Jimmy in Castroland
John L. Perry
May 15, 2002
NewsMax.com
"Curiouser and curiouser," Alice would surely say of Jimmy Carter's shameless gyring and gimbling midst the mimsy borogoves of communist Cuba.
Lewis Carroll could have been issuing an early heads-up to the former American president about the wiles of the perfidious dictator Fidel Castro when 137 years ago he penned the imperishable "Jabberwocky" poem in "Through the Looking Glass – and What Alice Found There":
Beware the jabberwock, my son.
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch.
Warnings Be Damned!
Jimmy couldn't wait long enough even to discern if that was his very own Attack Rabbit he was following down the hole and onto the Isle of Despair. Right into Castro's waiting arms he leapt.
Usually country boys from the peanut patches of south Georgia have better sense than to split their overalls in public like that.
It's not as though Carter hasn't noticed the news of the world over the past several decades. He had to have known what he was doing.
But why would any president of the United States, past or present, in or out of his gourd, go out of his way like that to commit such an earsplitting flatulence?
The Blame America Twins
The Left Rev. Jesse Jackson couldn't have done a more shameless job of barging off overseas and slinging foreign mud back onto Lady Liberty's skirts.
It's generally considered bad form for those who have served former presidents to speak ill of the living. But Carter has been out of office these 21 years now, and, confound it, what he did in Cuba this week was so reprehensible that the statute of limitations must surely have run. He has earned this review from one of his former hired help.
Jimmy didn't need to do what he did if what he thought he was doing was assisting the people of Cuba, who have troubles enough without his kind of leg up.
With Help Like This …
You want to help the victims of the Nazi Holocaust? You don't hie off to the outskirts of Buchenwald, dance a little jig with Adolf Hitler, give a Cheshire-cat grin and purr, "Oh, by the way, that's really not a very nice way to make soap."
You want to do something constructive about the enslaved populations of Eastern Europe? You don't drop in on Joseph Stalin at the Kremlin, appear on communist-controlled television and hint broadly to the Soviet people that the world's greatest democracy is what's making their lives so intolerable.
You want to emancipate the Cuban people from their misery – although, perish the thought that Carter would acknowledge that's what they're in? You don't hop a private jet – incidentally, who paid for that non-proletarian display of affluence? – bestow legitimacy on the island's unrepentant enslaver and join him in blathering the same party line that's responsible for maintaining four decades of communist oppression.
Praising With Faint Damns
It's not enough that Carter tossed off a few subordinate clauses about the desirability of democracy coming some day to Cuba. That's about as meaty as wishing someone many happy returns of the day.
And the few, thin criticisms Carter offered – in Castro's condescending presence – had the unfortunate distortion of making the dictator appear tolerant of criticism, which of course is a cruel joke.
Carter had an opportunity to issue a ringing call for freedom from Fidel and he blew it.
He said he didn't want to interfere in another country's politics. Why not?
Everybody Does It
Carter has shown no reluctance to do so wherever else he's gone around the globe.
Other Americans have not refrained from letting Castro know what they think of him. Castro has been busy inserting his finger in U.S. politics.
Carter certainly didn't hesitate to give George W. Bush a pain in the neck by cozying up to Castro and telling the wartime president how to run his foreign policy.
It's bad enough Carter cavorted like a wanton with Castro, but it was unforgivable that he should also seize the occasion – and the international spotlight – to call the current president of the United States, in effect, a liar for the State Department's having warned the world that Castro is cooking up bioterror materials and sharing them with other terrorist states.
See No Evil …
Good thing it wasn't Carter who was entrusted with the White House at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. In his present myopic mood, Carter might well have looked at those photos of the Soviet missiles deployed on Cuban soil that were targeted on U.S. cities and concluded they were innocent irrigation culverts. American schoolchildren might today be wearing red bandanas and learning to speak Cuban-Spanish with Russian accents.
It could be that Jimmy has reached, one might say, the pinnacle of his decline. He's certainly behaving as though in his dotage. If that's the case, then his minders need replacing.
If he still has his wits about him – and the man does have a remarkable I.Q. – then there's a wider mean streak in his character than many have suspected.
Was This Trip Necessary?
What could he have possibly expected to accomplish with such a bizarre performance in Cuba? With having gone there in the first place?
He certainly has done the victims of Castro totalitarianism no earthly good.
Has he given aid and comfort to those enemies of the Bush administration who oppose its efforts to keep the U.S. economic embargo in place so long as Castro remains in power?
To a certain extent, yes, but not very much. Carter has done such a splendid job of emaciating his own credibility, he is not exactly what one might consider a traveling partner of choice.
Speak No Evil …
Was his purpose to flatter Castro into lifting his foot from the necks of the Cuban people?
Castro is a lot of things, but gullible isn't on the list.
There was only one reason Castro welcomed Carter on such a mission: He thought it would do him some good in the court of world opinion. Castro has to know it wouldn't win him many warmer hearts inside Cuba.
To give Carter the green light that he did, Castro had to have known it would be a suck-up mission.
They Both Knew Why
Carter has been poking around the fringes of international politics long enough to know that's why Castro rolled out the red carpet.
Which gets you right back to the inescapable: Jimmy was intent on making mischief.
His efforts to insinuate himself successfully into other nations' business, both while president and in the past two decades, have for the most part been flops. Little wonder his advice has not been sought by successive presidents or heeded when thrust upon them.
The Unkind Hourglass
Beneath that nervous smile is a frustrated, even embittered, man whose time has passed.
Jimmy Carter is reminiscent of the child who, when the game didn't go the way he wanted it, took his bat, ball and glove home, let the screen door slam and stuck out his tongue at the other kids.
Most little boys get over childhood traits when they grow up. Who knows why some don't?
Alice was right. "Curiouser and curiouser."
John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, Jimmy Carter and Lyndon B. Johnson, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com.
Other Columns by John L. Perry
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Castro/Cuba