Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: Balog on November 02, 2009, 11:15:38 PM
-
Very interesting op-ed from the Washington Examiner.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Why-1978-was-a-very-bad-year-8437331-65944932.html
James Carafano: Why 1978 was a very bad year
By: James Carafano
Examiner Columnist
October 26, 2009
He followed an unpopular president. He received a strong election mandate. He changed the tone in Washington.
He said that Human Rights mattered. That America's image in the world had to be remade.
He would receive a Nobel Peace Prize.
As the end of his presidency's first year drew near, the future looked bright. He had brought change -- change that mattered.
It was 1977. The next year was very bad.
In 1978, President Jimmy Carter negotiated the Camp David Accords, formalizing peace between Israel and Egypt. (It's what won him the Nobel.) He also signed a bill that legalized the home-brewing of beer. Almost all the other news that year proved uniformly bad.
A Soviet-backed coup in Afghanistan paved the way for Moscow's future invasion of the country. Demonstrations against the shah wracked the Iranian regime, paving the way for revolution and the rise of the ayatollahs. Trouble erupted across Africa, from Somalia to Zaire and Zambia, some of it inspired by Soviet meddling.
From there on, national security challenges and foreign policies only worsened. It helped make Carter's stint in the White House a one-term deal.
Why did things go south for Carter so fast? Because America's enemies had taken measure of the man during his first, change-filled year in office. They saw weaknesses they could exploit. In the second year, they made their move.
In Year One, Carter invested all the international prestige of his presidency in diplomacy and image-making. His energy was dedicated almost exclusively to "making nice" on the world stage. It's what drove his actions in the Israeli-Egyptian peace process, at strategic-arms limitation talks and in negotiating the Panama Canal Treaty.
It was a perpetual exercise in "soft power." Not that there's anything wrong with that. Except ...
At the same time the White House was amping up the soft power, it was also looking to cut back on military commitments -- most famously with a controversial plan to scale back military forces in South Korea.
Faced with a troubled economy, the administration was also looking to cut back on military spending. Thus Carter embraced Defense Secretary Harold Brown's "offset" strategy. The armed forces would buy nothing new. The Pentagon would "skip a generation" and "rethink" military needs.
The "offset" strategy gave Carter a rationale to cut defense spending to the bone -- while claiming not to be weak on national security.
Our enemies didn't see it that way. They saw a distracted and humbled America that tried to substitute rhetoric for reality. They went on the offensive.
There is a real possibility that next year the Obama White House may find itself living out the Carter Years -- redux. Obama appears to be resurrecting the Carter formula of speaking out strongly but carrying a small stick. Plans for the Pentagon are awfully reminiscent of Carter's defense program. Likewise, the president's elevation of treaty negotiations and international institutions as the primary instruments for advancing national interests mirror Carter's approach as well.
In fact, Obama has already outdone President Carter, winning a Nobel Prize before rather than after he has done anything. Of course, this merely places additional pressure on the administration to continue relying on the tools (arms control agreements, the United Nations and such) lauded by the Nobel judges.
Sadly, warning signs that others will use the administration's "soft power uber alles" strategy to undermine U.S. interests are already cropping up.
» The Russians are demanding more and more at the strategic-arms negotiating table, while giving their U.S. counterparts less and less.
» Iran and North Korea are running out the clock, sending diplomats into the umpteenth round of talks while their scientists toil feverishly advancing their nuclear and missile programs.
» In Latin America, socialist dictators continue to outmaneuver the White House.
Meanwhile, new al Qaeda-related or -inspired plots appear to be popping up every day. Three in the United States were thwarted last month. A Boston-based plot was thwarted just last week. Turkey uncovered another network the week before that. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is on the march.
And the year is not over yet.
The rhetoric of soft power is inspiring and ever hopeful. But unless the nation seems firmly committed to backing that soft power with some hard muscle, those with no love of America will interpret the rhetoric as the vapid mooings of a nation in retreat.
That interpretation could make 2010 a year of living dangerously.
Examiner Columnist James Jay Carafano is a senior research fellow for national security at The Heritage Foundation ( heritage.org)
-
What was that the Mayans said about 2012?
Oh, yeah... they didn't. Or any year thereafter.
Nevermind...
-
I remember when Carter occupied the White House. The article doesn't even start to convey the dimensions of that wretched creature's failures.
-
Ditto what Standing Wolf says.......chris3
-
Carter was the love-child of David Rockefeller and Zbigniew B. Now he is an old hate-child, but no matter...
Let's not forget The Panama Canal, one of the earliest manifestations of the give-away game we've been practicing for decades now.
In '78 the children of the '60s were just getting out of law school, j-school, and film school. The best was yet to be...
-
As soon as I saw 1978 and bad year in the same sentence, I knew this was a thread about Jimmy Carter.
-
As soon as I saw 1978 and bad year in the same sentence, I knew this was a thread about Jimmy Carter.
Me too, actually. And I was born in the mid 80's. :O Didn't have to live through it to know why 1978 would be considered a bad year...
-
Saw the thread title, and immediately thought about the re-wiring I had to do on my '78 Harley. =D
-
Saw the thread title, and immediately thought about the re-wiring I had to do on my '78 Harley. =D
Does it mark its own territory too?
-
They're called H-D for a reason.
Hound Dogs and Harley-Davidsons ride home in the backs of pickup trucks, and do indeed mark their spots.
That's especially true if you don't have the neoprene gaskets on the oil lines going from the crankcase to the heads installed perfectly! ;)
My wife, as I'm fixing aforementioned oil leak:
"Honey, do you know what the difference between a vacuum cleaner and a Harley-Davidson is?"
Me:
"No, dear, what's the difference?"
Her:
"The location of the dirtbag!"
=D
-
Jimmy Carter: The only American president that no one claims to have voted for.
-
Proud to say that my first vote was for Reagan in '84.
-
The only American president that no one claims to have voted for.
Obama's on the fast track to join Carter with that distinction.
-
Obama's on the fast track to join Carter with that distinction.
thankfully there's so much video this time there will be no denying it for some :laugh:
-
Me too, actually. And I was born in the mid 80's. :O Didn't have to live through it to know why 1978 would be considered a bad year...
Sadly so did I.
-
Can't wait to see what Obama's attack rabbit episode looks like.
-
As soon as I saw 1978 and bad year in the same sentence, I knew this was a thread about Jimmy Carter.
Well, he DID spark my interest in survivalism....
-
Me too, actually. And I was born in the mid 80's. :O Didn't have to live through it to know why 1978 would be considered a bad year...
Same here.
-
Can't wait to see what Obama's attack rabbit episode looks like.
Obama appointed his attack rabbit to the office of Secretary of State....
-
In '78 I was once again denied a BB gun for Christmas. It was a very bad year.
I should move to Carthage.
-
In 1978 I was in Alaska. That summer a cowboy friend back in Colorado drowned while crossing a river on horseback. :(
-
In '78 I was just starting the college thing, after just finishing a hitch in the Marine Corps. I was in the reserves at that time, so I was still able to reap the benefit of the peanut farmer's fiscal evisceration of the military.
-
i just married wife one she escaped in 83
-
I was in my first year of marriage, and just started at a photo studio after finishing photography school. It was a great time, despite the Carter mess.
-
Another thing Jimmy Carter did was sign a bill to enforce sanctions against Rhodesian chrome in 1977. Of course, our only alternate supplier of chrome was that great defender of human rights, the Soviet Union, which was more than happy to sell us lower-grade ore at approximately 4x the price. The extra money the Soviets got helped finance their invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 (OK, that's a year later than the year mentioned in the original post) and of course, we know where that led.
Funny thing is, while Jimmy was enamored of sanctions against Rhodesia for "human rights" violations, he was perfectly content to let the US keep importing coffee from Uganda, then ruled by Idi Amin, an admitted cannibal.
I don't know about you, but in my book, literally devouring someone ranks pretty near the top when it comes to human rights violations.
And today . . . Jimmy has shown himself to be a bitter old man with a nasty streak of anti-Semitism. (Wonder how we'll be looking back on Obama in 20 or 30 years.)
-
lets no forget his grain embargo devastating american farmers
-
I was 5 and living in San Diego. I started to hate him back then because his speeches would pre-empt my cartoons!
-
I was 5 and living in San Diego. I started to hate him back then because his speeches would pre-empt my cartoons!
I was in college, and I remember when one of Carter's idiotic speeches interruped the PREMIER of the original Battlestar Galactica series. Much cursing ensued at the student union building, and someone said words to the effect of "Where the ^%#@ is Lee Harvey Oswald when we really need him?" (The response was applause, helped, no doubt, by the consumption of adult BEvERages.)
That night they say a record was set in irate phone calls to the networks, the White House, and the Capitol switchboard.