Message to "Scott" at AOL

Scott's "post" or more properly screed can be read here
http://www.aolelectionsblog.com/2007/05/19/the-irrelevancy-of-jimmy-carter/

Scott, Scott, Scott,

What is with all the hostility? Jimmy Carter was president in the ‘70's for crying out loud. That is thirty years ago. You were in, what, grade school back then? Maybe you are getting the facts second hand? Carter did not “wreck” the military he began the post-Vietnam build up and repair of the military. Regan just took Carter’s program and put it on steroids. The Dessert One fiasco was mainly due to the sorry condition of the Military after the Truman-Eisenhower-JFK-Johnson-Nixon war in Vietnam. We will leave out Jerry Ford because by the time he got in it was all over except for the shouting. Please note that it was Ford that got to watch the Choppers make their ignominious exit from Saigon.

And don’t yammer about how it was actually the Democrats that caused our exit from South East Asia. The Congress was just reflecting the voters wishes at the time. By 1975 NO politician Democrat nor Republican could get reelected on a pro-war platform. It just happened that Democrats were in the majority at the time in Congress. Remember, the Democrats had numerous Republicans vote with them for cutting off funding for Vietnam.

Your passion for slagging Carter is blinding you to the real events of that time. Carter inherited Fords’ economy, who got his bequest from Nixon. Nixon failed to fix the flaws in the economy that L.B.J. gifted him. The oil shocks of the late ‘70's didn’t help either. Remember OPEC and the highway robbery they performed? Regan broke the back of inflation by breaking the unions and wreaking the middle class. The mass export of US jobs was Don Reinaldo’s gift to the top ½ of 1 %. The whole sorry mess of N.A.F.T.A C.A.F.T.A. and “free trade” began with the Gipper.

While we are talking about Saint Ronald, what did he do when Muslim extremists butchered 350 Marines while they slept in their beds? What did Ronny do when that bomb went off in Lebanon?
Oh yes, He got the hell out of Dodge! The terrorists were not emboldened when that happened because. well because it was Ronald Wilson Regan and he could do no wrong! Ronald Regan and his six-shooter won the Cold War single-handedly. Truman et al had nothing to do with it. It was all Ronny all the time. And when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan it was Ronny that stopped them dead in their tracks. Oops that was Carter. Regan again took Carter’s policy and expanded it. Now Ronny did have some help from a Saudi named Osama Bin Laden. Of course the Jhadist militancy we are now facing in the Middle East has nothing to do with Regan/ Bush’s excellent adventure in Afghanistan right? Oh drat there is that little issue of the Mujahadeen fighters that Bin Laden set up in Afghanistan with help from the CIA. Then there is that group Bin Laden set up after the fall of the Soviet Union to fight the NEXT enemy of Islam, you know, Al Qaeda? You know, the guys in the memo George W didn’t read that were “determined to strike in the US?”

If Carter had read that memo what do you honestly think he would of done? That’s not a good question, because your hatred of Carter and any other Democrat prevents you and yours from a true answer. You have latched onto an idea fixe’ and no amount of reason will move you. Carter was not a great president, but he wasn’t awful either. He can be a sanctimonious so-and-so but he also can be a true Christian. He is not an Anti-Semite. He is the man that sealed the deal on the Israel-Egypt peace treaty. When he left office the Middle East was better place than when he came to it. There was a path to peace. There was a faint glimmer of hope. What is there now? Iraq is a total mess, the government there does not work. The whole region is poised on a Hobbesian struggle between the Sunnis and the Shi’ites. The Israelis and the Palestinians are at each others throats like rabid dogs. Let us not forget Iran, thanks to our taking out the Baathists in Iraq we handed the area over to ImMadInTheHead and his bunch of happy pirates. Who was one of the cheerleaders in W’s war of choice in Iraq? That would be Tony Blair. Carter was right to criticize Blair. If Blair was a true friend of the US, a real ally, he would have told us not to turn Iraq into Mess O’ Potamia. A true ally would have told Bush “sorry old chap, what you are proposing is an idea I can not support. This would be ruinous for the U.K. and for you our dearest friends the USA” Blair did no such thing, he followed George W Bush’s lead even when he knew that the “intelligence (was) fixed” Carter was pointing that out in his annoying, self-righteous way. Carter can be grating that way, it’s even worse when he is right.