Jimmy Carter and Hamas

I didn't mean to duck your question. If Joseph Ratzinger was a former president of the United States, and not the Pope, yes, I would say that sharing hugs and kisses with Hamas leaders would be inappropriate.

Not that that has any relation to reality. I'm not really up on who Ratzinger has met with, because I don't follow Papal things very closely. But to my knowledge he hasn't met with Hamas or tried to "negotiate" anything with them. Am I wrong about that, and if so when?

And if I am wrong about it, it'd be kind of curious to me anyhow, since Hamas is committed to the destruction of the Catholic Church, too, so I can't imagine what Ratzinger would be negotiating with them.

Did you see this story last week? My bet is that Ratzinger noticed it.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351242,00.html

It's kind of the point, though. That kind of rhetoric doesn't concern Jimmy Carter.

 

Sorry you think I am a hypocrite, Frank. Not sure what else to say. That sentence you selectively quoted is a real reach, given that it was part of a statement made from afar when Israel was bombing the fuck out of Lebanon. There wasn't a responsible leader on earth who wasn't making similar calls for the carnage to end.

I'm hypocrite somehow, but you can actually link to that with a straight face and not see any difference in context?

The Pope calling for peace in the middle of a dire situation in which thousands of people were being slaughtered by a barrage of missiles really equates with what Jimmy Carter did this week, which was decide to unilaterally meet face-to-face out of nowhere, against the wishes of a lot of people, and exchange hugs with a bunch of terrorists?

Even if there was any sort of parallel, that is far from a Papal endorsement of Hamas or any sort of meeting between Ratzinger and an organization that stated its intention for the destruction of the Catholic Church, or Ratzinger giving Hamas any credence. In fact, he doesn't even recognize Hamas or mention Hamas in that statement. He just made a bland, Popish kind of statement calling for the end to an acute situation in which lots of people were dying. It's the kind of statement the Pope is SUPPOSED to make when killing breaks out somewhere on the planet.

He certainly hasn't exchanged hugs with any Hamas leaders, though, the way Jimmy Carter has. And once again, this is the point. Jimmy Carter made kissy poo with a bunch of terrorists this week.

Furthermore, YOU brought the Pope into this. The Pope has nothing to do with Jimmy Carter. One is a religious leader. The other is a former president of the United States. People expect different behaviors from those people. You are equating apples and oranges.

But either way, I'm not slinging mud, as you put. I'm expressing my opinion of Jimmy Carter's actions. It's an opinion lots of others shared this week.

 

444 days of captivity with guns held to their heads by a bunch of batshit extremists. And your verdict is, "Well, they came home alive."

I was young, but I can't remember a lower point in morale in this country. Nobody had any confidence in Carter's leadership, and the rest of the world saw him as weak. It was how we ended up with our citizens sitting hostage for 444 days in the first place, while our leaders looked feckless. I won't lay total blame on Carter -- he inherited a bad time to be president -- but his ideas about diplomacy got us punched in the nose by the rest of the world over and over again, and worse, a great deal of it was brought on by his actions. Say what you want about the Shah, and how the U.S. had propped him up and his human rights violations, but Carter abandoned him at the most inopportune time, and pretty much single-handedly gave rise to the Ayatollah, which is what resulted in the evening news telecasts of Americans being paraded in blindfolds while a bunch of extremists mocked us. He waited about five months before he even broke off diplomatic relations (yeah, you can broker "peace" with people hell bent on violence) and even starting to plan for economic sanctions. And Mr. Human Rights, stood by with nary a word when the Ayotollah came out of exile and immediately executed 20,000 pro-Western Iranians. Here is a fact. Khomeini's regime executed more people in its first year in power than the Shah had allegedly killed in the previous 25 years. And Khomeini was a product of Carter's stupid-ass foreign policy, which not only brought all kinds of misery on the Iranian people, but ended up with Americans kept hostage for 444 days. But hey, you all will tell those poor people that "Hey, it's OK. 444 days with hoods over your heads and guns pointed at you, but you came home alive, so no harm no foul."

Carter was a disaster--and our country reached a low point because of him. I don't even have to argue it, because not even the most skilled charlatan can rewrite history enough to fool people on this one.

 

Because I take the time to post something I think is substantive, backed up by opinion and fact, this makes me irrational?

If you don't agree with my opinion, fine. But that is ridiculous.

Go back and read my posts on this thread. I started by posting about Jimmy Carter and what he did last week. I have posted substantively about what he has done since his time as president. I even indulged some off-point comparison between the Pope and Jimmy Carter.

I am responding to specific posts. My argument has only been that Carter wasn't a good president? You obviously aren't reading what I posts -- maybe it is the length of those "irrational" posts that turns you off.

My last post was in response to the idiotic, "the hostages came home alive, so no harm" stuff I read. You obviously decided to skip the posts in which I criticized what he has done since being president--where I talked about him meeting with Hamas, his trips to Cuba, his botched mission to North Korea that had far-reaching consequences, the rigged elections he is eager to always certify. All those things have happened since he has been president.

Again, you might not agree with what I have to say, but if you are going to characterize my posts, please at least characterize them correctly.