In his self-congratulatory Nobel Lecture, the former president proves he's still as naive as ever. by Claudia Winkler 12/11/2002 12:00:00 AM

Claudia Winkler, managing editor

IN A NOBEL LECTURE YESTERDAY that is a familiar mixture of personal self-satisfaction and national self-abasement, Jimmy Carter names the greatest challenge in the world today, and it is us: the tragic failure of the wealthiest nations to cure the poverty of the poorest.

Implicitly, the second-greatest problem is also us: our failure to recognize that war is evil and to embrace "the premise that the United Nations is the best avenue for the maintenance of peace."

Let's start with the self-congratulation. Carter begins by noting the "perhaps unique" scope and character of that island of moral sanity, his own Carter Center (a point to which he returns at the end of the speech, where he contrasts the center's noble work with the "terrible absence" in the industrialized world generally "of understanding or concern about those who are enduring lives of despair and hopelessness"). Then he launches one of the speech's themes: the identification of himself with previous Peace Prize winners.

First come "my friends, Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin." "Like these two heroes," Carter continues, he began his career in the military. Subsequently, he became commander in chief. As president, he extended his "public support and encouragement to Andrei Sakharov," also honored in Oslo for his Carter-like ideals. Woodrow Wilson, Cordell Hull, George C. Marshall, and--Ladies and Gentlemen--the great Mikhail Gorbachev: The former president feels right at home among these statesmen. Other laureates, more like the post-White House Jimmy Carter, showed that "individuals can enhance human rights and wage peace" outside government and "often in opposition to it"--such were Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa. If these are his peers, however, there is one figure Carter--with a Democrat's sure instinct for the primacy of racial struggles--singles out for deference, "the greatest leader [his] native state has ever produced," Martin Luther King Jr.

As for the lecture on foreign affairs, its core assertion is this airy bit of wishful thinking: "It is clear that global challenges must be met with an emphasis on peace, in harmony with others, with strong alliances and international consensus."

But of course, the challenges exist precisely where there is no consensus--not between Indians and Pakistanis, or Israelis and Palestinians, or Russians and Chechens, or suicidal Islamic extremists and anybody else. Great powers have enemies who do not necessarily play harmoniously with others. Carter, who presided over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the holding of some 60 Americans hostage in revolutionary Iran for 444 days, knows this. Alliances are strong when they have intelligent leadership from those prepared to act, not when they are debating societies or comfortable multilingual bureaucracies whose chief product is paper.

Carter seems not to have lived through the 1990s. His belief that the United Nations can maintain peace flies in the face of the U.N.'s catastrophic passivity before genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda. Indeed, his whole pacifist emphasis (the disclaimers--"War may sometimes be a necessary evil"--ring hollow) seems a flight from reality. Thus, he quotes 1950 Nobel peace laureate Ralph Bunche to the effect that "war begets only conditions that beget further war," a sentiment bizarre and unconvincing coming from a grandson of slaves whom it took a bloody war to free.

There is no doubt that Jimmy Carter's NGO has done praiseworthy humanitarian work in Africa and elsewhere. But neither his naive analysis of world affairs nor his smarmy truisms--"We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children"--have relevance for the grownups who must plot our course in the world after September 11.

Claudia Winkler is a managing editor at The Weekly Standard.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2002

Answers

does Carter have a speech writer or did he actually do it himself, I wonder?

-- Anonymous, December 13, 2002

I believe he does it himself Barefoot. I find it rather sad that people take his speech so out of context and come up with something like this. I have always thought Jimmy Carter was the epitomy of a man of integrety who was willing to take the responsiblity for what he did, even in failure as during the failed hostage rescue. He never tryed to cover it up or blame it on someone else. He personally called the family of each person lost in the line of duty during that failed rescue. Sad, very sad. If this position makes me unwelcome on this board. So be it, I can live with that.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2002

It doesn't make you unwelcome, Diane. It's not opinions that make people unwelcome here, it's how they're expressed. Your opinions are always gently expressed and I appreciate that. I don't agree with you about Carter, especially after knowing one of the helo pilots involved in the Iran rescue attempt, but I realize that we are all adults and have formed certain opinions that won't be changed, no matter what. We all have good reasons for those opinions, reasons that are important and make sense to us individually. Having long been "left-wing," I can understand more than most. The fact that I saw the light [ :-) ]and turned conservative doesn't make me a zealot.

Now if you say that animals shouldn't be spayed or that I'm going to burn in hell because I don't believe exactly what you believe, I won't be so understanding!!!

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2002

FOTFLOL.......................finally..............someone called me a left-winger!!!!!!!!! That really made my day. I have been the right-winged radical on another forum. I have always told everyone I was so far right that I just looked left!!!!!!!!!!!! Bwaaahaaaahaaa.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 2002

Hehe--the reason I put "left-wing" in quotes is because compared to me, in my present incarantion but not in my former War on Poverty persona, you're left-wing! That doesn't necessarily mean you are when compared to, say, the late Philip Berrigan! I'd say at least a third of my views, though, could be classified "left-wing." (Animals, battered women, working women, etc. But not immigration, national security, etc.)

-- Anonymous, December 15, 2002

Well OG, I was a Barry Goldwater, Ann Rand sort of person in college. As I get older I am far less likely to demand perfection from myself or anyone else and try to look hard for the good in each person and if possible encourage it. It has been both a fascination and a deeply depressing thing at times to participate on the forums. More than once I have almost stopped, or even have stopped for a while. My church is very against it..........but I tend to be a free thinker and will do what I think is the right thing to do.

What has been the most difficult is to see my fellow Christians be some of the most hateful people on the forums. It has been a real embarrassment to me. As far as Jimmy Carter goes, I believe he made a lot of mistakes. I still think he is a man of integrity and a man who feels very called to be a man of peace. Some think because he will sit down and listen to a wicked man that some how it makes him wicked. I believe he is acting as he feels God is leading him to and I admire that. I really like Jerry Ford also. He didn't ask for the job, but did the best he could. The power seekers are the one that really bother me.........they seem willing to defile the person they are running against or do anything to get the power. Anyway.........I do tend to get upset went anyone is being defiled, even some that I do not care for at all.

-- Anonymous, December 15, 2002