Jimmy Carter, Still Ineffective

Former President Carter, who history has shown to be not exactly one of our greatest presidents, has written a new book with the damning title Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. He, like the Iraq Study Group Report, claims that one of the cornerstones of a settlement for Iraq and the region is to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian problem. In other words, this is what has caused all of the Iraq/Iran/Syria/Hezbullah/Hamas problems. It must be true. After all, it has even brought to the spotlight the hatred of David Duke with his appearance at the Holocaust Deniers Conference in Iran. But, does this kind of thinking really have anything to do with our problems in the Middle East? Or is the Israeli/Palestinian problem just a whipping boy for the Arab/Radical Muslim hatred of the West, and especially the United States?

Okay, let’s imagine that peace happens between Israel and the Arabs. Or better still, that Israel is driven into the sea, as promised by the Arabs since its inception in 1948. What would that result bring? Will Shiite stop killing Sunni? Will Bin Laden come out of hiding? Will al-Queda stop killing Americans, as well as their fellow countrymen? Will Syria and Iran stop trying to destabilize Iraq? Will Iran give up its nuclear bomb program? Will the Muslim world start to love the United States? There are a thousand additional questions just like these that all deserve the same answer, and that is obviously: Of Course Not.

None of these problems have anything to do with the trumped-up charges of Mr. Carter’s phony, misplaced claim of apartheid in the Palestinian territories. There are no connections, but rather only excuses for the hatred, killing, and dangers, brought on by fourteenth century extremism, in the Middle East.

Mr. Carter should spend more of his time building homes for the homeless, and less continuing to show how ineffective he was as a governor and president. His book is a one-sided embarrassment.