Bernie Sanders
Related: About this forumUnder the Bus, Jimmy, Under the Bus you go....
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511696186malletgirl02
(1,523 posts)How dare a former U.S. President not pay homage to our feudal lords, the Clintons?
EdwardBernays
(3,343 posts)But
I love Jimmy Carter.. Proud to claim him an ex-president. Of my country.
But.
His foreign policy was pretty awful.
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
So Carter was warned that his potential actions could lead to a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - and all that that implies - and he still did it.
That's an Iraq War sized blunder.
I love the man and his work, but we have to be completely honest or we become no better than Hillary Clinton.
surrealAmerican
(11,362 posts)We would have done anything to weaken the Soviet Union - and we did.
EdwardBernays
(3,343 posts)By not challenging the status quo he prolonged it, and that status quo led us to 9/11 and the Iraq War and ISIS.
I can't really just forgive that because everyone was doing it... Plus he KNEW how many dead kids would result from a Soviet invasion...
So...
I'm unwilling to simply forgive bad things because they're common.
n2doc
(47,953 posts)Carter came in with little foreign policy experience and was led astray in several areas. The difference is, he has learned from his mistakes. HRC has doubled down on hers (Iraq-Libya-Syria-ISIS....).
In retrospect, the aid to Afghanistan became a problem because Republicans And W Clinton kept interfering in the region and allowing Sunni support for OBL even after he became a threat. It did have the effect of further weakening the Soviet Union and arguably was a major factor in its breakup.
EdwardBernays
(3,343 posts)I think the moral compromises he made are yet another disastrous legacy of the idiotic cold war nonsense..
Nyan
(1,192 posts)He was a liberal interventionist, and sometimes that leads to deadly consequences. That was a wrong decision.
And it's good to be clear headed about this stuff.