You gotta wonder sometimes just what planet Jimmy Carter lives on.
From “Hardball with Chris Matthews” for 18 October (in response to a question on parallels between the American Revolution and the war in Iraq):
“Had the British Parliament been a little more sensitive to the colonial‘s [sic] really legitimate complaints and requests the war could have been avoided completely, and of course now we would have been a free country now as is Canada and India and Australia, having gotten our independence in a nonviolent way.”
Well, yeah, hindsight is a wonderful thing ain't it ? If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. Just makes ya weep. All those insensitive, needlessly violent, people. Maybe ol’ King George should have called for mediators from the Carter Center. Maybe instead of the Battle of Yorktown, George Washington could have conducted a sit-in demonstration.
More seriously, how typical of Mr. Carter to chide 18th Century politicans for not behaving like 21st Century pacifist members of the Democratic Party. The really loaded phrase in Mr. Carter's little homily is his reference to the colonials' "really legitimate complaints." Mr. Carter the peacemaker simultaneously calls the war a mistake, and then totally dismisses one side's point of view.
That kind of reasoning looks like a good way to START a war to me. Like most pacifists, Mr. Carter appears to assume that all people are really the same and all disputes are either negotiable, or products of mistakes or misunderstandings. To these people, money, ego, pride, power, nationalism, etc. are all trivial side issues. Earth to Jimmy: all right-thinking people don't think your way.
You can read the transcript here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6281085/
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