America polarized by money, uncivil relations says ex-U.S. President Jimmy Carter

Words of warning from the wise to fellow Americans

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

Excerpts from a Charles Green interview with former President James Earl Carter Jr., appended biographical briefs on the former President and former First Lady Eleanor Rosalynn Carter

MONEY IN POLITICS

Jimmy Carter: “I don't think anybody now can hope to be the nominee of the Democratic or Republican Party if they cannot raise a quarter of a billion dollars.

 

“This massive infusion of money automatically polarizes our country.

“When hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent tearing down the reputation of an opponent in order to get elected, animosity and negativism carries on into Washington.

 

“There was harmony among [members of Congress and the White House] when I was there, and I got just as much support from Republicans as I did from Democrats. I can’t imagine myself as a successful candidate today.”

RESPECT, CIVILITY IN GOVERNMENT

Jimmy Carter: “George H.W. Bush… was the only one …, along with his secretary of state, James Baker, who treated ex-presidents with respect.… And I’m not derogating the others when I say that.

  

“Somebody who has been out of office for 35 years is much less helpful to an incumbent president than either Gerald Ford or Richard Nixon was to me, because they had only been out of office just a few months or years.”

RACE RELATIONS

Jimmy Carter: “The recent publicity about mistreatment of black people in the judicial and police realm has been a reminder that the dreams of the civil rights movement have not been realized.

“Many Americans still have racist tendencies or feelings of superiority to people of color.”

PERSONAL CHARACTER, ATTITUDE

Jimmy Carter: “I haven’t been very belligerent in my life, maybe because of that ancestral background [his great-great, great-, and grandfathers having lost their lives in acts of violence].

“I’ve been primarily devoted to peacekeeping. I’ve stayed in a peaceful mood.”

 

PARTNER

The marriage of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter and former president Jimmy Carter is 69 years. Jimmy Carter describes their relationship and work as “fully collaborative.”

  

Sources and Notes

Conversation with the United States’ thirty-ninth president, Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter), humanitarian and peanut farmer, AARP Bulletin, interview and article by Charles Green, freelance writer and former editor of National Journal, June 2015, http://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-2015/jimmy-carter-reflections-at-90.html

 

Rosalynn Carter née Eleanor Rosalynn Smith: First Lady of United States of America (1977–81), wife of Jimmy (James Earl) Carter, 39th president of the United States and mental health advocate; one of the most politically astute and active of all American first ladies.

Foreign Relations

First Lady Rosalynn Carter “participated in political affairs to an extent unmatched by any of her predecessors. … She attended cabinet meetings when the subject under discussion interested her and attracted attention for taking whatever seat was vacant, even if it happened to be the one normally occupied by Vice President Walter Mondale. 

• June 1977 she visited seven nations in the Caribbean and Latin America and met with their leaders to discuss substantive matters related to defense and trade.”
• She routinely traveled “to various parts of the world for ceremonial occasions and on humanitarian missions such as a 1979 trip to a refugee camp in Cambodia.”

Domestic Affairs

• Rosalynn Carter “served as honorary chair of the President’s Commission on Mental Health and took an active role in the commission's work, which resulted in the submission of the Mental Health Systems Bill to Congress in May 1979. During debate on the bill, which passed in 1980, she testified before a Senate subcommittee, the first presidential wife to make such an appearance since Eleanor Roosevelt in 1945.”
• 
  
• The President “sometimes pointed out that his wife’s first name was Eleanor and that she had been as valuable a working partner to him as had Eleanor Roosevelt to her husband. 
• 
  
• Compared with other first ladies, Rosalynn Carter’s “popularity was consistently high.”

Eleanor Rosalynn Carter: birth and birthplace August 18, 1927, Plains, Georgia 

Carter, Rosalynn.  (2013). Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Deluxe Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Carter, Jimmy (James Earl Carter, Jr.): 

In a period of serious domestic and international problems, Jimmy Carter served as the 39th president of the United States (1977–81). A one-term president, he had been perceived as unable “to deal successfully with those problems”. After leaving office Mr. Carter broadened his credentials, embarking “on a career of diplomacy and advocacy,” meriting high praise for his peace efforts.

While in office critics had charged that Mr. Carter’s vision of the world was naïve in the area of foreign affairs but he has received “accolades for championing international human rights.”

Foreign affairs accomplishments as president major achievements: 

• In 1977, he obtained two treaties between the United States and Panama that gave the latter control over the Panama Canal at the end of 1999 and guaranteed the neutrality of that waterway thereafter. 

• In 1978, he brought together Egyptian President Anwar el-Sādāt and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland, and secured their agreement to the Camp David Accords, which ended the state of war that had existed between the two countries since Israel’s establishment in 1948. 

• On January 1, 1979, Carter established full diplomatic relations between the United States and China and simultaneously broke official ties with Taiwan. 

• Also in 1979 in Vienna, U.S. President Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed a new bilateral strategic arms limitation treaty (SALT II) [which Carter removed from consideration by the Senate in January 1980 after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan] intended to establish parity in strategic nuclear weapons delivery systems between the two superpowers on terms that could be adequately verified. 

Diplomat without portfolio post presidency

The former president Carter “served as a kind of diplomat without portfolio” in conflicts in many countries among them “Nicaragua (where he successfully promoted the return of the Miskito Indians to their homeland), Panama (where he observed and reported illegal voting procedures), and Ethiopia (where he attempted to mediate a settlement with the Eritrean People’s Liberation Force).”

• In 1994, he was active in “negotiating with North Korea to end nuclear weapons development there and with Haiti to bring about a peaceful transfer of power and with Bosnian Serbs and Muslims to broker a short-lived cease-fire.” 

• Also in his post-presidency years, Jimmy Carter “became a prolific author, writing on a variety of topics. Two books on the Middle East were Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (2006) and We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work (2009). His interview with Syria’s Forward Magazine, published in January 2009, marked the first time that a former or current U.S. president had been interviewed by a Syrian media outlet. Carter also authored The Hornet’s Nest: A Novel of the Revolutionary War (2003) and a collection of poetry. His presidency is chronicled in White House Diary (2010), “which contains edited entries from a journal Carter kept during his years in the White House.” 

James Earl Carter Jr., birth and birthplace: October 1, 1924, Plains, Georgia 

Carter, Jimmy.  (2013). Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Deluxe Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

George Herbert Walker Bush (b. June 12, 1924, Milton, Massachusetts) was the 41st

president of the United States (1989–93). As president, Bush assembled a multinational force to compel the withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War.  This American politician and businessman had also been U.S. vice president (1981–89).

Bush, George (2013). Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Deluxe Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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Violence never enough for this president

From Jim Naureckas’s August 30 article “When It Comes to State Violence, 'Too Much Is Never Enough'”

Editing, brief comments by Carolyn Bennett

In his five years in office, U.S. President Barack Obama has executed at least six wars against nations of the world, their peoples and leaders. 

He about tripled the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, from 33,000 to 98,000. 

In 2011, President Obama, the Obama government sent naval and air forces into battle to overthrow the government of Libyan President Muammar al- Qaddafi. 

President Obama and his government tried and failed to keep tens of thousands of troops in Iraq [as they are doing with Afghanistan] beyond the withdrawal deadline negotiated by the former President George W. Bush and his government.

Since 2009, President Obama’s/U.S. drone strikes have killed more than 2,000 people in Pakistan ─ including 240 civilians among them 62 children.

Since Barack Obama assumed the U.S. presidency, U.S. drone strikes have killed more than 400 people in Yemen. 

Somalia has suffered President’s/U.S. drone strikes, which are “harder to quantify.”

This is far from indicative of a “hesitancy to use force.” It is a flagrant, callous even cavalier taking of human life: Madness.

State Violence

M

edia critic Jim Naureckas was responding to mass media’s pressuring for more wars against Syria and Iran (the latter’s people already suffer ─ as did Iraq before full-out invasion ─ U.S. warfare of sanctions) and a writer who makes the ludicrous suggestion that six wars against foreign countries amount to this president’s “hesitancy in the use of force.”

Naureckas concludes, “No matter how many wars you engage in, there are always wars you could have started but didn't”; and the Time Magazine writer he is critiquing “seems to be suggesting that those unfought wars ought to take the blame for any problems Obama leaves behind.”

T

he old Legacy of Hesitancy (or "soft on," you name it, “Communists,” “terrorists”, “axes of evil,” whatever is this season’s non-threat-concocted-as-threat) charge as opposed to a projection of this president’s true Legacy: 

…of lawlessness and cold-bloodedness, 

global destabilization and provocation, 

invasion and occupation, 

breach of sovereignty and abuse of human rights of many nations and peoples.

F

ormer U.S. President Jimmy Carter in a speech earlier this year said: “Our country is now looked upon as the foremost war-like nation on earth. And there is almost a complete dearth now of a commitment of America to negotiate differences with others. 

"It is not just Democrats or Republicans or a particular president. 

"It is a consciousness or attitude of Americans like you and me. We need to be working for peace for others as well as ourselves.… 

“The Middle East is a typical example where there is a need for peace.”

You be the judge of the current president's (together with mass media and the U.S. Congress and corporate interests') foreign relations legacy.

Sources and notes

“When It Comes to State Violence, Too Much Is Never Enough” by Jim Naureckas, August 30, 2013, http://www.fair.org/blog/2013/08/30/when-it-comes-to-state-violence-too-much-is-never-enough/ 

Jim Naureckas

Since 1990, Jim Naureckas has been the editor of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s bimonthly journal of media criticism, Extra!

Naureckas co-manages FAIR’s website and is co-author of The Way Things Aren’t: Rush Limbaugh’s Reign of Error, and co-editor of The FAIR Reader: An Extra! Review of Press and Politics in the ‘90s. He has worked as an investigative reporter for the newspaper In These Times, where he covered the Iran-Contra scandal; and was managing editor of the Washington Report on the Hemisphere, a newsletter on Latin America. Jim Naureckas is a Stanford University graduate in political science. http://www.fair.org/blog/author/jim-naureckas/

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) is the national media watch group that has been offering offers well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986.

FAIR works to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. As an anti-censorship organization, FAIR exposes neglected news stories and defends working journalists when they are muzzled. As a progressive group, FAIR believes that structural reform is ultimately needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent public broadcasting, and promote strong non-profit sources of information. http://fair.org/about-fair/

“Challenges of a Superpower” (PDF): Speech by Jimmy Carter to the Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, California, February 24, 2013, http://www.cartercenter.org/resources/pdfs/news/editorials-speeches/carter-speech-022413-challenges-of-a-superpower.pdf

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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U.S. in Middle East: Kill until all disagreeing are killed; abandon Palestine ─ Kucinich, Carter

Acute and constant U.S. Foreign relations disasters

Re-reporting, editing by 

Carolyn Bennett

Referencing this week’s Washington Post article on the White House’s calculated global killing program, Kucinich writes, the United States’ “‘targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has spent much of the past year codifying and streamlining the process that sustains it.’ …  The current policy creates new U.S. enemies and our government wants to make this program permanent.”

This is a “short-sighted policy,” Kucinich says, that “has been likened to mowing the grass. As soon as you stop cutting the grass down, it comes right back.”

U.S. drone
Human costs
Somalia

But, Kucinich warns, “Nations are not made of grass. They are made of people” ─ as many as 3,378 people including 885 civilians killed by more than 350 U.S. drone strikes.

Innocent civilians, thousands of people dead [not to mention the maimed and demoralized, the displaced, the terrified and insecure, the destabilized]; and we “continue to kill ‘top leaders’”: repeatedly, we have “killed ‘Al Qaeda’s number 2’… and significant questions persist as to whether the United States is conducting [assassination drone] strikes in accordance with the law. The evidence suggests not.

“We are not solving our problems or making the world safer,” Kucinich says. We are staining our own global image, undermining our ethical place to lead and descending into moral depravity.

U.S. drone
Pakistani backlash

 

“Will we keep killing until everyone who disagrees with us is dead?”

U.S. drone launch

W

hile the elected government in Washington was killing people in the Middle East, the Elders were fact finding in the Middle East, talking peace and a two-state solution in Palestine.

The Elders is an independent group of ten global leaders who no longer hold public office (they are independent of any national government or other vested interest), leaders who have earned international trust, demonstrated integrity, and built a reputation for inclusive, progressive leadership.

Palestinian woman
Child
Rubble

The Elders work together for peace and human rights. They were brought together in 2007 by Nelson Mandela, who is not an active member of the group but remains an Honorary Elder. The Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was also an Honorary Elder, until her election to the Burmese parliament in April 2012. Current active Elders are Martti Ahtisaari, Kofi Annan, Ela Bhatt, Lakhdar Brahimi, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Fernando H Cardoso, Jimmy Carter, Graça Machel, Mary Robinson.

Three of the Elders, former Norway Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Ireland President Mary Robinson, and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, made a two-day visit to Israel and the West Bank this week.

Elders’ findings in Occupied Territories

Elders left to right
Gro Harlem BrundtlandJimmy Carter
Mary Robinson.

The former President of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, said:

“The aspirations of Palestinians are being crushed, not only by the complete failure of negotiations with Israel but by a lack of unified political leadership.

“They deserve much better,” she said. “Reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas remains an essential ingredient in Palestinian self-determination [and] the leaders have to be more attuned to the demands of the people, especially given the broader changes sweeping the region.” 

 

The former Prime Minister of Norway, Gro Harlem Brundtland, said:

“It has been very sad to hear of the considerable problems that long-standing Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem face in their everyday lives –

having to reapply every year for the right to stay,

businesspeople waiting years for licenses,

[loss of] their homes to settlers or demolition.

“The effect of this system,” she said, [creates] great suffering, and erode[s] the diverse character of this city, which is so important for people of all faiths and traditions from all around the world.”

As a physician, Gro Harlem Brundtland said she “was particularly affected by our visit to Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian model of excellence for the entire region which faces enormous difficulties in treating those people nearest to it from the West Bank – never mind Palestinians from Gaza – due to Israeli travel restrictions.” This is a tragic illustration, she said, of “the direct human impact of the present deadlock.” 

Middle East
Occupied Territories

The former President of the United States, and the leader of this Elders’ delegation, Jimmy Carter, said:

“We are heading towards a one-state outcome, which will fail to ensure 

• the security and democratic rights of the people of Israel and

• renege on the promise of self-determination for Palestinians.

The two-state solution is vanishing. We urgently need a fresh approach by all parties if a Palestinian state is to be achieved.

Jimmy Carter said, “The Elders share the view that the two-state solution is the only realistic path to peace and security for Israel and the Palestinians but changes on the ground ─ including the construction of settlements beyond the Green Line and the growing isolation of East Jerusalem from the West Bank ─ make a Palestinian state unviable.”

In the reporting press on the Elders’ Middle East trip, Mr. Carter reportedly chastised U.S. leadership “for the lack of progress toward a two-state resolution:

The United States ‘has withdrawn commitment to be the major negotiator.’

Sources and notes

“The Kill Matrix ─ State-sponsored murder has killed so many people that it is becoming routine, bureaucratized and pathological” Washington, October 24, 2012, http://kucinich.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=311425

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today released a statement (text and video) opposing the codification and the streamlining of the United States’ ‘Kill Matrix’ which determines when and where the United States uses drones to conduct targeted killings.

“State-sponsored murder has killed so many people that it is becoming routine, bureaucratized and pathological,” Kucinich added.

American for nonviolence

Dennis John Kucinich (b. October 8, 1946) has been a member of the United States House of Representatives representing Ohio’s 10th congressional district since 1997 (2012, current Congress, ends his tenure). He was a candidate for the U.S. presidency in 2004 and 2008; and before entering Congress, Kucinich was Cleveland, Ohio’s 53rd mayor (1977-1979).

In the U.S. Congress, Dennis Kucinich sits on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. In a Congressional career in which he has stood for bringing articles of impeachment against former U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard (Dick) Cheney; and against the 2003 invasion of Iraq and consistently for nonviolence, for diplomacy, for peace, Kucinich will end his congressional career in January 2013, following a redistricting by Ohio’s Republican-controlled state legislature that abolished the congressional district in which he serves.

Todays Insight News: “Toward U.S. global Tiananmen?”  Tuesday, June 5, 2012 

The Elders, http://theelders.org/about

“We are heading towards a one-state outcome” (press release) October 22, 2012, http://theelders.org/article/we-are-heading-towards-one-state-outcome

‘The two-state solution is vanishing’ – Jimmy Carter, Gro Harlem Brundtland and Mary Robinson urge a fresh approach to achieving lasting peace in the Middle East

The Elders concluded a two-day visit to Israel and the West Bank by saying that the two-state solution is in deep peril and may soon be out of reach. They urged a fresh, concerted approach to explore all alternatives to the current stalemate in negotiations, stressing that a two-state solution is the only realistic path to lasting peace in the Middle East.

During this visit, the Elders met the Israeli President Shimon Peres, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, international officials and a range of Israeli and Palestinian groups. Their discussions on this issue will continue in the coming days in Cairo, Egypt.

“Carter joins two other members of The Elders on visit to Israel and the West Bank and sees worsening situation for Palestinians” (Common Dreams staff), October 23, 2012, http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/10/23-4

“Jimmy Carter downplays U.S. influence on Israel and Palestine” (Press TV), October 23, 2012,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/10/23/268308/carter-downplays-us-influence-on-israel/

Elders’ Part II Egypt

“The Elders begin two-day visit to Egypt” October 23, 2102:  In the second part of their trip to the Middle East, The Elders were in Egypt for two days meeting with President Morsi, senior officials, religious leaders and members of civil society. The Elders praised the Egyptians for their success in using non-violent protest to bring about sweeping political changes and expressed their support for the country’s democratic transition.

Gro Harlem Brundtland, Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson offered encouragement and support for an inclusive democratic transition. http://theelders.org/article/elders-begin-two-day-visit-egypt

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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