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QOTD: Jimmy Carter -- Digby
https://digbysblog.net/2026/03/16/qotd-jimmy-carter/Nobel Lecture, Oslo, December 10, 2002
He was awarded the prize during the run up to the Iraq war. Read the whole thing. Carter was long out of office at the time but he used his moment, as an elder statesmen, to make a moral statement at a time when it was difficult to do so.
The astonishing thing is that we're back where we were then except the people in charge are much worse and the only rationale is the most fatuous of all: the president took the country to war because he "had a feeling" they were going to attack.
Great American power and responsibility are not unprecedented, and have been used with restraint and great benefit in the past. We have not assumed that super strength guarantees super wisdom, and we have consistently reached out to the international community to ensure that our own power and influence are tempered by the best common judgment.
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.
The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. God gives us the capacity for choice. We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes - and we must.
He was awarded the prize during the run up to the Iraq war. Read the whole thing. Carter was long out of office at the time but he used his moment, as an elder statesmen, to make a moral statement at a time when it was difficult to do so.
The astonishing thing is that we're back where we were then except the people in charge are much worse and the only rationale is the most fatuous of all: the president took the country to war because he "had a feeling" they were going to attack.