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jimmy carter
Trump Orders US Military to Plan Invasion of Panama to Seize Canal: Report
U.S. officials familiar with the planning said options for "reclaiming" the vital waterway include close cooperation with Panama's military and, absent that, possible war.
Mar 13, 2025
President Donald Trump has directed the Pentagon to prepare plans for carrying out his threat to "take back" the Panama Canal, including by military force if needed, two U.S. officials familiar with the situation told NBC News Thursday.
According to the outlet, the officials said that U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is drawing up potential plans that run the gamut from working more closely with Panama's military to a less likely scenario in which U.S. troops invade the country and take the canal by force. They also said that SOUTHCOM commander Adm. Alvin Holsey has presented draft strategies to be reviewed by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is scheduled to visit Panama next month.
The officials explained that the likelihood of a U.S invasion depended on the level of cooperation shown by the Panamanian military.
Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out use of military force to seize control of the vital U.S.-built waterway, as well as Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark.
Last week during his joint address to Congress, Trump proclaimed that "to further enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal," but his administration has not clarified precisely what "reclaiming" entails.
The Republican president says the U.S. needs to retake control of the Panama Canal to enhance "economic security," and has falsely claimed that the waterway is "operated by China."
Earlier this month, the New York-based investment firm BlackRock led a group of investors in a $23 billion deal to purchase ports at both ends of the Panama Canal from a Hong Kong-based conglomerate, an agreement Trump dubiously seized upon as proof that "we've already started" reclaiming the conduit.
Panamanian President José Raúl Molina countered that "the Panama Canal is not in the process of being reclaimed... The canal is Panamanian and will continue to be Panamanian!"
The U.S. controlled what was formerly called the Panama Canal Zone from the time of the waterway's construction in the early 20th century—largely done by Afro-Caribbean workers, thousands of whom died in what's widely known as the world's deadliest construction project—until then-President Jimmy Carter transferred sovereignty to Panama in the late 1970s. Under the Torrijos-Carter treaties, the U.S. reserves the right to use military force to defend the canal's neutrality.
The United States has repeatedly used deadly military force in Panama over the decades, including during a 1964 student-led uprising against American control in which 22 Panamanians and four U.S. soldiers were killed, and in a full-scale invasion in 1989 ordered by then-President George H.W. Bush to capture erstwhile ally and CIA asset turned narcotrafficking dictator Manuel Noriega. The U.S. invaders killed hundreds of Panamanians, including many civilians.
Writing for Americas Quarterly this week, Panamanian jurist Alonso E. Illueca argued that Panama's efforts to appease Trump aren't working. These include the BlackRock deal and other moves like quitting China's "Belt and Road" initiative, taking in third-country migrants deported by the U.S., backing a U.S. resolution on Ukraine at the United Nations Security Council, auditing the country's ports, and revisiting a railway project originally developed by the Chinese government.
"Panama should abandon its accommodating policy towards the U.S., which can only lead to escalating demands to banish Chinese influence, to the detriment of Panama's national sovereignty," Illueca asserted.
"An alternative policy for Panama is to align with the rules based international order," he continued. "This includes establishing synergies with like-minded states which have been also affected by U.S. actions such as Canada, Mexico, Greenland, and Denmark. The country should seek to transcend the U.S.-China binary and find alternatives for alliances, which should include partners like the European Union."
"In short," Illueca added, "the way forward for Panama lies in replacing strategic dissonance with strategic clarity."
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Whose Example Will We Follow, America—Carter’s or Trump’s?
The funeral of Jimmy Carter just days away from the inauguration of Donald Trump has presented us with a choice and a challenge.
Jan 13, 2025
This past week, Washington D.C. was witness to a stark study in contrasts: The solemn dignity involved in the nation’s farewell to former President Jimmy Carter and the blustery antics accompanying former President Donald Trump’s impending return to the White House.
There couldn’t be any two men more different than Carter and Trump. And as if to make that point, one day’s newspaper featured headlines that virtually screamed across the front page at each other. One read “Celebrating a ‘servant of the people,’” with the subhead “As Carter arrived in Washington, many gather to honor his humility and decency.” On the other side, we read “Trump won’t rule out coercion to expand U.S. map,” with the subhead, “He eyes Panama Canal and Greenland.”
In the same week Americans were mourning the death of one former president who was praised for his service to others, his humility, honesty, and commitment to peace, democracy, and human rights, they were also awaiting the return of another former president who was threatening to use coercion to “take over” foreign countries and pardon hundreds of people convicted of the violent attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
There is another factor that unites these two former presidents: Despite their obvious differences, they reflect two distinct sides of the American reality.
The Panama Canal story alone tells the story of the differences between the two men and their approaches to governance. With Latin America in turmoil and many Panamanians growing restive with U.S. control of the Canal Zone that not only cut their country in half, but also negatively impacted their society in other ways, Carter realized that it was time to negotiate a deal that respected Panama’s sovereignty. Trump, on the other hand, wants to renege on the treaty, asserting that the canal is “ours,” claiming that “we lost thousands of lives” building it. In fact, it’s estimated that, while over 25,000 Panamanians perished digging the canal, very few Americans died.
Additional contrasts between the two men would include: one was humble, the other always boastful; one devoted his life to others, the other a narcissist; one said “I will never lie to you” (and fact-checkers were unable to identify a single one), while fact-checkers have identified 33,000 falsehoods told by the other in just four years; one was faithful to his wife for 77 years—let’s just say that the other was not; one attributed his successes to others, the other boastfully claims everything for himself; and one was born in a small southern town and after his term in office returned to that simple life until his final days, the other was born into wealth in New York City and has surrounded himself with the trappings of ostentatious excess.
While all of these differences between the two must be noted, there are some characteristics they share. First and foremost is the fact that both were elected president of the United States as insurgents and agents of change because, in their respective eras, both understood and responded to a felt need in the public’s mood. Carter was elected while the nation was still reeling from the double traumas of Vietnam and the Nixon resignation. He parlayed his simple rural style to establish himself as the antithesis of a typical politician. He was comfortable and steady, and that’s what voters were craving back then. For his part, Trump understood that many voters had been unsettled by social, economic, political, and cultural changes and were reeling from multiple traumas from 9/11 and the failed war in Iraq to the aftershocks of the economic collapse of 2008-9. Voters were wary of typical politicians who either didn’t understand or didn’t care about just how angry and upset they were. Carter promised honesty and an end to turbulence. Trump promised to shake things up at whatever the cost.
There is another factor that unites these two former presidents: Despite their obvious differences, they reflect two distinct sides of the American reality. We are a nation capable of doing great and good things. We are also a nation that has shown itself to be capable of doing evil. We have welcomed millions of refugees, provided humanitarian support to those suffering in the wake of catastrophic events, and have led efforts to support equality and human rights. At the same time, we recall that our nation was born with the original sins of slavery and genocide; continues to struggle with racism; still has a xenophobic streak that periodically rears its head; and has committed or aided and abetted war crimes in countries as far flung as Vietnam, Iraq, Cuba, and Palestine.
We can never deny either of these sides of our nation’s history and “personality,” because in a real sense both are who we have been. And more importantly, both can be who we are today and who we can become in the future. If we allow ourselves to forget that the capacity for evil is always residing under the surface, we become vulnerable to its allure. At the same time, if we forget that we have the capacity to do good and great things, then we deny our ability to make things better and lose hope in our possibility to make change.
The funeral of Jimmy Carter just days away from the inauguration of Donald Trump has presented us with a choice and a challenge. Which path will we take, and which America will we become?
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Holy Scandal-rooski! What You Won't Learn From State Farm's NFL Playoff Ads
The insurance giant—one of the nation's largest—does some bundling that hasn’t gotten the media attention it deserves, especially given the climate devastation in Los Angeles that the whole country has been watching on TV.
Jan 11, 2025
With NFL playoffs about to begin, State Farm Insurance will be constantly running commercials in which multimillionaire Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid and his multimillionaire star player Patrick Mahomes belittle themselves by using their fame to personally cash in instead of using it like, say, Colin Kaepernick did, to address an issue of social significance. True to form, the NFL blackballed Kaepernick but at least he maintained his dignity.
In one commercial Reid acts goofy as he repeatedly says “Bundle-rooski” to describe Star Farm’s plan for bundling home and auto insurance. State Farm does some other bundling that hasn’t gotten the media attention it deserves, especially given the devastation in Los Angeles that the whole country has been watching on TV.
This other bundling couples State Farm’s refusal to insure tens of thousands of homes in fire prone areas with State Farm’s doubling down on investing in the fossil fuel industry. Not insuring properties that seem guaranteed to cost the company lots of money seems like good business sense. But it becomes shameful if coupled with also propping up the fossil fuel industry.
The Los Angeles Rams are hosting an NFL playoff game this weekend but because of the fossil fuel driven wildfires the game has been moved from LA to Arizona and, of all places, State Farm Stadium.
The fires in LA are called natural disasters but that’s not an apt description by itself. We are all witnessing the increasing number and magnitude of droughts, floods, heatwaves and storms that climate scientists have been warning us about for decades. Much of the discussion now is about how we need to adapt to the new climate reality, which is true. But the first rule for getting out of a hole is to stop digging and the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over and expect different results.
We need to quickly and greatly cut back on our burning of fossil fuels. State Farm needs to stop investing in fossil fuels before much more of the country becomes uninsurable.
The country said goodbye this week to Jimmy Carter, a most decent man who tried to set us on a path to renewable energy almost 50 years ago. Now we’re about to reinstall his direct opposite. We must resist. We must stand with each other and for the common good.
The Los Angeles Rams are hosting an NFL playoff game this weekend but because of the fossil fuel driven wildfires the game has been moved from LA to Arizona and, of all places, State Farm Stadium. If you watch be on the lookout for the “Bundlerooski” commercials, then spare a thought for Colin Kaepernick, Jimmy Carter, all the uninsured people in LA who lost everything…and State Farm’s scandalrooski.
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Jimmy Carter: The First Neoliberal Democrat and the Last Boy Scout
The most meaningful measure we can make of Jimmy Carter is whether we would prefer an imperfect, yet noble man like him at the helm of the country, today. I would.
Jan 08, 2025
Virtually everybody with an opinion judges Jimmy Carter to have been a decent man. He was certainly as good an ex-president as we’ve ever had. But what about his legacy as a then-president? That assessment is murkier.
A common refrain holds that Carter was a good man but a weak president, that he was not wise to the ways of Washington, that he was naïve in his belief that pure motives could win over champions of impure schemes.
It is impossible to fairly weigh Carter’s success or failure without understanding the context in which he served. That context was some of the greatest institutional tumult the U.S. has ever seen.
First, was Vietnam. The U.S. had just limped, still bleeding, out of the Vietnam War. It was the first war America had ever lost. The trauma of that loss (to say nothing of the trauma of having tried to prevent it) cannot be overstated.
Carter was the first elected president to have to deal with the shock, the disbelief, the grief, the shame, and the anger from the loss. There wasn’t a person in America who knew how to deal with that rat’s nest of conflicting, disorienting emotions and make the country whole again.
After Vietnam (and, especially, immediately after) the U.S. was not the swaggering hegemon it had been for the 30 years since 1945. But what could it be? That Delphic divination was only the first of Carter’s monumental challenges. There was equal upheaval, economically.
In 1971, Richard Nixon had removed the dollar’s coupling to gold. That left Arab oil sheikdoms receiving paper for their once-ever patrimony. They responded by tripling the price of oil, sending both inflationary and recessionary shocks through the world’s economy.
Theory held that stagnation and inflation couldn’t exist at the same time. But there it was: stagflation. The remedy for stagnation was to lower interest rates and increase the money supply. The remedy for inflation was to raise interest rates and reduce the money supply.
Clearly, you couldn’t do both at the same time. The Keynesian framework for managing the economy, operative since the Great Depression, no longer worked. So, in 1979, Carter hired Paul Volcker to try to fix it.
Volcker jacked up interest rates to record levels, inducing an immediate recession. It was the right thing to do, but it killed Carter’s chances in the 1980 election, as he knew it would. It gave Ronald Reagan his now-famous question: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
Finally, on top of the ferocious ferment roiling international and economic affairs, there was Watergate. Richard Nixon was caught trying to break into the offices of whistleblower Daniel Elsberg’s psychiatrist and also the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The crime seems petty today, especially compared to launching a mob on the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power, but it was monumental, then.
Probably no event in modern history had so shattered the public’s faith in the integrity of its national institutions and actors. Nixon resigned in disgrace. All political acts—and all political actors—were suddenly suspected of being nefarious and self-dealing.
Carter was both, but he was also neither. That is, yes, he was a politician, carrying out political acts. But he was neither nefarious nor self-dealing. He was as honest and selfless a politician as we’ve ever known. But, that was the tar with which all politics, and politicians, were smeared by Nixon’s sordid bequest.
Simply put, the intellectual and institutional moorings that had anchored the country for the prior 40 years—from the New Deal consensus to the post-World War II international order—were coming unglued. That was the tectonically-shifting world that Carter inherited. Nobody had ever dealt with anything like it.
So, how did he do? In truth, he did pretty well. First, the negatives.
In 1979, Iranian revolutionaries overthrew their government and took 66 Americans hostage. They held them for 444 days, dealing a severe humiliation to the U.S. That was probably Carter’s greatest public defeat.
But the underlying grievance had started in 1953, when the U.S. overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and installed the brutal Shah Reza Pahlavi, a reliable U.S. sycophant but a ruthless enemy of his own people. The boil of that festering resentment popped in 1979, on Carter’s watch.
Also, the Reagan campaign had cut a back-door deal with the revolutionaries to not release the hostages until after the election, thereby depriving Carter of a win in the matter. It was one of the most perfidious deeds ever to degrade American politics. Most people didn’t know that then, and don’t know it, still, today, so mistakenly blame Carter for the entire ordeal.
Later in 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Carter had provoked the invasion. Six months before, he had begun supplying arms to the opponents of the Soviet-leaning Afghan government. The Soviets invaded to prop up their ally which was under attack by U.S.-supported terrorists, including the later-to-become-infamous Osama bin Laden.
Ironically, Afghanistan proved to be the Soviet Union’s Vietnam, draining it of treasure, manpower, and willpower. It is widely regarded to have been the single greatest cause of the Soviet collapse, in 1991. Carter’s critics who condemn his actions at the time always seem to forget that they eventuated in the defeat of the U.S.’ greatest adversary of the twentieth century.
Carter’s solutions to economic woes leaned conservative, or even further. It was he who began the Neoliberal regime we often associate with Ronald Reagan.
He deregulated the airline, trucking, and railroad industries. He reduced spending on welfare much more than either Nixon or Reagan ever did. Fearing inflation, he fought the United Mine Workers in their 1978 national coal strike, alienating one of his—and the Democratic party’s—most important bases.
But what of the good things that Carter delivered?
For all of the upheaval, he actually delivered better economic performance than did Ronald Reagan. That meant faster GDP growth and higher levels of business investment. He delivered the last balance of payments surplus the country has ever known. And he did this without the budget busting deficits that followed him.
When Carter left office, in January, 1981, the national debt—the cumulation of all federal borrowing over 204 years—stood at just under $1 trillion. Reagan tripled that debt in only eight years, an ominous portent of things to come. It is $36 trillion, today.
Carter placed more women and minorities in the federal judiciary—40 and 87, respectively—than all of his predecessors, combined. Ruth Bader Ginsburg attributed her decision to become a judge to Carter’s initiative. He literally actualized the centuries-long-delayed intent embodied in the Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s.
Carter established the Department of Energy, an essential move, given the way the country and the world were being whipsawed by Arab oil producers. It has been a huge contributor to the U.S.’ being one of the world’s top energy producers still, today.
He started the Department of Education. An educated work force is probably the most valuable social asset a society can produce. But before Carter, it was left to the scattered machinations of 50 different state bureaucracies, a guarantee for national failure.
Carter engineered the Camp David Accords, bringing Israel and Egypt together to bury at least part of the hostility that has afflicted the Middle East since Israel’s founding in 1948. He proved prescient on the Israelis, predicting that they would not honor their promises to cede greater autonomy to the Palestinians.
Finally, Carter introduced Human Rights into U.S. foreign policy considerations. Even if done badly, it signaled an aspiration for what the U.S. stood for in its desire to be “the leader of the free world.”
The sum of this amounts to as adroit (though not flawless) an adaptation to the challenges of the time as could be conceived.
Besides considering the context and weighing the balance on Carter, there is one more lens through which we can, and should, judge him. That is, “Who would you rather have at the helm, today, steering the country through waters that are at least as perilous as those Carter faced?”
The U.S. is going through similar—or even greater—dislocations, today, as it was in Carter’s time. Its status in the world is plummeting as it has done everything it possibly could to bolster Israel’s heinous genocide of the Palestinians, and as China has blown by it in manufacturing, commerce, and in many areas of technology.
It has suffered withering military defeats, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and, now, Ukraine. The majority of the world’s nations—led by Russia and China—are aligning against it as a Global South. Its economy, too, is much worse today than it was in Carter’s time.
In 1980, the U.S. had not begun hollowing out its economy with 40 years of de-industrialization. It had not begun the psychotic debt binge it has taken, borrowing $35 trillion dollars to try to mask the rot and keep the lights on. It was not hazarding the onset of actuarial bankruptcy, as it is, today.
These are not the signifiers of a healthy global leader. They are the signs of a wounded, faltering behemoth struggling to find a way to regain its once-heralded, even respected, primacy.
So, where does all of this leave us with Jimmy Carter?
Everybody agrees that Carter was an honest, decent, dignified, intelligent, hard-working, selfless public servant who never used his office for personal gain. It’s the things he wasn’t, though, that makes the things he was stand out in such dazzling, admirable, relief.
He wasn’t a pathological liar. He wasn’t a serial sexual abuser. He didn’t consort with porn stars and Playboy bunnies. In fact, he was married to the same woman for 77 years. His daddy didn’t leave him $413 million, so he wasn’t a phony put-up as a self-made man. He wasn’t a five-time draft dodger. He was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and served seven honorable years in active duty.
He wasn’t a tax cheat or a convicted felon—probably didn’t even have traffic tickets, he was such a Boy Scout. He didn’t use his office to boost his own personal wealth. He didn’t sell access to billionaires. He didn’t foment racial hatred for electoral gain. He wasn’t a bully. He didn’t threaten to send journalists and political foes to jail, in order to silence them. He didn’t steal state secrets on his way out of the presidency. And he certainly never tried to overthrow the government to keep himself in power.
It’s amazing how far our putative standards have fallen, and how we can so readily, fatuously, condemn a good man who, facing the greatest task of many decades, gave our country his very best, and, in fact, healed so many of the wounds of distrust and division that he and we had inherited.
Smug, supercilious condescension about Jimmy Carter is precisely the sign of our own inadequacy to judge him. We insist of him, even in his death, that he be some kind of incongruous super-human avatar: both chaste and worldly-wise; honest and wily; simple, but savvy; idealistic, yet pragmatic; compassionate, yet ruthless.
Would that we could apply such standards in our own time, to wildly, egregiously inferior human beings, repulsive, amoral self-dealers, setting out to loot the country for their own vanity and personal gain, again.
The most meaningful measure we can make of Jimmy Carter is whether we would prefer an imperfect, yet noble man like him at the helm of the country, today. I would. You? There you go.
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'Nobody Can Embargo Sunlight': Jimmy Carter and the US Solar Revolution That Wasn't
Why didn't we listen? We could so easily have listened.
Jan 07, 2025
As Jimmy Carter is laid to rest this week, I think it’s worth paying attention to just exactly how out front he was on solar energy.
Driven by both the upheaval of the OPEC embargoes and the lingering echoes of Earth Day at the start of the 1970s, and with “Limits to Growth” and “Small is Beautiful” as two of the decade’s big bestsellers (Carter had a reception for E.F. Schumacher at the White House!), the administration decided that solar was the way out. (The idea of the greenhouse effect was beginning to be talked about in these circles too, but it wasn’t yet a public idea, and it wasn’t driving policy).
Everyone knows about the solar panels on the White House roof, but that was the least of it. Jimmy Carter, in his 1980 budget, pledged truly serious cash for solar research, and for building out panels on roofs across America. “Nobody can embargo sunlight,” he said in his most important speech, from the government’s mountaintop solar energy lab in Golden, Colorado. “No cartel controls the sun. Its energy will not run out. It will not pollute the air; it will not poison our waters.” Carter—with characteristic bad luck—was giving this speech outside in a driving rainstorm, not the backdrop his handlers had hoped for. But he was resolute. “The question is no longer whether solar energy works,” he said. “We know it works. The only question is how to cut costs.”
Reagan took the solar panels off the White House, but again that was the least of it.
His goal, he said, was to have America getting a quarter of its power from the sun by the year 2000. And that was almost certainly an achievable goal—the history of it is that when you pour money on panels, they get better and cheaper fast. The money finally came from Germany, with its feed-in tariffs, which subsidized the development of low-cost Chinese panel manufacturing beginning around 2005. But that was a quarter century after what might have been, had we listened to Carter.
Just for kicks, here’s John Hall and Carly Simon singing about the “warm power of the sun” outside the Capitol in 1979. (If you look really closely, you can’t see me, but I was there). I think the movement probably made a mistake spending as much time opposing nuclear as backing solar—but opposing is easier, it must be said.
"Power-No Nukes" concert with Carly Simon
Anyway, of course, we listened to Reagan, with his siren song about ‘morning in America,’ and his version of ‘drill baby drill,’ and we went ever deeper down into the hydrocarbon hell we now inhabit. Reagan took the solar panels off the White House, but again that was the least of it. The real problem was that he slashed federal research funding to the bone. Tens of thousands of people in the nascent solar industry lost their jobs; a generation disappeared.
In fact, it’s only now that we’re getting back to where we were. The Inflation Reduction Act will forever be Biden’s signal achievement, even if he and Harris never figured out how to talk about it (and didn’t even really try during the fall campaign). But it’s done what Carter envisioned—jumpstarted the future. And if you want a musical tribute (not quite John Hall and Carly Simon, but pretty good anyway), check out this video about the DOE’s Loan Program Office, which—under the inspired leadership of Jigar Shah—has been at the absolute center of the IRA rollout:
Now, of course, the Trump administration is going to try and do what the Reagan administration did in the 1980s—slow down the transition to clean energy, at the behest of their friends in Big Oil. Trump’s a true believer—he told the British government last week that they should take down the wind turbines in the North Sea and drill for more oil instead. Biden got the final word here, though—in one of his last acts, he put an awful lot of the U.S. coast off-limits to drilling and in ways that won’t be easy for the next guys to undo.
The administration will still do serious damage, of course, but it’s possible that it won’t be as fatal as the last time around. For one, the energy revolution is now global, and so even if the U.S. lags, China will drive the planet forward. For another, the IRA has two years under its belt already, and so there’s lots of money already out there, lots of it in unusual places. (The biggest solar panel factory in the western hemisphere is in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district). The GOP has announced they’d like to cut $700 billion in clean energy funding to help pay for a $5 trillion tax cut—we’ll see how the politics shakes out.
The GOP has announced they’d like to cut $700 billion in clean energy funding to help pay for a $5 trillion tax cut—we’ll see how the politics shakes out.
But the biggest reason is that the movement of people who care about the future know what happened last time, and we will do our best. Some of that will mean trying to keep IRA money funding through the Republican Congress; much of it will mean figuring out how to celebrate sun and windpower, and make them ever easier to install at the state, local, and street level. That’s much of what we’ll be working on at this newsletter in the year ahead—for now, I’ll just tell you to keep the weekend of the autumnal equinox (Sept 21) free on your calendar.
And also just a reminder, as the press reports on the funeral of the pious and extremely good Baptist peanut farmer (all of which is true) that the 70s were also kind of cool. I mean, Carly Simon! And that White House roof, where the solar panels were? That’s where Willie Nelson smoked a large joint after an Oval Office visit. Jimmy, we will miss you—you were a great ex-president, but a great president too. If only we’d listened.
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Why Jimmy Carter Pardoned Draft Resisters
President Carter’s pardon took a certain amount of courage and compassion, but it was also the culmination of years of determined resistance and organizing.
Jan 06, 2025
The passing of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has been duly noted in ubiquitous remembrances and commentaries on his four-year presidency from 1977-1981. Carter is lauded more for his post-presidential humanitarian projects, while his presidency is deemed a mixed bag by left and right alike. For many Vietnam War resisters—myself included, it is more personal. Jimmy Carter’s first act as president was to pardon draft resisters. He then established a program for military deserters like me, who were able to return from exile or up from “underground” without going to prison.
President Carter’s pardon took a certain amount of courage and compassion, and for that we remember him fondly. To say that “Jimmy Carter pardoned war resisters,” however, is a bit like saying that “Abe Lincoln freed the slaves.” Both presidential decrees were the culmination of years of determined resistance and organizing—by the war resisters and the slaves—and by their many valuable allies. Grassroots people’s movements laid the table.
Over 1 Million People Needed Amnesty
Resistance to the U.S. War on Vietnam was widespread throughout the late 60s and early 70s. Over 1 million young men found themselves in legal jeopardy—an estimated 300,000 draft resisters, as many as 500,000 deserters, and another 500,000 veterans who were discharged from the military with “less-than-honorable” discharges—life sentences of discrimination, particularly by employers. There were also thousands of women and men who had been prosecuted for their antiwar protests.
Somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 Vietnam War resisters emigrated to Canada—the majority being draft resisters, often accompanied by girlfriends and spouses. Thirty thousand became Canadian citizens. Another 800 U.S. war resisters—mostly deserters—fled to Sweden, the only country to officially grant asylum to Vietnam War resisters. (Canada’s immigration policy was wide open at the time, unlike today, and did not care about the military obligations of other countries).
In 1972, AMEX-Canada, a Toronto-based collective of U.S. deserters and draft resisters, of which I was part, took the lead in calling for unconditional amnesty for all war resisters and veterans with less-than-honorable discharges. (AMEX = American Exile.) We fought hard for this position within the broad-based National Council for Universal, Unconditional Amnesty (NCUUA), which included the National Council of Churches, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), War Resisters League (WRL), Women Strike for Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), and many local peace groups. The initial instinct of some of the church groups was to call for amnesty only for draft resisters, who were mostly white and middle-class, and not for deserters, who were largely working class, and were wanted by the military.
It was a bigger struggle yet to include veterans with less-than-honorable discharges, who were often people-of-color who had resisted racism within the military. But AMEX-Canada, the only organized group of war resisters within the amnesty coalition, along with WRL and VVAW, prevailed, as evidenced by the awkward but specific name, National Council for Universal, Unconditional Amnesty.
AMEX-Canada always called for the U.S. to end its “illegal, immoral” war in Vietnam, which killed over 3 million Vietnamese, mostly civilians. AMEX’s Jack Colhoun, an Army deserter and historian, chronicled the progress of the Vietnam War in the pages of AMEX-Canada magazine. By demanding amnesty, war resisters had opened an antiwar front that outlasted the antiwar movement, which waned after U.S. troops were withdrawn from Vietnam in 1972-73.
In September 1974, AMEX-Canada hosted an international conference in Toronto, with exiled U.S. war resisters from Canada, Sweden, France, and the U.K., who were joined by Vietnam Veterans Against the War and other U.S. peace activists. Several days before the long-planned conference, President Gerald Ford announced that he was granting an unconditional pardon to his disgraced predecessor, Richard Nixon, along with a very limited and conditional “earned re-entry” program for Vietnam War resisters. Returning resisters would have to sign loyalty oaths, to perform alternative service, and—if they were deserters—accept a new kind of “less-than-honorable” discharge that would mark them for life.
Resisters Demanded Total Amnesty, Not “Shamnesty”
The U.S. media flocked to Toronto to hear U.S. war resisters’ response. We totally rejected Ford’s so-called “clemency” program and unanimously demanded an unconditional amnesty for all Vietnam War resisters. “It is right to resist an unjust war,” we exclaimed. We called on our fellow war resisters to boycott Ford’s punitive program, and we vowed to continue our struggle for total amnesty
In order to raise the temperature, we sent a draft resister, Steve Grossman, back to the U.S. to challenge the program. And then a deserter, yours truly. Grossman’s draft charges were dropped, as was my jail sentence, after a 50-city speaking tour that put the government on the defensive. Although some war resisters were able to take advantage of Ford’s “earned re-entry” program, relatively few did. The program was scheduled to end on January 31, 1975. The White House extended it twice—for a total of two months—in the hopes of gaining greater numbers. But to no avail. The media declared Ford’s program a resounding failure. We kept pushing for real amnesty, not “shamnesty.”
The Democratic National Convention in New York City in July 1976 provided us with a great stage. That was the convention that nominated Jimmy Carter for president. Carter had campaigned on a pledge to pardon draft resisters. Little did he know that a draft resister and a Vietnam veteran would steal the show at his convention. Fritz Efaw, who was living in England after refusing draft orders, managed to get himself elected as an Alternate Delegate from Democrats Abroad, and flew into New York’s Kennedy Airport. Lawyers for the amnesty coalition (NCUUA) negotiated a deal with authorities that delayed Efaw’s arrest to allow him to participate in the convention.
By 1976, the mood of the country had changed. Most people agreed that the Vietnam War had been—at the very least—a terrible mistake. A majority of grassroots Democrats supported an amnesty for Vietnam War resisters. That probably included a majority of the 2,100 or so delegates to the Democratic National Convention. But it took only 300 of their signatures to nominate Fritz Efaw to be the next vice president of the United States.
Draft Resister and Paralyzed Vietnam Veteran Take the Podium at Democratic Convention
And so it was that a wanted draft resister grabbed a precious 15 minutes of prime time TV before a very large audience. First, Efaw had to literally draw straws with the other three VP candidates to determine the order of their nominating speeches. The other three were progressive African American Rep. Ron Dellums (with whom the amnesty activists had coordinated), an anti-abortion advocate whose name has long been forgotten, and the “other Fritz”—Fritz Mondale, who would become Carter’s running mate. Fritz Efaw won the most desirable primetime spot.
Next came the battle with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) over who could speak on Efaw’s behalf. The established format was for a nominating speech, a seconding speech, and an acceptance speech. NCUUA had chosen Gold Star mother Louise Ransom, a leading advocate for amnesty, to make the nominating speech. Her son had been killed in Vietnam. But it was the seconding speaker, paraplegic Vietnam veteran and fiery antiwar activist Ron Kovic, who ran into resistance.
The DNC did everything in their power to keep Ron Kovic off the podium. They even claimed that the Democratic Party—the party of Roosevelt—did not have insurance to cover a wheelchair on the podium. The diverse team of amnesty advocates, including former exiled war resisters Dee Knight, Steve Grossman, and Gerry Condon (that’s me), would not take no for an answer. Eventually Ron Kovic was allowed to make what many observers agreed was the most powerful speech of the convention. He began with these words:
I am the living death
the memorial day on wheels
I am your yankee doodle dandy
your john wayne come home
your fourth of july firecracker
exploding in the grave
These words are also how Ron Kovic begins his remarkable autobiography, Born on the Fourth of July (his birthday), later memorialized in Oliver Stone’s marvelous 1989 film by the same name. Tom Cruise did an amazing job portraying Ron Kovic, and was nominated for Best Actor at the 62nd Academy Awards. The last scene in the film dramatizes Ron Kovic’s triumphant appearance at the 1976 Democratic Convention.
The team of amnesty organizers at the convention was exuberant after the powerful presentations by Louise Ransom, Ron Kovic, and Fritz Efaw. And rightly so. We had won 15 minutes of primetime TV proclaiming that Vietnam War resisters were heroes for resisting an unjust war, and should not be punished. What a triumph!
True to his word, once elected and inaugurated, Jimmy Carter wasted no time—his very first act as president was to pardon draft resisters. He also ordered the military to establish a case-by-case program for returning deserters. In a nod to the amnesty movement’s demand for a Single Type Discharge, Carter even set up a program for case-by-case review of less-than-honorable discharges.
This was not quite the “universal, unconditional” amnesty that we had fought so hard for. But it was quite an achievement. Many war resisters were able to resume normal lives without fear of arrest and imprisonment. Even those who chose to remain in Canada, Sweden, and other havens were able to legalize their status so they could return to the U.S. for family visits—a welcome departure from the days when the FBI would haunt their parents’ funerals looking to make arrests.
President Nixon had ended the draft in 1973, in part to defuse the antiwar movement, but six years later in 1979, during the Iran hostage crisis and increasing tensions with the Soviet Union, President Carter resumed draft registration, sparking another era of draft resistance. Young men are legally required to register for the draft when they turn 18, but millions have failed to do so. Fast forward to 2025: The Congress is haltingly considering several bills that would extend draft registration to women, and the debate about resuming the draft continues.
U.S. Is Immersed in War and Genocide Today
The terrain for GI resisters is arguably more difficult today. Soldiers who refused to deploy—or re-deploy—to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had a really hard time fighting for refuge in Canada, whose immigration policy has tightened considerably since the Vietnam era. Some were able to remain in Canada while others were forced to return to the U.S. and face military court martial. Sweden offered no refuge to Iraq and Afghanistan war resisters, and recently abandoned its neutrality in favor of joining U.S.-dominated NATO.
A 14-month-long Israeli campaign of daily horror and genocide against the Palestinian people—especially children—is being actively facilitated by the United States. U.S. troops remain in Syria, after helping to overthrow the Syrian government and replace it with an al Qaeda offshoot. The U.S. is escalating the war in Ukraine by facilitating the firing of U.S. missiles into nuclear-armed Russia. And the notorious Neocons who inhabit both Democratic and Republican administrations are pushing for wars against Iran and China. People across the political spectrum worry aloud about the looming threat of a civilization-ending nuclear war, while war planners insist they can fight and win a nuclear war. When will they ever learn?
It Is Right To Resist an Unjust War
Veterans For Peace (VFP), which includes Vietnam combat veterans as well as former GI resisters, has issued a statement applauding those Israeli soldiers who are refusing to fight in Gaza. Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty U.S. Airman, self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington to protest the U.S.-Israeli genocide. Another active-duty Airman, Larry Hebert, then fasted against genocide in front of the White House and Congress. Many active duty personnel are expressing concern that they will be ordered to fight or facilitate illegal wars and genocide.
Veterans For Peace has joined with About Face—Veterans Against the War, the Center for Conscience and War, and the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild to promote the Appeal for Redress (v.2), an opportunity for active-duty GI’s to legally present their concerns about war and genocide to their congressional representatives. The veterans also refer GI’s who are thinking about becoming Conscientious Objectors to the Center on Conscience and War, and to the GI Rights Hotline, 1-877-447-4487. If needed, the 40-year-old veterans’ organization can put people in touch with lawyers experienced in military law.
Harkening back to the Vietnam era amnesty movement, the VFP statement concludes with: “Remember, it is right to resist unjust wars and illegal orders.” These words will become all the more important in the dangerous days ahead, as will increasing support for military personnel who refuse to be part of unjust wars of empire and genocide.
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History Shows Carter Was Right to Warn Against Israeli Apartheid
While the Democratic Party has mostly maintained its pro-Israel stance since the publication of Carter’s 2006 book, his words now appear quite prescient and reflect a growing international consensus.
Jan 05, 2025
The late President Jimmy Carter was not a particularly progressive president, but his exemplary service as a peacemaker and humanitarian since leaving office has resulted in an outpouring of heartfelt tributes following his death at the age of 100 on December 28. During his final years, however, the Nobel Peace Laureate was met with intense criticism for insisting that standards of peace, human rights, and international law should apply not just to countries hostile to U.S. interests, but to U.S. allies like Israel as well.
Particularly controversial was Carter’s 2006 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which went on to be a New York Times bestseller, in which he argued against Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank, the Palestinian territory seized in 1967 during a war that the international community had hoped would form the basis for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Carter was a liberal Christian Zionist who believed passionately in Israel’s right to exist as a secure homeland for the Jewish people. Like many left and liberal Jewish Zionists, however, he argued that the continued occupation and colonization of the West Bank would make a viable two-state solution impossible, and that Israel would be forced to choose between allowing for democratic governance in all the areas they controlled—meaning Jews would thereby be a minority, and Israel would no longer be a Jewish state—or imposing an apartheid system akin to the one instituted in South Africa prior to its democratic transition in 1994.
Carter was falsely accused of referring to Israel as an apartheid state, when he had explicitly stated otherwise. He was referring only to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where the establishment of Jewish-only roads, Jewish-only settlements, and other strict segregation policies do resemble the old South African system.
Since Carter wrote Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid 18 years ago, the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories has more than doubled, most of them surrounding Palestinian cities and towns in a manner that would make the establishment of a viable contiguous Palestinian state impossible.
In reality, the main objection of Carter’s critics was that he dared criticize the Israeli government, a recipient of tens of billions of dollars’ worth of unconditional taxpayer-funded military equipment from U.S. arms manufacturers.
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid received overwhelmingly negative media coverage following its release. The Washington Post accused Carter of harboring a “hostility to Israel” in part for allegedly failing to note, according to reviewer Jeffrey Goldberg, that the Israeli government “dearly wants to give up the bulk of its West Bank settlements.” In reality, the illegal settlements have continued to expand since 2006, and the Israeli government has reiterated that they are there to stay.
An article in The New York Times about the reaction to the book included a number of quotes from pro-Israel organizations attacking it, while failing to quote a single Palestinian or Palestinian-American source.
The Democratic Party leadership was also hostile to the book. In a rare rebuke by another former president of the same party, Bill Clinton, ignoring Carter’s frequent trips to and extensive knowledge of Israel and Palestine, wrote, “I don’t know where his information (or conclusions) came from” and insisted, “It’s not factually correct, and it’s not fair.”
Howard Dean, then chair of the Democratic National Committee, also voiced his disagreement with Carter’s analysis. Representative Nancy Pelosi, who was about to become Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, declared, “It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously.” She added, “We stand with Israel now and we stand with Israel forever.”
Former presidents have almost always been granted an opportunity to speak at their party’s subsequent conventions, but in apparent reaction to the book, Carter’s appearance at the 2008 Democratic National Convention was limited to a video clip speaking in praise of nominee Barack Obama and interviewing survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Carter also only appeared in short video clips at the 2012 and 2016 conventions.
In 2022, Joe Biden named Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt to be the U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism. Lipstadt had previously accused Carter of engaging in “traditional antisemitic canards” and compared him to the notorious antisemite and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
But while the Democratic Party has mostly maintained its pro-Israel stance since the publication of the book, Carter’s words now appear quite prescient and reflect a growing international consensus. In 2022, Amnesty International published a 281-page report making a compelling case that Israel practices a form of apartheid toward the Palestinians. Human Rights Watch published a similarly detailed study the previous year reaching the same conclusion. B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights organization, also released an extensive report documenting the Israeli government’s imposition of apartheid. Similar conclusions have been reached by the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories. This past July, the International Court of Justice, in an advisory opinion, also found that Israel’s ongoing and multiple violations of international humanitarian law constitute apartheid.
A number of Carter’s former critics, including a board member of the Carter Center who resigned in protest following the publication of the book, have since apologized and acknowledged that the former president was correct. No one in the Democratic Party leadership has yet done so.
Indeed, very few of Carter’s critics have been willing to demand an end to Israel’s settlements and segregation policies in the West Bank or acknowledge that these colonial outposts in the occupied territories constitute a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a series of unanimous U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Since Carter wrote Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid 18 years ago, the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories has more than doubled, most of them surrounding Palestinian cities and towns in a manner that would make the establishment of a viable contiguous Palestinian state impossible.
As a result, many Palestinians and others who once supported a two-state solution have concluded it is too late and are now demanding a single democratic state with equal rights for both peoples between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Similarly, increasing numbers of Jewish people in the United States and elsewhere now believe that the Zionist movement has become hopelessly dominated by overt racists, and have renounced Zionism altogether.
Carter warned that the choice before Israel was “peace or apartheid.” The Israeli government and its backers in Washington have chosen apartheid—but people across the world have not given up on the peace Carter envisioned.
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Carter’s Legacy Will Live on to Inspire Future Generations
He nourished the norms of personal and civic decency, dialogue, truth-telling, and working for a just society, expressing his Christian faith in action.
Jan 01, 2025
Jimmy Carter was the last president to actively open the government for engagement by citizen groups. Right after his November 1976 election, he agreed to address a huge hotel ballroom in D.C. full of local and national citizen advocates. It was a great success never again repeated by succeeding president-elects.
Mr. Carter then chose civic leaders and other solid progressives to head regulatory agencies such as National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Federal Trade Commission, and for other high positions in government. He chose the formidable longtime consumer-labor advocate Esther Peterson to be his consumer protection special assistant in the White House. He also supported an independent consumer protection agency which Congress, after a fierce struggle between corporate lobbies and consumer groups, narrowly defeated in 1978. Starting in 1981, Ronald Reagan undermined many Carter Administration health and safety initiatives.
Compare Jimmy Carter’s life with the rancid, corrupt, cowardly politicians spoiling today’s Washington landscapes.
Mr. Carter was also the last president to authentically recognize Palestinian rights and charge the Israeli government with imposing a system of apartheid (“worse than in South Africa,” he said) over Palestine. However, he failed to get Israel to agree to a comprehensive peace settlement, including the creation of a Palestinian state, and had to settle for a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.
Citizen Carter was easily our greatest former president. For over 40 years his indefatigable work ethic was applied to advancing peace efforts, initiating health programs in developing countries, supervising fair elections overseas and, with Rosalynn, joining Habitat for Humanity as a manual laborer (he was an expert woodworker, among his many skills) to build houses around the country for needy families.
The range of interests expressed through his 32 books and conferences revealed a practical, results-oriented, humble Renaissance man. His compassion and honesty infuse the Carter Center to this day.
He nourished the norms of personal and civic decency, dialogue, truth-telling, and working for a just society, expressing his Christian faith in action.
Compare Jimmy Carter’s life with the rancid, corrupt, cowardly politicians spoiling today’s Washington landscapes.
There are legitimate criticisms of Carter’s foreign and domestic policies that others will examine. But overall, his legacy will live on to inspire future generations of Americans to elevate their expectations and strive toward them with civic dedication and commitment.
I was always in awe of how efficiently he used his time every day—and truly amazed by his relentless productivity. This alone would have been a worthy book by Mr. Carter were it not for his genuine humility.
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Jimmy Carter's Daughter Thanks Writer for Focus on Her Dad's Defense of Palestinian Rights
"There is no better way to remember him," said Amy Carter.
Dec 30, 2024
Amid of flurry of reflections on former U.S. President Jimmy Carter following his death at age 100 on Sunday, his daughter Amy Carter thanked one writer for highlighting her father's historic support for Palestinian rights and criticism of Israeli apartheid.
Qasim Rashid, a human rights lawyer and former Democratic congressional candidate who has forcefully criticized the ongoing U.S.-backed Israeli assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip over the past nearly 15 months, remembered Carter on Sunday by writing on Substack about the 39th president's stance on Israel and Palestine. Rashid included a clip from a 2007 interview with Democracy Now! about a book that Carter published the previous year, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
"In this book, President Carter cogently argues that the main obstacle to peace in Israel and Palestine is in fact the hundreds of thousands of illegal settlements that Israel continues to build, all with U.S. backing and support," Rashid wrote, also emphasizing Carter's point from the interview that it is politically risky for elected officials in Washington, D.C. to support Palestinian rights. "Contrast President Carter's clarity and courageous voice with the cowardice and complicit nature of every president since, including their appeasement of the Israeli government's settlement expansion, land annexation, and apartheid enforcement."
Later Sunday, Rashid posted on social media a screenshot of Substack subscriber Amy Carter's response to his article. The 57-year-old—who was arrested as a teenager for protesting apartheid in South Africa—said in part: "There is no better way to remember him and I appreciate that you and your readers are keeping this important part of his legacy alive. Thank you."
Floored to receive this beautiful comment from Amy Carter, daughter of President Jimmy Carter. She proudly elevates her father's legacy in promoting justice for Palestine & calls upon everyone to keep that legacy alive. Here's my article she is responding to: www.qasimrashid.com/p/president-...
[image or embed]
— Qasim Rashid, Esq. ( @qasimrashid.com) December 29, 2024 at 9:33 PM
While the former president has faced praise and scrutiny from across the political spectrum for various foreign policy decisions and positions, the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner's support for Palestinian rights does stand out from those who have held the Oval Office since his single term—which included the Camp David Accords, signed in September 1978 by him, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
Rashid was not alone in focusing on Carter's controversial 2006 book and broader position on Palestine in the wake of his death—as Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for slaughtering over 45,500 Palestinians in Gaza and starving those who have managed to survive.
On Monday morning, Democracy Now! shared on social media a version of the 2007 clip Rashid noted, during which Carter stresses that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) "is not dedicated to peace," but rather is working and succeeding at convincing the American public, media, and political leaders to support the policies of the Israeli government.
Journalist Mehdi Hasan—who recently launched Zeteo after his MSNBC show was canceled following his criticism of Israel's assault on Gaza—on Sunday shared "eight critical Jimmy Carter quotes you won't see in most mainstream media obits."
In a Sunday obituary for Foreign Policy, Jonathan Alter—author of His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life—wrote:
The Camp David Accords turned out to be the most durable diplomatic achievement since the end of World War II. "What he has done with the Middle East is one of the most extraordinary things any president in history has ever accomplished," said Averell Harriman, a veteran U.S. diplomat who sometimes gave Carter advice.
Carter was the first president to back a Palestinian state, which along with his rhetoric afterward—including a 2006 book titled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid—made him the most pro-Palestinian U.S. president ever, a fact that angered American Jews for decades. Based on the Camp David Accords alone, however, he also turned out to be the best U.S. president for Israel's security since Harry Truman. That's because the only army with the capacity to destroy Israel—the Egyptian army—has been neutralized for more than four decades.
Mitchell Plitnick, a political analyst and writer, asserted at Mondoweiss on Sunday that Carter "is a man whose legacy will forever be inextricably linked to Israel and Palestine. Yet that legacy will be built as much on myth as on reality, as with so many other aspects of the history and politics of the 'Holy Land.'"
Calling for Carter's legacy to be "scrutinized carefully and honestly," Plitnick—like Alter—wrote of the Camp David Accords that "Carter understood, as any observer would, that if Israel made peace with Egypt, it would remove the single biggest military challenger in the region and the remaining Arab states would no longer be able to mount a credible threat against Israel."
He also argued that Carter's 2006 book "itself was far less remarkable than the title," given that its substance "made it clear that he was trying to steer Israel away from its own self-immolation on the altar of its occupation."
"The hateful comments that came his way for many years, mostly from the Jewish community but also from the Christian Zionists who share his evangelical beliefs but not his understanding of what those beliefs mean, were horribly misplaced," Plitnick added. "He cared deeply and tried to do what he could to create a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike. For that, he's been called an antisemite. Every person who ever uttered that slur against him owes him an apology. Now would be a good time to send it."
As The Guardian's Chris McGreal reported on Monday, at least one key person did apologize before Carter died:
Among those outraged by Carter's book in 2006 were members of the former president's own foundation, which has built an international reputation for its work on human rights and to alleviate suffering. Steve Berman led a mass resignation from the Carter Center's board of councilors at the time.
Earlier this year, Berman revealed that he later wrote to Carter to apologize and to say that the former president had been right.
"I had started to view Israel's occupation of the Palestinians as something that started in 1967 as an accident but was now becoming an enterprise with colonial intentions," Berman said in his letter to Carter.
Shortly before Carter's death, Peter Beinart, described as "the most influential liberal Zionist of his generation," said the time had come for the former president's critics to apologize for the "shameful way that the book was received by many significant people."
Leading Muslim groups in the United States have also released statements since Carter's death on Sunday.
"President Carter was a friend of the American Muslim community and a champion for many just causes, including Palestinian freedom," said Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) national executive director Nihad Awad. "Even when President Carter faced vitriolic attacks from anti-Palestinian groups for his prescient book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, he stood firm. He was a humanitarian role model, and we pray that a new generation of political leaders will take inspiration from his legacy."
The U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO)—an umbrella group that includes CAIR—said that it "joined American Muslims in commemorating former President Jimmy Carter as a principled humanitarian who dedicated his post-presidency to pursuing social and international justice, including courageously and forthrightly warning the American public about the harmful influence of pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC and the Israeli government's intent on entrenching a colonial apartheid state on Palestinian land."
In addition to praising Carter's 2006 book, USCMO said that "he candidly called the U.S. 'Road Map for Peace' a sham that intended failure. He went on record, nearly alone among U.S. politicians at the time, to debunk the so-called Israeli 'security wall' as an 'imprisonment wall' to intern West Bank Palestinians. Moreover, he stood alone among his political peers in the U.S. in unfailingly and publicly defending Islam and Muslims against a rising, politically motivated, systematic Islamophobia media campaign as a foil for promoting religious nationalism in American politics."
"We convey our sincere condolences to the family and loved ones of James Earl Carter Jr.," USCMO concluded, "and to the American people who have lost a rarity in our politics—a former president who stood for the best interests of this nation and its stated values of freedom, justice, and democracy, regardless of outside political pressure to sell out those American values."
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Beyond the Myths: Reflecting on Jimmy Carter’s Israel-Palestine Legacy
More than any other U.S. president, he tried to create a better future for Palestinians and for Israeli Jews.
Dec 30, 2024
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 100, is a man whose legacy will forever be inextricably linked to Israel and Palestine. Yet that legacy will be built as much on myth as on reality, as with so many other aspects of the history and politics of the “Holy Land.”
Carter is remembered fondly by many on the left, and for good reason. In many areas, he tried to govern with humanity, decency, and with regard to people’s rights. Whether due to his own shortcomings or the limitations of the system, he was not always successful, as citizens of Cambodia and East Timor can attest. Still, if he was far from perfect, Carter did still bring principles of human rights into his policy thinking more than any other U.S. president in living memory, and quite possibly in all of American history.
There can be little doubt that Carter’s heart was in the right place when it came to his ambition to resolve what he referred to as the “Israel-Palestine conflict.” Carter spoke often about the need for Palestinian rights to be recognized, but he also repeatedly noted that he was motivated by his affection for Israel and his desire to see it survive, something he did not believe it could do if it continued to oppress the Palestinians.
The most striking thing I recall about Carter—aside from the oppressive feeling his Secret Service guards projected—was the depth of his feeling when he talked about both Jewish history and the Palestinian present, at that time.
Carter had, and often expressed, boundless sympathy for the Jewish people and what they had endured throughout history. But he recognized both that this history did not justify the oppression of another people and that establishing an ethnocentric apartheid state would not end the scourge of antisemitism or the harm that caused to Jews. This was the ethos he expressed in his book, even while it was less visible in his policies as president.
Carter’s view of the issue was, inevitably, shaped by his evangelical Christian background and his thorough immersion in the view of Israel that dominated the United States throughout the Cold War years after World War II. It was a view of Israel that few Palestinians would recognize, but it was also a view that, in the 1970s and 1980s, was still more critical of Israeli actions than the overwhelming majority of Americans.
Carter’s view evolved over the years, as we can see from the two major points of Carter’s engagement with the issue: the Camp David agreement and Israel-Egypt peace treaty of 1978 and 1979, respectively; and the publication of his controversial book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, in 2006.
Meeting Carter
I had the privilege of meeting President Carter a few years before his book was published. The meeting was attended by about half a dozen progressive leaders in the San Francisco Bay Area, on the UC Berkeley campus.
The most striking thing I recall about Carter—aside from the oppressive feeling his Secret Service guards projected—was the depth of his feeling when he talked about both Jewish history and the Palestinian present, at that time. I’ve met many political leaders, and I’m used to the air of phoniness they project. There was none of that with Carter. If he wasn’t genuinely affected by the suffering he was talking about, he was a much better actor than he ever was a politician.
Carter spoke with pride of the work he put in to get Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat to an agreement at Camp David, and with immense regret that he didn’t do more to secure a better future for the Palestinian people. One can debate the politics and strategy of his actions, and even find considerable fault with them, but it is clear that his intentions toward both peoples were positive.
Carter is seen by much of the Jewish community and many other supporters of Israel as an enemy, the man who forced then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to accept compromises that he and the pro-Israel community wished to reject. But as it played out, Carter did more for Israel’s security than any other U.S. president, while unwittingly setting the stage for the steady erosion of Palestinian rights that the Oslo process represented.
Camp David
The result of the Camp David summit and the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement that emerged from it was that Israel has not faced a credible military threat since the agreement was put in place. Carter understood, as any observer would, that if Israel made peace with Egypt, it would remove the single biggest military challenger in the region and the remaining Arab states would no longer be able to mount a credible threat against Israel. He understood as well that by bringing Egypt firmly into the United States’ sphere of influence, the Cold War balance of power in the Middle East shifted significantly.
Carter, in that case, acted not only in the interests of Israel, but also had a clear American interest in the outcome. The regime of annual aid that has flowed ever since to both Israel and Egypt locked both countries into an alliance, and into a certain degree of dependence on the U.S., a factor that was of great importance in Cold War strategy.
All of this was lost on Israel’s supporters in the United States. In his book, We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel, historian Eric Alterman described the reaction to Carter mentioning the “legitimate rights of the Palestinian people,” citing Carter’s Press Secretary Jody Powell describing the reaction as “bonkers.” Alterman elaborated:
Democratic fundraising events were cancelled. Representatives of the administration to Jewish groups were shunned. Hyman Bookbinder, the outspokenly liberal Washington representative of the American Jewish Committee, lectured the Carter people, “Obviously you apparently do not really understand what these words mean…‘Palestinian rights’ means the destruction of Israel.” A Harris poll taken at the time found 60% of Jews agreeing with the statement that “the president and his people have abandoned Israel.”
Alterman further noted that the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations at the time, Alexander Schindler, leaked the contents of a private meeting with Carter to the press, a highly unusual betrayal of trust. That generated even more intense controversy and American Jewish anger at Carter, as it was intended to do.
All of this, it must be noted, was in response to Carter’s vision of Palestine being a sort of autonomous adjunct of Jordan, a position not far removed from that of most of the Israeli political spectrum. He was not advocating an independent Palestinian state, an idea which was completely out of bounds in American political discourse of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Indeed, Carter, in March 1977, said that “the first prerequisite of a lasting peace is the recognition of Israel by her neighbors, Israel’s right to exist, Israel’s right to exist permanently.” Carter never wavered from that position, despite the invective hurled at him by Israelis and Israel’s American boosters for the rest of his life.
When the historic agreement emerged from Camp David, parts of the Jewish community saw Carter in a better light, but this soon faded amid controversy over the sale of fighter jets to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Jewish leadership got even more enraged when, due to a miscommunication, the U.S. voted in favor of a United Nations Security Council resolution that condemned Israeli settlement in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Though Carter said that the U.S. was supposed to abstain and only voted “yes” by mistake, the Jewish leadership, already hostile to him, was not mollified. It’s worth noting, however, that at that time, opposition to settlements was a much stronger U.S. policy, so much so that even the staunchest pro-Israel advocates didn’t expect the U.S. to vote “no” on the resolution. Times have certainly changed.
While the Jewish community was nowhere near large or powerful enough to cause the defeat of an incumbent president, it was a factor in Edward Kennedy’s strong, if ultimately unsuccessful, challenge for the Democratic nomination in 1980 which weakened Carter. Carter had the poorest showing among Jews of any Democratic presidential candidate since 1920, although he still won a plurality of the vote (John Anderson, who ran as an Independent, got 15% of the Jewish vote to Carter’s 45% and Ronald Reagan’s 39%).
Yet, after all of that, and with some continued grumbling and foot-stomping, Israel did manage to make a peace with Egypt; withdraw its settlements from the Sinai Peninsula; secure the annual funding that has stabilized and grown its economy and helped it become the dominant military power in the region; and kept Egypt as a cold ally ever since. Israel has Jimmy Carter to thank for all of that.
Reagan did little but press forward on Carter’s actions until the end of his second term. Ironically, Reagan would, only a few months after taking office, have his own run-ins with Israel’s domestic U.S. lobby, over the sale of the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) to Saudi Arabia.
Yet Reagan remained beloved among the pro-Israel forces, despite selling a state-of-the-art military system to the Saudis, whom Israel was still extremely unfriendly with at that point; despite his frequent criticism of Israel’s behavior in Lebanon; and despite rebuking Israel for its dangerous attack on the Osirak nuclear site in Iraq in 1981. The difference was that Reagan rarely mentioned the Palestinians and often said nice things about Israel.
Apartheid
“And the word ‘apartheid’ is exactly accurate,” Carter told journalist Amy Goodman in 2007. “Within Palestinian territory, they are absolutely and totally separated, much worse than they were in South Africa, by the way. And the other thing is, the other definition of ‘apartheid’ is, one side dominates the other. And the Israelis completely dominate the life of the Palestinian people.”
Carter was responding to the resounding criticism of his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. The book itself was far less remarkable than the title, which drew an avalanche of criticism to Carter, including accusations of antisemitism. Then-ADL leader Abraham Foxman said, “The title is to de-legitimize Israel, because if Israel is like South Africa, it doesn’t really deserve to be a democratic state. He’s provoking, he’s outrageous, and he’s bigoted.”
Foxman’s statement is bizarre. States, of course, do not “deserve” to be democratic, it is something they either are to a significant degree or they are not. Foxman could not even utter the possibility that Israel was not a democratic state, which, interestingly, was certainly not what Carter was saying either in his book or his subsequent statements and writing.
Jimmy Carter, for all of his missteps, was, at heart, the decent man that Joe Biden liked to claim to be and couldn’t be farther away from actually being.
Carter was trying to warn Israel that it would become an apartheid state if it didn’t change course. This stood in sharp contrast to the claims of Palestinians, who, by 2007, had already been accusing Israel of apartheid for many years. Worse for Foxman was that Carter made the argument that legitimate Palestinian views were rarely heard in the media. Although Carter neither stated, nor even implied, that this demonstrable statement of fact had anything to do with a nefarious conspiracy of Jewish control, Foxman said, “The reason he gives for why he wrote this book is this shameless, shameful canard that the Jews control the debate in this country, especially when it comes to the media.”
Carter knew he was going to get hit for the title of his book. The substance, however, made it clear that he was trying to steer Israel away from its own self-immolation on the altar of its occupation. At the end of his book, he wrote, “The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law... It will be a tragedy—for the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world—if peace is rejected and a system of oppression, apartheid, and sustained violence is permitted to prevail.”
The woman in Joe Biden’s administration who currently, and undeservedly, holds the position of Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, said Carter’s book “ignores a legacy of mistreatment, expulsion, and murder committed against Jews. It trivializes the murder of Israelis. Now, facing a storm of criticism, he has relied on antisemitic stereotypes in defense.” The scurrilous accusation is backed up with the same sleight of hand Foxman used.
Carter continued to advocate for Palestinian rights while also, contrary to the assertion of Lipstadt and Foxman, repeatedly asserting that Israel must be afforded a secure existence within recognized and clear borders.
In November 2016, as Barack Obama was preparing to leave office, Carter urged the outgoing president to recognize a Palestinian state, arguing, “The combined weight of United States recognition, United Nations membership, and a Security Council resolution solidly grounded in international law would lay the foundation for future diplomacy. These steps would bolster moderate Palestinian leadership, while sending a clear assurance to the Israeli public of the worldwide recognition of Israel and its security.” It was not the first time he had promoted such recognition.
This was the theme of Carter’s efforts from the 1970s to the end of his days. He was willing to take risks to see that vision come true. Over the years, he and the Carter Center he started made many efforts to heal the breach between Fatah and Hamas, ignoring criticism over talking with Hamas.
Carter’s legacy should be scrutinized carefully and honestly, with the same critical eye as any other president. He made his mistakes, and, as with any president, innocent people suffered as a result. But more than any other U.S. president, Jimmy Carter tried to create a better future for Palestinians and for Israeli Jews. No president before or since has tried as hard or has placed peace ahead of political concerns to the extent he did.
Jimmy Carter, for all of his missteps, was, at heart, the decent man that Joe Biden liked to claim to be and couldn’t be farther away from actually being. The hateful comments that came his way for many years, mostly from the Jewish community but also from the Christian Zionists who share his evangelical beliefs but not his understanding of what those beliefs mean, were horribly misplaced. He cared deeply and tried to do what he could to create a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike. For that, he’s been called an antisemite. Every person who ever uttered that slur against him owes him an apology. Now would be a good time to send it.
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