And while you're dealing with Carter (as, alas, we are all forced to do), check out this Fox News report on just how miffed folks are at the fellow. Democrat Joe Lieberman said that "at best, President Carter is being naive" in trying to negotiate with avowed terrorists. "There is a long list of people who thought they could reason with dictators and killers, going back to Neville Chamberlain and Hitler in the 1930s, but it has been shown to be absolutely wrong."
Also in the story are such nuggets as Congresswoman Sue Myrick's desire to have Carter's passport revoked. She also supports a measure to withdraw all federal funding going to the Carter Center. "We have a policy in this country about Hamas and he is deliberately undermining that policy," Myrick said. "Why should we support his center when he will not support his government?"Why indeed? It seems like a nice idea, one we should pass along to our own Congressmen.
However, as Tyrrell says in his column, Carter is "so full of himself" that he refuses to heed his countrymen's warnings. And his latest embarrassment was to chat it up with Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas leader who pulls the strings of the anti-Israel militants in the Gaza Strip. Zahar wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post Thursday decrying the "hideous straitjacket of apartheid" in Gaza and compared Israel to Nazi Germany. "Sixty-five years ago, the courageous Jews of the Warsaw ghetto rose in defense of their people," he wrote. "We Gazans, living in the world's largest open-air prison, can do no less."
Thus, even such liberal voices as the editors of Washington Post have had enough. They criticized Carter for "lending what is left of his prestige to an avowed terrorist," and suggested that he not grant "recognition and political sanction to a leader or a group that advocates terrorism."
Clifford May's fine National Review Online piece gives yet more detail and insightful commentary on these latest Carter shenanigans.
Who knows? Perhaps Carter Center officials, feeling anxious about those federal funds possibly being withdrawn, will finally put Jimmy back on his meds and take his keys away. It would be the best public service the Center could ever accomplish.
