Last week, Jimmy Carter exercised his privileges as a former U.S. president, hopped on an Atlanta millionaire's private jet, flew to Cuba, shook hands and broke bread with Fidel Castro and delivered a speech -- in Spanish -- that was nationally broadcast to the island's people.

Isn't it about time someone in the Bush administration called him a traitor? Or at least a threat to U.S. security?

After all, any movement these days that is not in lockstep with Bush -- especially anything regarding foreign policy -- is damned by the administration for undermining our increasingly amorphous "war" on terrorism.

What could be more unsupportive of the Bush global vision than for a former U.S. president -- whose name has become synonymous with peace -- to acknowledge Castro as anything but Hitler with a beard?

What could be less in line with the Bush world order -- angels of God versus evil monsters -- than a high-profile, U.S. Christian talking about common ground and treating Cuba's longtime leader with anything but snarling disrespect from the safety of a bully pulpit at least 90 miles away?

It's a wonder J.B. Fuqua's jet wasn't diverted on takeoff from Havana and ordered to land at Guantanamo Bay so Jimmy and Rosalyn could be interrogated along with all those other enemies of the American people.

How dare Carter become, not just the first former or sitting U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge to visit Cuba, but the first former or sitting president in modern memory to deliver an entire speech in the language of the people he was visiting?

Cuba's state-controlled press could ignore Carter's calls for "a Cuba fully integrated into a democratic hemisphere" all it wanted. Castro's government could pretend Carter never mentioned the Varela Project and its 11,000- signature petition for a referendum on political reform.

All suppression was after the fact. With their own ears, tens of thousands of Cubans heard Carter's words -- without the aid or impediment of an interpreter. El gato was out of the bag.

Cubans (and the rest of the world) got to hear some other things from Carter as well. For example: It's time to loosen the travel and trade embargoes that the United States slapped on Cuba 41 years ago and clings to today despite their outmoded Cold War creakiness, their hypocrisy in the face of our other alliances, and the fact that most Americans want them to be lifted.

Instead of maintaining the blanket U.S. condemnation of everything that is Castro's Cuba -- as Bush is expected to do Monday night at a Miami fundraiser - - Carter shot straight with the Cuban people. He called a spade a spade, the good ones and the bad. As the Boston Globe reported:

"For every hard-hitting statement, Carter -- who is known for his diplomatic style -- softened the message by recognizing Cuba's achievement in health care and education and by insisting that he had come to build bridges, not pass judgment."

Diplomacy in Cuba? What cheek.

Long before Jimmy Carter was elected president, and long since he lost the office to Ronald Reagan, he has not just talked the talk of bridge building, peace making and community involvement. In nearly everything he has done with his life -- from his honored marriage vows to Habitat for Humanity to a Carter Center that is "guided by a fundamental commitment to human rights and the alleviation of human suffering" -- he has walked the walk.

That he is more of a statesman as a civilian than anyone in office speaks volumes about the sorry quality of our elected leadership in 2002. That he displays more integrity and guts than all the Democrats in Congress put together says plenty about that uninspiring bunch, too.

Yes, sir. For a 77-year-old guy who couldn't win a second term in the White House, Jimmy Carter has become getting downright dangerous.

©2002 San Francisco Chronicle

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