The River

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

A startling admission

AMY GOODMAN: Afterward President Jimmy Carter spoke on Tuesday about his book, Palestine: Apartheid Not Peace [sic], he took questions from the audience. He was asked to outline what a balanced US-Middle East policy would look like. Again, his book is called Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

JIMMY CARTER: Yeah, the word “balance” is one that's almost unacceptable in our country. If you had a candidate for Congress running either Democratic or Republican and they announced to the general public, “I’m going to take a balanced position between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” they would never be elected. That's an impossibility in our country. But that doesn't preclude an incumbent administration from demonstrating with their own actions and words that they are concerned about Israeli peace, they are also concerned about peace and justice for the Palestinians. And that's what I did. It’s what Richard Nixon did. It’s what Ronald Reagan did after I left office. It’s what George Bush, Sr. did. It’s what Bill Clinton did. But it's not being done now.

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On the one hand, Carter admits that the Israeli influence/lobby will prevent politicians from coming to power in the U.S. if they indiciate a concern for the plight of the Palestinians (what is called "balance" here), yet he goes on to say that such a situation does not preclude said politicians from working for peace and justice in the region.

Can somebody explain the logic here? Does an elite position such as Carter's preclude the ability to address root causes?

posted by Bruce at 9:51 AM
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Comments:
Carter sure does twist. He can make a small stab at addressing the problems caused by the Israel Lobby, but he has to pull up well short of addressing the M/I power strucutre, in which the zionophiles are a single tentacle and useful only as long as divide and conquer is the US approach to the oiligarchies in that region. Hence that whacked out, tortured logic of "working towards peace". Sort of like me working towards quitting smoking by buying only fair trade organic cigarettes.
# posted by Blogger Arkady : 12:19 PM
 
A further twist is the way he casually dismisses the notion of democracy in the U.S.
# posted by Blogger Bruce : 3:42 PM
 
"American Spirits" here. Yellows. Stuck at 1-2 cigs a day.

Maybe Carter is just tiring of it all, so is starting to blurt out parts of the obvious whole in an effort to change events.

The muslims must maintain belief in progress. On our side, dropping that pretence bears higher transaction costs all across the globe. Carter is just noting the damage, and how pretenses
dropped when AIPAC learned to stop worrying and love the Clash of Civilizations. Democracy is being compressed like a balloon when it is dragged deeper into a lake.

Ah. To quote Dennis Hopper in the movie True Romance, one of the top movie scenes of all time: "I'd like that cigarette now."
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 9:07 PM
 
At first I thought he was adcocating radical policy changes at the lame duck stage. I now think he was suggesting that politicians should lie on the campaign trail and then do what they want once elected, which is what they do anyway.
There is another thing that worries me here. Carter, like many people these days, treats even the Bush I and Clinton years as ancient history, as if it were OK to admit that 9/11 "changed evrything.
# posted by Blogger P. Curtin : 12:53 PM
 
I think he's just another fool who can't tell up from down because it's not in his job description. Have you seen the cover of the book? Talk about hubris: the huge, Godlike, "compassionate" head of Carter looking down on the ant-size people.

Also, regarding political rhetoric: lying to the everyday voters is altogether different than lying to the people who own you. (and if Israel is our client state, well, possessions can own you.
# posted by Blogger Bruce : 8:41 AM
 
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