Carter's Little Heart Attack Pills

If your heart's a bit sluggish this morning, I recommend a cardio workout and point you to The Progressive, and Amitabh Pal's interview with Jimmy Carter.

After a fawning introduction that irritatingly reminds us that a great number of people think of Carter's last couple decades as "perhaps the best post-Presidency ever in U.S. history," Pal sits down for a heart-to-heart.

Right off the bat, Carter shows that he is incapable of differentiating between terrorists captured on the field of battle and everyday American citizens:

What’s been done in the last seven years is embarrassing to an American. What we have done through our own government is to torture prisoners, to deprive them of their basic rights to legal counsel, even the right of prisoners to be acquainted with the charges against them. Those kinds of things have been cherished as basic principles of American law and American policy for more than 200 years. To have them subverted and abandoned and condemned is just a travesty of justice and a very serious embarrassment to those of us who—as Americans and non-Americans—are committed to human rights.

It's not embarrassing to me; I don't agree with his definition of torture; and I don't think al-Qaeda operatives who defy the Geneva Conventions in every act they do should be offered anything approaching the rights of Americans.

Is there a great commitment to human rights on the part of those of us who think people who blow up babies and crash planes into skyscrapers -- infringements of human rights, if you will -- be kept apart from the rest of us?

Turning to the Middle East, Carter leads off his answer to a question about the Annapolis conference -- the question goes something like this, "Bush's Annapolis ploy doesn't hold a candle to your magnificent Camp David Accords, does it?" -- Carter says:

The Palestinian community has been deliberately divided, one part from another, with support from both the United States and Israel.

That's one incredibly ignorant and biased way to look at it. As I recall, Hamas and Fatah had a shooting war. Each side was armed and funded not by the US or Israel, but by the various Arab nations. They ripped Palestine apart and spilled a lot of Palestinian blood all by themselves doing it, and there was nothing the US or Israel could have done to bring the sides together; that was the work of the Arab nations, and none of them could do a thing about it, either.

Besides, what's wrong with Palestine going crazy and making a fool of itself again? If they do it enough, all the world except for Jimmy Carter and foolish people like writers for The Progressive will see their leadership for what they are: Human scum incapable of running a gas station, let alone a nation.

I wish I could go on; I'm barely touching the surface here, but I must be off for another all-day meeting to prep for my client's Coastal Commission hearing. Feel free to read the piece yourself and add comments below.

hat-tip: RCP