Absolutely nothing.
For the record, I am not surprised that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is traveling to Syria to meet with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal. The only thing about Carter’s visit that surprises me is that he didn’t go through with it sooner.
In fact, Carter has wanted to visit Syria for time now. Carter said so in a scene filmed for Jonathan Demme’s documentary Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains. While Carter was en route to Boston’s Logan International Airport after his controversial appearance at Brandeis University in 2007 to promote his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, he expressed anger towards the Bush Administration, singling out National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley in particular. The 39th President was irate the State Department would not grant him permission to visit Syria so he could meet with its dictator, Bashar al-Assad. Carter protested that he had known the junior Assad since he was in college. I am sure Assad would regale Carter with tales of his days at Phi Beta Jihad on the campus of the University of Damascus where he would make pledges dress up as Orthodox Jews and pelt them with eggs. Ah, good times.
So if Carter has been keen to have an audience with Assad it is hardly a stretch that he would want to have an audience with Meshal. Who knows? Maybe Carter and Meshal will get along so famously that Carter will invite him to sit in the President’s Box at the Democratic National Convention this summer in Denver.
All levity aside, Syria is but one stop on a nine-day “study mission” of the Middle East that commences on April 13th. Other stops include Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, Saudi Arabia (a key donor to the Carter Center) and Jordan. Carter is scheduled to meet with Meshal on April 18th. The press release announcing the tour boasts that the Carter Center “has supported human rights defenders throughout the region as they seek to build peaceful and democratic societies.”
Naturally this statement begs several questions. Does Carter consider Khaled Meshal a defender of human rights? If he believes Meshal is a defender of human rights why does Meshal praise Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s statements that the Holocaust is a myth and that Israel should be wiped off the map as "courageous declarations?"
Does Carter believe Hamas seeks to build a peaceful and democratic society? If so, why does the Hamas Charter call for the State of Israel to be destroyed and replaced with a Palestinian state based on Islamic law?
If Carter honestly believes Meshal is a defender of human rights and also believes Hamas seeks to build a peaceful and democratic society, then the former President is a fool who ought not to be suffered gladly.
But it is possible that Carter realizes Meshal is no defender of human rights. It is also possible he knows Hamas wants a peaceful and democratic society about as much as Robert Mugabe wants to voluntarily leave power in Zimbabwe. In that case, why is Carter meeting with Meshal? What does he think he will accomplish?
For one thing, Carter gets one last chance to give the Bush Administration the one-finger salute and undermine its position. He also gets yet another chance to stick a thumb to the eye of American Jews who have been increasingly critical of him in recent years.
It also gives Carter a platform to state he is restoring America’s good name by talking with its adversaries. This, of course, assumes America was ever in good standing with the likes of Hamas or that America should want to be in good standing with Hamas.
A visit with Meshal also gives Carter a forum to tell the world that Hamas is comprised of happy-go-lucky people who want to live in peace with their Zionist comrades. I am sure he would tell Americans they have an inordinate fear of Hamas. After all, this is a man who said in Man From Plains that Ismail Haniyeh, the Prime Minister of the Hamas government in Gaza, supports peace talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. This is the same Haniyeh who told students at Friday prayers in Tehran in December 2006 that Hamas would never recognize the State of Israel and would fight for the “liberation of Jerusalem.”
However, I can see one possible tangible outcome from this meeting. Meshal has publicly said that kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is alive and might be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Carter could use this meeting as an opportunity to intervene on Shalit’s behalf. If Carter does intercede and Meshal arranges Shalit’s release, it would be a public relations coup for both Carter and Hamas. By arranging for the release of an Israeli soldier, it would effectively neutralize the argument that Carter is anti-Israel. It would also make him an international hero, entitling him to a slew of awards and recognition on top of the awards and recognition he has already received.
For Hamas, it would be given a human face and the world would say, “Ah, Hamas isn’t so bad.” Consequently, Israel would come under international pressure to recognize Hamas. We should have no illusions about Hamas, though. It would not release Shalit without a heavy price but it would be a price the world would never know about. Sure, the release of Shalit alive and well would be welcome news but Carter and Hamas would come out of it smelling like roses after dancing on manure. If Meshal truly wanted Shalit released he would have already done so. Moreover, if Meshal was truly committed to defending human rights then Hamas would not have entered Israel and kidnapped Corporal Shalit in the first place.
The United States, along with many other countries, has declared Hamas a terrorist organization. Therefore Jimmy Carter ought not to meet with Khaled Meshal or any official representing Hamas. Carter’s meeting with Meshal and Hamas does not serve the interests of the United States nor peace in the Middle East. This meeting serves only the personal objectives of Carter and the political objectives of Hamas. A former President of the United States ought to know better.
The definitive concepts outlined in Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr’s book The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness are aptly illustrated by President Jimmy Carter. Sometimes it is forgotten what a truly ghastly president he was.
During the later part of the Carter years I was a young naval officer going to grad school studying foreign affairs. Some of the professors were buying farmland far from the city digging survival shelters. There was an overwhelming fear held by people in the know that was unmistakably articulated by Senator Barry Goldwater during the 1980 Republican convention: “If there is four more years of Jimmy Carter as President there will not be four more years of this country.”
The Politburo was fully aware that the Soviet Union’s contradictory economy was in slow melt down. They saw a window of opportunity where their immense military strength relative to the West could used decisively to win what they viewed as the inevitable conflict between the two opposing political ideologies.
President Jimmy Carter’s answer to this life and death challenge was to unilaterally disarm the United States in an attempt to appear less threatening. President Carter never understood the mind of totalitarian despot where weakness is viewed as an opportunity for determined aggression.
The response to President Carter’s strategy by the Soviet Union was predictably the invasion of an adjoining country and worldwide increased efforts at destabilizing the West’s allies. Now with President Carter’s rose colored glasses cleared from his vision he again demonstrated his lack of understanding of the threat with the meaningless rejoinder on an Olympic boycott.
President Carter had weak or no responses to the challenges such as the Sandinista Communist of Nicaragua tormenting and murdering its populace, seizing private property and turning the country into a training ground for PLO and Castro’s military thugs. Most specifically the abandonment of one of United States staunches Middle East allies, the Shah of Iran which ushered an appalling, repressive world leader Ayatollah Khomeini gave the Soviet Union the perception that President Carter was weak and unwilling to standup to its commitments.
The torture inflicted on the United States by the seemingly never ending American hostage crisis in Iran further convinced the Politburo that the United States was indisposed and perhaps unable to answer aggression with anything but words.
Most officers in the United States military that I knew at the time felt their lives were forfeit in an upcoming war that we were incapable of winning because of years of a President Carter’s induced malaise and disarmament.
When President Carter was overwhelmingly defeated in the 1980 election there was jubilation in the military as a new lease on life was now offered. President Reagan lived up to expectation through a doctrine of peace through strength and after some difficult years the 800 lb gorilla Soviet Union collapsed.
Thank God we did not have four more years of Jimmy Carter. I truly doubt the United States of American would be around today in any recognizable form. To Ronald Regan we owe or lives and our country and in this I am sure.
President Jimmy Carter continues to disrespect his betters and demonstrate that he has learned nothing in the past twenty eight years. His latest desire to commiserate with Middle East tyrants will have the same effect as his past efforts of diplomacy. Harm will be done, confusion will be spread, and creditability will be tendered to the oppressors. That is the continued legacy of the worst president of a century or more.
I’ve read 2 books by people that have crossed paths with President Carter, “Hazardous Duty” by General Singlaub, and “The Prince of Darkness” by Robert Novak. Both of them consider him to be dishonest. I don’t think he will ever “know better”.
Would some Republican congressman and/or senator pulleeeeeze sponsor a bill to pay Carter $50,000 a day to go back to Georgia, become a hermit, and stay there?
There truly is no fool like an old fool.