Carter and me

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May 17, 2002 8:45 a.m.
by Jay Nordlinger
NR Managing Editor

Speak out about Carter, people say. I’m afraid I haven’t had time to study and digest. But here’s a little speaking out.

In his speech on Tuesday to the Cuban people, Carter called Castro “President,” and referred to Batista as “the dictator.” Routine, you might say, and perfectly acceptable under the circumstances — but it irked a lot of Cubans (freedom-loving Cubans, that is). (Does the phrase “freedom-loving” gag you? Then you’re reading the wrong column, I’m afraid.)

Carter basically wants a “constructive,” normal relationship between the U.S. and the Castro regime, a relationship not unlike ours with, say, Sweden. We want the Castro government treated as a pariah, an illegitimate regime imposed on Cuba by force, without the consent of anybody, only the gun — only murder, imprisonment, torture, repression, and exile. Who’s “we” (as in “We want”)? Well, for starters, Cuban human-rights and democracy activists — and those who wish them well.

Said Carter,

“There are some in Cuba who think the simple answer is for the United States to lift the embargo, and there are some in my country who believe the answer is for your president [!] to step down from power and allow free elections. There is no doubt that the question deserves a more comprehensive assessment.”

A more comprehensive assessment? I say no. Allowing free elections is good enough.

“I have restudied [“restudied”!] the complicated history, in preparation for my conversations with President Castro, and realize that there are no simple answers.”

Ah, this is what Tom Sowell calls the “nuance excuse.” Reagan liked to say, “There are simple answers — just not easy ones.” Freedom is pretty simple; but one must stand up to bullies and enslavers to achieve it.

Here was an awfully offensive passage:

“I hope that Cuba and the United States can resolve the 40-year-old property disputes with some creativity. In many cases, we are debating ancient claims about decrepit sugar mills, an antique telephone company, and many other obsolete holdings. Most U.S. companies have already absorbed the losses, but some others want to be paid, and many Cubans who fled the revolution retain a sentimental attachment for [sic] their homes.”

Sure, easy for Carter to say: Have your property stolen, be forced to flee your country, and get over it, gusanos. The lack of sympathy and compassion in his statements is horrid. “Decrepit sugar mills,” “an antique telephone company,” “obsolete holdings” — such derogatory and belittling language. Not all of us get to sell our peanut farm to ADM, for a very handsome — and suspicious — price. And how about that “sentimental attachment for their homes”? Sentimental. That’s the problem with those romantic, emotional Latins: They just don’t know how to take rape.

And now, the money shot: Carter’s moral equivalence. One of my themes in life is, “No one knows how left-wing Carter has become in his post-presidential years. No one knows how close to Arafat, how close to the Ortegas, he became. No one knows how alarmingly he has lined up with the anti-Americans — how he often sounds like the denizens of the old Christic Institute” (remember that?). Well, this should give a flavor:

“My nation is hardly perfect in human rights [compared to Communist Cuba, we are]. A very large number of our citizens are incarcerated in prison, and there is little doubt that the death penalty is imposed most harshly on those who are poor, black, or mentally ill. For more than a quarter century, we have struggled unsuccessfully to guarantee the basic right of universal health care for our people.”

Do these disgusting remarks really need comment? It is better to imprison criminals than to let them harass and abuse innocent people. Until men sprout wings, we will have to have prisons. It may well be that we have too few in prison. And if you oppose the death penalty, oppose the death penalty (and there are many moral arguments for it) — but stop the race baloney. Also, a former American president has to apologize for lack of HillaryCare — this, in a Communist-ruled nation? The United States has by far the best health-care system in the world, and it’s because it’s not socialist.

But Carter had to propagate the cherished lie: “Cuba has superb systems of health care and universal education.” This is a total crock — but as Armando Valladares is fond of saying, “Even if it were true, why can’t Cuba have those things without torture and suppression?”

And why side with Castro against the U.S. government in the matter of Cuba’s biotech capability and what Castro is doing with it? Not for nothing is Cuba on the State Department’s list of terror-sponsoring states — and there are only seven. Carter got burned by Castro, a couple of times, while he was in the White House: The dictator dispatched his soldiers to Ethiopia, just when Carter thought he’d start behaving in Africa. Carter famously told people that he learned more about Communism in December 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, than he’d ever known before. But what has he learned about Castro’s Communism?

Yes, it could have been worse: Carter met with dissidents; he mentioned the Varela Project (the petition drive to force a referendum on whether the government should continue — the method by which Chileans got rid of Pinochet in the late 1980s, which the Cuban democrats have copied). But isn’t that the minimum? I mean, the man was president of the United States, the Leader of the Free World. Is our bar so low for Carter that we should be pleased — despite the moral equivalence, the endorsement of Castroite propaganda, the baseball shtick, and all the rest?

In his 1976 campaign, Carter asked, “Why not the best?” (It was the title of his book, too.) Why am I not entitled to ask, “Why not the best” — or even something unembarrassing?

Before leaving Carter and Cuba (for now), I’d like to direct you to a floor statement made by Sen. George Allen, Republican of Virginia. This is a relatively new senator, and an unsung one. I suppose many people know him as much for being the son of the legendary football coach George Allen as for having been governor of Virginia. But he is one to watch: presidential timber, no less, as far as I can tell. The knowledge and passion with which he talks about Cuba let me know something important about him.

One more Cuban item: Mary McGrory, longtime columnist for the Washington Post, ended her recent column this way: “George Bush would rather keep Cubans hungry than take any chances for himself and his brother with the folks who thought Elian Gonzalez would be better off dead than red.”

Cubans are hungry because of Fidel Castro’s political-economic system, not because of the American embargo. (It was nice, by the way, that a famous American liberal acknowledged that Cubans are hungry — often the Left doesn’t like to do that.) And it’s not like there’s a world embargo against Cuba. In fact, no other nation besides the United States has an embargo on. Cuba “trades” — but only in quotation marks, because the regime controls everything, not private citizens — with well over 100 countries. But still the people starve — and that’s because of “socialism.”

I’ve said it before, and it’s stupid to say it again, but: It’s positively mind-boggling that a woman such as Mary McGrory could be given a political column in one of the most important newspapers in the world. Yes, that’s our George Bush: going to bed, stuffed with tacos, determined to “keep Cubans hungry.” Absolutely mind-boggling. And they say the web — as represented by NRO, for example — is unpoliced, irresponsible, and outrageous?

A quick reversion back to Carter and Cuba. My favorite line from his trip? While visiting Castro’s biotech lab, the ex-president asked officials there whether they were planning on exporting their materials to states like Libya and Iraq. They said — blow me down! — no. Whereupon Carter said, “I just want to reassure myself.”

“I just want to reassure myself.” I’ll treasure that for the rest of my life. No wonder people keep bringing up Iraq and the “baby-milk factory.”

You may recall that, while in office, Carter gave a notorious speech in Warsaw in which he suffered from a translator’s error. He wanted to say “the desires of the Polish people,” but it came out “your lusts for the future.” (Carter and lust: Will it ever stop?) In his speech to the Cuban people — when he was talking about the evil of our justice system and health care — he had no translation excuse: He was speaking in his very own, Plains-inflected Spanish.

I remember that one of the things I learned about Carter when he was president was that he and Mrs. Carter liked to read the Bible out loud to each other in Spanish. I thought that was so marvelous, so inspired: and how could the American people decide on that boobish beast Reagan, against those saintly Carters?

I learned fairly quickly, though.

A reader reminded me of a classic R. Carter line. Why was Reagan elected? Because, said Mrs. C., “he makes us comfortable with our prejudices.”