Slamming 71-year-President Donald Trump for replacing 55-year-old Gen. H.R. McMaster with 69-year-old former U.N. Amb. John Bolton, 93-year-old former President Jimmy Carter finds an immediate audience with the anti-Trump media. Quoted chapter-and-verse as long as he trashes Trump, the media finds great credibility in Jimmy Carter, a man that brought double-digit inflation, a 21% Prime Interest Rate and one of the most humiliating military boondoggles in U.S. history. How the media forgets life under Jimmy Carter, looking desperately to discredit anything Trump. Trump picked Bolton March 22 to bring heft to his foreign policy team before he faces North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in nuclear disarmament talks, potentially avoiding war on the Korean Peninsula. Instead of recognizing Bolton’s vast foreign policy experience, Carter whips up the media’s anti-Trump narrative.
No one in the media doubts Bolton’s foreign policy education and experience. What they question are his well-reasoned hard-line views on North Korea, Russia and the Middle East. Bolton has served four Republican administrations, including former Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. Carter’s one to talk about the “worst decision” of Trump’s presidency. Carter relied on his National Security Adiser Zbibniew Brzezinski when he decided the April 24, 1980 on Operation Eagles Claw to rescue 52 American hostages when Iranian radicals sacked the U.S. embassy in Tehran Nov. 4, 1979. Carter’s scientist Defense Secretary Harold Brown hatched the plan ending in disaster, where eight American soldiers lost their lives when a U.S. Bluebird helicopter crashed into a EC-130 transport plane, a great disgrace to the U.S. military.
Knowing nothing about Bolton’s background, training and plans as National Security Adviser, Carter finds himself a stooge of the anti-Trump media. “I have been concerned at some of the things he’s decided. I think his last choice for national security adviser was very ill-advised. I think John Bolton has been the worst mistake he’s made,” Carter told CBS News. Bolton hasn’t started his job, let alone shared the advice he’d give to President Trump. But one area where Bolton and Carter disagree most is on Israel. Bolton understood firsthand the national security value of Israel in a post Sept. 11 world. Carter had no problem embracing the terrorist policies of Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] founder Yasser Arafat. Carter agreed with Arafat that Palestinians had a right to use terror as a legitimate tactic of resistance against what they regarded as Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.
Carter’s claim-to-fame was the 1979 Camp David Accords, pressuring Israel to give back the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for a peace treaty with Egypt. Carter made zero progress on reconciling differences with Israel and the PLO. Yet Carter wrote his Sept. 18, 2007 anti-Semitic diatribe, “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.” Eight years after Sept. 11, where Carter watched Palestinians dance-in-the-streets celebrating Osama bin Laden’s attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Carter doesn’t comprehend the geo-political significance of Israel in the U.S. war on terror. Only after George W. Bush became president, did his foreign policy team figure out that Arafat was a terrorist by anyone’s definition. Yet Carter’s 2007 book tried to tar-and-feather Israel for practicing apartheid, the only democratic state in the Middle East. Carter has no criticism for other repressive Arab Mideast states.
Carter knows that as national security adviser, Bolton won’t set U.S. foreign or defense policy. That task is left to Trump’s Secretary of State and Defense Secretary to advise the president on matters of foreign policy and defense. National Security advisers have limited roles, unless given expanded portfolios like Nixon’s National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger or former President Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice. Under Obama, Rice was given the job of “unmasking” Trump campaign officials to help Hillary get elected president. Never before has any National Security Adviser used the nation’s national security apparatus, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA] Court, to wiretap political opponents. Bolton won’t be doing anything close to what Rice did under Obama. Carter’s attack on Bolton shows he’s way over his head opining at age 93.
Carter’s the last one to advise Trump on Cabinet or other appointments, given his track record on domestic and foreign policy. By the time he left office Jan. 20, 1981, U.S. foreign and domestic policy was in shambles. It wasn’t until Reagan took his oath, that 52 U.S. hostages lifted off from Tehran to Germany. Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khamenei wanted no part of a confrontation with Reagan, having played Carter for a fool during the Iran Hostage Crisis. Like Regan’s foreign policy team, that included Bolton, Trump’s trying to repeat Reagan’s mantra of “peace-through-strength.” Carter’s weakness as a leader led U.S. adversaries to take advantage. Now that the U.S. faces an implacable nuclear threat from North Korea, Trump needs the toughest foreign policy team possible to force Kim to disarm. Carter has his opinions but he should show more presidential restraint.
