Jimmy Carter's record demonstrates that he is a champion of human rights abusers, not human rights

PunditReview (5/14) By most accounts Jimmy Carter's presidency was a disaster.  Once out of office however, Carter refashioned his reputation and image as a champion of human rights.  This is nonsense.  Jimmy Carter's record demonstrates that he is a champion of human rights abusers and tyrannical dictators.

On his second day in Cuba, the former president saw fit to repudiate Colin Powell and the Bush administration's claim regarding Cuba's biological weapons program. Even if Carter is 100% correct in his assertion, he is wrong to take a stance in direct opposition to the current administration while in Cuba.  What Jimmy Carter has done is say that he believes the communist dictator Fidel Castro over his own country. This is a disgrace.  

"These allegations were made not coincidentally just before our visit to Cuba," Mr. Carter said with Cuban President Fidel Castro at his side after visiting Havana's Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. Say What?

Upon hearing of Carter's outrageous performance yesterday, Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "we do believe Cuba has a biological offensive research capability. We didn't say it actually had some weapons but it has the capacity and capability to conduct such research."

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told public television's "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" last night that "there is plenty of reason to be very concerned about what the Cubans are doing in this area."

Anyone who has followed Jimmy Carter's career is not surprised that he supported a tryannical dictator over his own government.

The Case Against Jimmy Carter

1.    This week he is taking Fidel Castro's side over his own country.  

2.    Last month Carter wrote an op-ed in the New York Times titled ""America Can Persuade Israel to Make a Just Peace." This was a disgraceful editorial by a former American president against the only democracy and free market economy in the Middle East.  Carter plainly took Arafat's side and attacked Sharon.  He was essentially arguing that the United States should cut off funding to Israel because they had the nerve to defend themselves.  I would provide a link but the New York Times charges for its archives.

3.    During the Clinton administration, Carter worked hard on behalf of the North Koreans to diffuse a tense situation relating to their stockpiling of nuclear weapons.  North Korea is among the most repressive regime in the world.  According to Jay Nordlinger in National Review, "While in North Korea, Carter lauded Kim Il Sung, one of the most complete and destructive dictators in history. Said Carter, "I find him to be vigorous, intelligent,...and in charge of the decisions about this country" (well, he was absolute ruler). He said, "I don't see that they [the North Koreans] are an outlaw nation." Pyongyang, he observed, was a "bustling city," where shoppers "pack the department stores," reminding him of the "Wal-Mart in Americus, Georgia."

4.    "In the run-up to the Gulf War, as the Bush Sr. administration was trying to assemble a coalition against Iraq, Carter sent a letter to members of the U.N. Security Council, urging them to thwart the administration's effort. Some around Washington were heard to mutter "treason."

5.    Again from National Review, "Joshua Muravchik reminded us of some Carter nuggets in a 1994 piece for The New Republic. While in office, Carter hailed Tito as "a man who believes in human rights." He said of Ceausescu and himself, "Our goals are the same: to have a just system of economics and politics . . . We believe in enhancing human rights." Since leaving office, Carter has praised Syria's late Assad (killer of at least 20,000 in Hama) and the Ethiopian tyrant Mengistu (killer of many more than that). In Haiti, he told the dictator Cédras that he was "ashamed of what my country has done to your country."

Recommended reading: 

Jonah Goldberg: Jimmy Carter: America basher, "It's an unusual thing for a former president to more or less choose sides against the United States and with a hostile nation ruled by a ruthless dictator. Unusual, that is, in the sense that most U.S. presidents - current or former - don't do this sort of thing.  Unfortunately, Carter is the exception that proves the rule. Like a (very) white, un-rhyming Jesse Jackson, Carter has developed an uncanny gift for sucking up to the most appalling dictators on the planet and undermining U.S. policy."

Frank Gaffney, Ex-Presidential Misconduct, "It is outrageous -- but hardly surprising -- that Jimmy Carter would put himself into a position where he will be shamelessly used as a propaganda foil against his own government. To be sure, he has done it before. By his participation in Potemkin tours of Cuban factories and other sites at this juncture, however, he is not only lending credibility to a regime that makes no secret of its hostility to the United States. The ex-President is overtly undercutting the current President's policy of insisting on regime change in Cuba and the liberation of the long-suffering people of that island as a precondition to normalizing economic and political relations between the two countries."

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. held senior positions in the Reagan Defense Department.  He is currently the president of the Center for Security Policy.

Jay Nordlinger, National Review, There He Goes Again Jimmy Carter, our “model ex-president.”

A PEANUT FARMER AT CASTRO'S COURT , " Poor Jimmy Carter - forever truckling to foreign tyrants like Serbia's Milosevic, North Korea's Kim and now Cuba's Castro.  Is he hungry for a Nobel Prize, sainthood - or is it just attention he needs, decades after his buffoonish presidency?  Unless the former president can overcome his has-been's susceptibility to flattery and work up the courage to challenge Castro on behalf of the Cuban people, then his trip will only encouraging the bearded old brute - to the continuing despair of the political prisoners who rot in his dungeons.  But Carter will keep his peace - like the sad old man he has become."

Cuba in the Clear, "While cozying up to Fidel Castro, former President Jimmy Carter complained that the Bush administration is sabotaging his excursion, and he's fighting back by sticking up for the Western Hemisphere's last Communist dictator.Notwithstanding the evident shortcomings in his own ability to "inspect" a scientific-research facility, Carter proudly pronounced that Castro's regime does not export biological agents to Libya or Iran. All based on a brief, guided tour. Reports are not in yet, but it is not likely that free nations of the world are going to rest easy now that Carter has made such a definitive declaration."

Shut up, Jimmy Carter, "It must be because his own ideas have worked so well that Mr. Carter still feels entitled to an opinion, as well as to a role in international missions. And it must be because he's always had a soft spot for despots and terrorists — his recent op-ed refers to Palestinian bombers and Hamas not as terrorists, but as "misguided" — that he feels he can impose his politics on a mentally sound administration."

Castro's Daughter Condemns Carter Visit, "Alina Fernandez, the emigre daughter of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, condemned ex-president Jimmy Carter late Monday for playing into the hands of her father's brutal and repressive regime.  "I always said that Jimmy Carter was drawn to the presidency because of his innocence," she added. "But I don't think he's acting innocently right now."