and caused a national depression - mentally as well as financially - there are very few observers of those times who rate the Carter presidency very far from the bottom. The only good news on that score is the presidency of George W. Bush shows every sign of making Carter look good.
At least as a former president, Carter has focused his sights on humanitarian efforts such as Habitat for Humanity, voting rights abuses around the world and other causes that help those who can't help themselves. For his selfless work for those in need, he has, indeed, earned some high marks.
But, for some reason, when it comes to international affairs - especially those of the Middle East - the guy still doesn't get it. For a long time I figured it was a certain kind of naivete that led him constantly toward wrong conclusions and wrong-headed decisions, a belief that made it easier to give him the benefit of the doubt when it came to motivation. And while I would like to think that is still the case, it has just been made harder to sustain that kind of goodwill toward a man most people want and try to like. Including me.
Carter's newest book, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid," far beyond its hideous title shows an abject determination to ignore the reality of the Middle East in favor of some Pollyannish belief that sounds more like Rodney King than a man who is supposed to know the ways of the world. And, to be even more blunt, if President Carter's underlying belief is that people - no matter what their motivation - can all "just get along," then it would be easier to understand why he wrote such a book. It would be based somewhere between childish dreams and adultlike denial of reality.
But that is not the case. Even though he is credited, deservedly so, for bringing Egypt and Israel to the peace table - a great and admirable accomplishment - I believe that was a consolation prize once he blew the far greater opportunity of a comprehensive peace among Israel and all of her neighbors, a move that led, ultimately, to the assassination of a real man of his times, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt.
I am bolstered in this belief after reading excerpts from his latest book and seeing in print the convoluted thinking that allows a man of his stature and seeming credibility to equate Israel's actions to pursue peace and protect its people as an act of apartheid.
First, let's get this straight. Apartheid is a dirty word. It was a vile and inhuman attempt by white South Africans to subjugate and dehumanize the majority black South Africans through government edict and with, I would suggest, international acquiescence. At least enough of the world's "ignorance" to the situation to allow apartheid to take hold. It was only later that international pressure on South Africa created an environment in which South African leadership itself recognized the mistake it had made and ended the practice. It was an ugly time for that country and a stain on the world community, specifically for its lack of involvement at a time when involvement was necessary.
For President Carter to suggest, no aver, that what is happening in the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinians is apartheid not only ignores the truth of what is happening but also severely lessens the impact of that vile practice by allowing many, if not most, responsible people in the world to rationalize that ugliness as they apply it to the Middle East. Put another way, if you believe that what Israel is doing is in self-defense of its people, then you would have to believe that apartheid, according to Carter, is defensible.
While I wasn't involved in President Sadat's visit to Israel, I was very close to some people who were working on that effort, the Israeli response and the Arab reaction should Sadat actually be the first Arab leader to set foot on Israeli soil in peace. It was a momentous time, a time of great courage and sacrifice by the Egyptian leader and a time of significant tension throughout the rest of the Arab world. And it didn't happen in a vacuum.
Long before Sadat touched down in Israel, a blueprint for a lasting and comprehensive peace between Israel and her neighbors had been agreed to by significant Arab leaders. I will not mention them by name because retribution is still a mighty sword in that part of the world. Suffice it to say, a student of history can connect the dots if he or she were to study the immediate aftermath of Sadat's visit.
One thing is certain, though: There was no room in that peace blueprint for a Palestinian state. That was not an Israeli demand, rather it was a consensus of Arab leaders who saw a different future for the Palestinians that had nothing to do with their own sovereignty.
And so Sadat did his thing. And shortly afterward, President Carter did his thing.
In an act of complete naivete and utter defiance of the facts on the ground, he proclaimed 30 years ago - as he does in his latest book - the absolute right of the Palestinian people to have their own state. With the United States firmly in favor of a Palestinian homeland, the then-moderate Arab voices took a hike away from peace - they did not want terrorist killers in their midst - and back into their own little worlds. That left Israel with no one but Egypt to make peace and Sadat with nowhere to go but straight ahead into a better future for his people and almost certain death to himself.
And now, today, from that same convoluted view of the Middle East comes a further effort to impose words such as apartheid, oppression, colonization and deprivation of human rights on the tiny nation of Israel, which is doing its best to protect its innocent men, women and children from suicide bombers, who are paid and glorified for every drop of Israeli blood they can shed. By the very same people President Carter claims are the innocents!
Enough already. There are many things the former president does for which he should be commended. But for some reasons, and I will not even attempt to surmise what they are, he is blinded to the realities of life in that part of the world. And through this book, he is trying to similarly blind those who set policy in this country so that they may see the world as he does. Not to mention what his words mean to those Arab killers who will use them to further their own violent means.
He is right about one thing. For the past six years the United States has been completely disengaged from the peace process, a decision that has left all the parties without sufficient motivation or ability to find their way to the peace table. There will be no peace without U.S. leadership. Right or wrong, that is a fact. And without the Bush administration's push to find that path toward peace, the parties have been left to their own devices. For the Palestinians and the violence sponsors in Syria and Iran, those devices have been suicide vests and unwitting, ignorant malcontents convinced that there is a greater glory in killing women and children. And for the Israelis, the devices include a fence designed to keep the bad guys out of Israel and a system of rocket and other attacks designed to kill the murderers with the certain knowledge that collateral damage is inevitable. However necessary that might be.
Carter's book adds nothing to the debate or the solution except to confuse and confound. It confuses because it tells a story that just isn't accurate and it confounds because it gives aid and comfort to those who live to kill and to those good people in our own country who want to believe that a former president knows whereof he speaks.
He does - give aid and comfort to those who will use this book to encourage the killers among them, and he doesn't - know whereof he speaks. You can tell that just from the title of his book.
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