"Jimmy" Carter, president of the U.S. between Ford and Reagan (Jan. 1977-Jan. 1981) posted a brief statement on his organization's website, the Carter Center, which reads in full as follows:
According to the Washington Post, Carter's two sisters, his father, and brother Billy all died from pancreatic cancer. His mother died from breast cancer. This would indicate a genetic vulnerability to cancers. [1]
As he is 90 years old, and the cancer has already spread (metastasized), it is probable, if not almost certain, that he will die of the disease (or from side effects of treating it).
Ninety years is a long life, so no reason to feel sorry for Carter. That's longer than the life expectancy for U.S. boys born today, and much longer than for those born in the year of Carter's birth.
As we can expect a shower of dishonest and cloying propaganda about his regime and life after his death, let us preempt the indoctrination to come just a little bit with some taboo truths:
Carter was falsely smeared as a "liberal" and "weak on defense." I recall in the first months of his presidency hearing his Secretary of "Defense," Harold Brown on the radio (if memory serve,s he was testifying before Congress) saying that the Carter regime was going to increase the military budget by 50%. I was stunned. Sure enough, over four years U.S. military spending went from $100 billion a year to $150 billion. Yet the media and various reactionary screechers have created the myth that Carter "gutted" the military. Carter in fact was the precursor to Reagan, both in his domestic policies and outside U.S. borders. (Reagan then doubled military spending in eight years, to $300 billion, and also tripled the national debt, from about $900 billion when Carter left office, to $3 trillion. Then Bush the Elder added another trillion to that in four years as president. His successor Clinton ran budget surpluses in some years. Yet the media persists in implanting in the minds of the idiot America public the patently false idea that it is the Democrats who are the profligate ones running up the debt. The mystery is why the Democrats go along with this canard.)
Carter initiated a phony propaganda campaign of "human rights." While the U.S. continued to support the same murderous dictators it always had, this provided a useful bludgeon to beat the Soviet Union over the head with- even though, post-Stalin, the U.S. had by far a worse human rights record. Just compare Eastern Europe 1953-1991 to Latin America in the same time frame! Or what the U.S. did in Indochina
As the chief executive officer of U.S. Imperialism during his one term as president, Carter committed crimes against humanity as would be expected of a U.S. president. He tried to keep the vicious Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza in power, including by arranging for Israel to ship Somoza arms and terror advisers when it became politically awkward for the U.s. to be seen doing so. He began the creation of the contra terrorist army used against Nicaragua, for which Reagan gets all the "credit."
He scoffed at the notion of the U.S. paying reparations to Vietnam, with the sick statement that "the destruction was mutual." (Yeah, the U.S. dropped 6 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, three times the tonnage dropped in World War II, and Vietnam shot down some of the bombers. There's an example of "mutual destruction.")
He hailed the Shah of Iran, the dictator with the world's worst human rights record at the time (as per Amnesty International) as a "great friend." When the Shah was forced to flee for his life, Carter instigated the "hostage crisis" by having the Shah come to the U.S., despite warnings from the new Iranian regime not to give the Shah sanctuary. (The excuse was that the Shah needed medical treatment for cancer- as if the U.S. is the only nation on earth with hospitals. Carter himself knew this would provoke a bad reaction, as he griped to Henry Kissinger when Kissinger called Carter and transmitted an order from David Rockefeller to let the Shah in.)
Then there's Afghanistan. Carter's head of the "National Security" Council, the Machiavellian Zbigniew Brzezinski, had a plot to lure the Soviets into invading Afghanistan. A self-described "communist" government had taken over the country, and were battling a Muhajedeen insurgency. ("Muhajedeen" means Islamic Holy Warrior, which is to say violent, backward religious fanatic.) Carter secretly authorized aid to these terrorists on July 3rd, 1979. On that date, Brzezinski advised Carter in a memo that the “aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.” This was something the Polish Brzezinski ardently desired, as the animating passion of his life is hatred of Russia. The U.S. "national security" state also was eager to "pay back" the Soviet Union for the Vietnam War (as if somehow it was their fault!) and wanted to bleed the Soviets. Sure enough, at the end of 1979, the Soviets invaded. [2]
And what the U.S., in cahoots with its partners Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the two nations that arm and fund violent islamofascist jihadism globally, wrought by its vengeful, malicious policy was not only the destruction of any chance of social and economic progress in Afghanistan (the "communists" had instituted schooling for girls, for example, and in other ways tried to drag Tenth century Afghanistan into the Twentieth century), but the opening of a Pandora's box of evil. The U.S. reaped the whirlwind, creating the most spectacular case of "blowback" ever. The Islamofascist Taliban eventually took over the country, and provided a base for Osama bin-Laden's Al-Qaeda ("The Base"). The Islamofascist movement has become more extreme and violent as the U.S. has increased its efforts to destroy the movement, and has now mutated into its most toxic form yet, the "Islamic State," which has conquered large swaths of Iraq and Syria, and has metastasized (if I may ironically redeploy that word in a non-medical context) to Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere.
But Brzezinski and Carter receive no criticism for any of that.
Carter, like many former apparatchiks of the system, waited until he was out of power to speak truthfully and to advocate for policies he should have pursued when he was in a position to do so. His Habitat for Humanity builds a small number of homes for poor people. And he warns that Israel "could become" an apartheid state. (In fact it's been one for years.) He did, while he was president, have the CIA purged of a few hundred of its worst fascist cutthroats. That was a wise move just from the standpoint of his personal safety. (See: JFK assassination.) If nothing else, that allowed cancer and not the CIA to claim his life.
1] "Former president Jimmy Carter, 90, announces that he has cancer," Washington Post, August 12, 2015.
2] See the eye-opening thesis "THE STRATEGIC MIND OF ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: HOW A NATIVE POLE USED AFGHANISTAN TO PROTECT HIS HOMELAND," May 2012, which compiles public source but ignored information and citations. Brzezinski for his part remained unrepentant when asked years later if he had any regrets: "That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into an Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?” (My emphasis.)
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