Christopher Hitchens Pans Jimmah





I have always enjoyed reading anything that Chris Hitchens writes. He is one of the few lefties that I have any respect for, because he is honest and says what he means. He never minces words.

Hitch has a great essay about the former president Carter. Here are a few excerpts:

I once had quite an argument with the late Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who maintained adamantly that it had been right for him to vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980 for no other reason. "Mr. Carter," he said, "quite simply abdicated the whole responsibility of the presidency while in office. He left the nation at the mercy of its enemies at home and abroad. He was the worst president we ever had."

I find this quite interesting. I had never heard that McCarthy voted for Reagan in 1980. But of course, this is not the sort of thing that our beloved journalists in the lamestream media would be likely to report.

Eugene is quite correct that Jimmah left us at the mercy of foreign thugs. When the Iranian islamofascists seized our embassy in Tehran and held our diplomats as hostages, Jimmah foolishly thought that he could negotiate to bring them home. He even offered to pay ransom. Khomeini and his band of merry thugs humiliated the USA for 444 days. This didn't end until the day that Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president.

Hitch gives Jimmah another hug:

It was because, whether in Afghanistan, Iran, or Iraq—still the source of so many of our woes—the Carter administration could not tell a friend from an enemy. His combination of naivete and cynicism—from open-mouthed shock at Leonid Brezhnev's occupation of Afghanistan to underhanded support for Saddam in his unsleeping campaign of megalomania—had terrible consequences that are with us still. It's hardly an exaggeration to say that every administration since has had to deal with the chaotic legacy of Carter's mind-boggling cowardice and incompetence.