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Thread: Jimmy Carter: He speaks for real Americans

  1. #1
    Good Doctor HST Guest

    Jimmy Carter: He speaks for real Americans

    Article from CommonDreams.org
    Published on Monday, November 14, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times
    This Isn't The Real America
    by Jimmy Carter


    In recent years, I have become increasingly concerned by a host of radical government policies that now threaten many basic principles espoused by all previous administrations, Democratic and Republican.

    These include the rudimentary American commitment to peace, economic and social justice, civil liberties, our environment and human rights.

    Also endangered are our historic commitments to providing citizens with truthful information, treating dissenting voices and beliefs with respect, state and local autonomy and fiscal responsibility.

    At the same time, our political leaders have declared independence from the restraints of international organizations and have disavowed long-standing global agreements — including agreements on nuclear arms, control of biological weapons and the international system of justice.

    Instead of our tradition of espousing peace as a national priority unless our security is directly threatened, we have proclaimed a policy of "preemptive war," an unabridged right to attack other nations unilaterally to change an unsavory regime or for other purposes. When there are serious differences with other nations, we brand them as international pariahs and refuse to permit direct discussions to resolve disputes.

    Regardless of the costs, there are determined efforts by top U.S. leaders to exert American imperial dominance throughout the world.

    These revolutionary policies have been orchestrated by those who believe that our nation's tremendous power and influence should not be internationally constrained. Even with our troops involved in combat and America facing the threat of additional terrorist attacks, our declaration of "You are either with us or against us!" has replaced the forming of alliances based on a clear comprehension of mutual interests, including the threat of terrorism.

    Another disturbing realization is that, unlike during other times of national crisis, the burden of conflict is now concentrated exclusively on the few heroic men and women sent back repeatedly to fight in the quagmire of Iraq. The rest of our nation has not been asked to make any sacrifice, and every effort has been made to conceal or minimize public awareness of casualties.

    Instead of cherishing our role as the great champion of human rights, we now find civil liberties and personal privacy grossly violated under some extreme provisions of the Patriot Act.

    Of even greater concern is that the U.S. has repudiated the Geneva accords and espoused the use of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and secretly through proxy regimes elsewhere with the so-called extraordinary rendition program. It is embarrassing to see the president and vice president insisting that the CIA should be free to perpetrate "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment" on people in U.S. custody.

    Instead of reducing America's reliance on nuclear weapons and their further proliferation, we have insisted on our right (and that of others) to retain our arsenals, expand them, and therefore abrogate or derogate almost all nuclear arms control agreements negotiated during the last 50 years. We have now become a prime culprit in global nuclear proliferation. America also has abandoned the prohibition of "first use" of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear nations, and is contemplating the previously condemned deployment of weapons in space.

    Protection of the environment has fallen by the wayside because of government subservience to political pressure from the oil industry and other powerful lobbying groups. The last five years have brought continued lowering of pollution standards at home and almost universal condemnation of our nation's global environmental policies.

    Our government has abandoned fiscal responsibility by unprecedented favors to the rich, while neglecting America's working families. Members of Congress have increased their own pay by $30,000 per year since freezing the minimum wage at $5.15 per hour (the lowest among industrialized nations).

    I am extremely concerned by a fundamentalist shift in many houses of worship and in government, as church and state have become increasingly intertwined in ways previously thought unimaginable. As the world's only superpower, America should be seen as the unswerving champion of peace, freedom and human rights. Our country should be the focal point around which other nations can gather to combat threats to international security and to enhance the quality of our common environment. We should be in the forefront of providing human assistance to people in need. It is time for the deep and disturbing political divisions within our country to be substantially healed, with Americans united in a common commitment to revive and nourish the historic political and moral values that we have espoused during the last 230 years. Jimmy Carter was the 39th president of the United States. His newest book is "Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis," published this month by Simon & Schuster.


  2. #2
    amman254 Guest
    impressive !!!!

    there actually are still "big time" politicians out there that are willing to embrace the truth, and speak out against the demoliton of democracy and human rights...the values that america has always boasted about in the course of history...

  3. #3
    Partridge Guest
    Carter started the covert funding for the Mujaheddin. Before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - in order to draw the Soviets in, in support of the pro-Soviet governnment in Afghanistan. He wanted to 'give the Russians their own Vietnam'.

    Alexander Cockburn,
    Counterpunch


    Now they've given Jimmy Carter the Nobel Peace prize. Who knows? The DC Sniper may have first started to cook back in Carter time, when Jimmy said America would not stand idly by while Nicaragua tried to set forth on a different path after they threw out Anastasio Somoza.

    Carter told the Sandinistas they had to retain the National Guard, which had been Somoza's elite band of US-trained psychopathic killers. The Sandinistas said No. So Carter ordered the CIA to bring up the officers and torturers running the Argentinian death squads to train up a force of Nicaraguan exiles in Honduras, and launch them on terror missions across the border. They called them the Contras.

    Carter was a busy man. Not just content with forming the Contras, he harkened to the pain of South Korea, where workers and peasants were demonstrating. His envoy, Richard Holbrooke advised the South Korean military to hit back hard, and they did, killing around 3,000, the most horrible massacre since the Korean war. And yes, Carter started the covert CIA operation in Afghanistan, rallying the mujiddeen to fight the Soviets. Soon the CIA would bring Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan to lend a Saudi presence and Saudi cash.

    Now he's a peace prize winner. He's been campaigning for it for years. He's a white male American with the blood of thousands on his hands. So how could he miss, unless the Peace Prize Committee had decided to abbreviate the whole process and give it to George Bush. Maybe next year, though Ariel Sharon is the next in line.

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