If you open up a can of worms, someone else might open up a can of whoopass:
By contrast, the Obama ad’s brief rebuke of Romney is at least factual and accurate: Not only did he say what the ad quotes, but he also said that he wouldn’t go into Pakistan to get bin Laden, which is what the mission required. Had the president followed Romney’s policy recommendation, bin Laden would almost certainly still be at large.
“Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order,” scoffed Romney in response. But he shouldn’t be so quick to denigrate the former Democratic president, who entered the Navy during World War II and then served as a submarine officer until his honorable discharge in 1953. Somebody may compare Carter’s service with Romney’s own military record, which doesn’t exist — and remind voters that he avoided the Vietnam draft with a pampered stint as a Mormon missionary, in France.
I’d like to add something to this, just because I find it irritating. Mitt Romney decided to pick on Jimmy Carter in this instance as an example of someone who was weak on national security. This is wrong for at least three reasons. First, when Carter was faced with the Iranian Hostage Crisis, he authorized a rescue mission. That rescue mission was known as Operation Eagle Claw. It failed because of a sandstorm in Iran, and insufficient redundancy in the planning. It was wisely called off when too few helicopters remained operational to assure success. If Carter deserves any criticism beyond being a victim of bad luck, it’s that he didn’t personally intervene in the planning to assure there were more helicopters. But this is exactly what Obama did, and it may have been crucial to the success of the mission to get bin-Laden.
Second, Jimmy Carter’s signature achievement in office was the Camp David Accords, which allowed Egypt and Israel to make a peace that has lasted to this day, and which formally brought Egypt out of the Soviet orbit and into our own. If that is weakness in foreign policy, then I guess making peace is weak and screwing the Soviets was weak.
Third, rather than criticize Carter for timidity in foreign policy, he should more rightly be critiqued for recklessness. Here is a segment of a 1998 interview with Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski that discusses the Soviet War in Afghanistan.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
President Carter intentionally goaded the Soviets into invading Afghanistan and armed and trained and grew the numbers of the Islamic fundamentalists that turned on us and attacked us repeatedly leading up to the devastating 9/11 attacks. When Moscow invaded Afghanistan, Carter boycotted the Russian Olympics and cut off grain supplies. In reaction, the Soviets boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984.
Carter was unsuccessful in securing the release of the Iranian hostages, but that wasn’t entirely his fault. And, in any case, it has little bearing on Carter’s successes and failures in foreign policy.
