Father of the Iranian revolution

[Lyion]

THE JERUSALEM POST Jun. 20, 2007

We just don't get it. The Left in America is screaming to high heaven that the mess we are in in Iraq and the war on terrorism has been caused by the right-wing and that George W. Bush, the so-called "dim-witted cowboy," has created the entire mess.

The truth is the entire nightmare can be traced back to the liberal democratic policies of the leftist Jimmy Carter, who created a firestorm that destabilized our greatest ally in the Muslim world, the shah of Iran, in favor of a religious fanatic, the ayatollah Khomeini.

Carter viewed Khomeini as more of a religious holy man in a grassroots revolution than a founding father of modern terrorism. Carter's ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, said "Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint." Carter's Iranian ambassador, William Sullivan, said, "Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure." Carter adviser James Bill proclaimed in a Newsweek interview on February 12, 1979 that Khomeini was not a mad mujahid, but a man of "impeccable integrity and honesty."

The shah was terrified of Carter. He told his personal confidant, "Who knows what sort of calamity he [Carter] may unleash on the world?"

Let's look at the results of Carter's misguided liberal policies: the Islamic Revolution in Iran; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (Carter's response was to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics); the birth of Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization; the Iran-Iraq War, which cost the lives of millions dead and wounded; and yes, the present war on terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

WHEN CARTER entered the political fray in 1976, America was still riding the liberal wave of anti-Vietnam War emotion. Carter asked for an in-depth report on Iran even before he assumed the reins of government and was persuaded that the shah was not fit to rule Iran. 1976 was a banner year for pacifism: Carter was elected president, Bill Clinton became attorney-general of Arkansas, and Albert Gore won a place in the Tennessee House of Representatives.

In his anti-war pacifism, Carter never got it that Khomeini, a cleric exiled to Najaf in Iraq from 1965-1978, was preparing Iran for revolution. Proclaiming "the West killed God and wants us to bury him," Khomeini's weapon of choice was not the sword but the media. Using tape cassettes smuggled by Iranian pilgrims returning from the holy city of Najaf, he fueled disdain for what he called gharbzadegi ("the plague of Western culture").

Carter pressured the shah to make what he termed human rights concessions by releasing political prisoners and relaxing press censorship. Khomeini could never have succeeded without Carter. The Islamic Revolution would have been stillborn.

Gen. Robert Huyser, Carter's military liaison to Iran, once told me in tears: "The president could have publicly condemned Khomeini and even kidnapped him and then bartered for an exchange with the [American Embassy] hostages, but the president was indignant. 'One cannot do that to a holy man,' he said."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has donned the mantle of Ayatollah Khomeini, taken up bin Laden's call, and is fostering an Islamic apocalyptic revolution in Iraq with the intent of taking over the Middle East and the world.

Jimmy Carter became the poster boy for the ideological revolution of the 1960s in the West, hell bent on killing the soul of America. The bottom line: Carter believed then and still does now is that evil really does not exist; people are basically good; America should embrace the perpetrators and castigate the victims.

IN THE '60S it was mass rebellion after the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. When humanity confronts eternity, the response is always rebellion or repentance. The same ideologues who fought to destroy the soul of America with the "God is dead" movement in the 1960s are now running the arts, the universities, the media, the State Department, Congress, and Senate, determined more then ever to kill the soul of America while the East attempts to kill the body. Carter's world view defines the core ideology of the Democratic Party.

What is going on in Iraq is no mystery to those of us who have had our fingers on the pulse of both Iran and Iraq for decades. The Iran-Iraq war was a war of ideologies. Saddam Hussein saw himself as an Arab leader who would defeat the non-Arab Persians. Khomeini saw it as an opportunity to export his Islamic Revolution across the borders to the Shi'ites in Iraq and then beyond to the Arab countries.

Throughout the war both leaders did everything possible to incite the inhabitants of each country to rebel - precisely what Iran is doing in Iraq today. Khomeini encouraged the Shi'ites across the border to remove Saddam from power and establish an Islamic republic like in Iran.

Carter's belief that every crisis can be resolved with diplomacy - and nothing but diplomacy - now permeates the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, Carter is wrong.

There are times when evil must be openly confronted and defeated.

KHOMEINI HAD the help of the PLO in Iran. They supplied weapons and terrorists to murder Iranians and incite mobs in the streets. No wonder Yasser Arafat was hailed as a friend of Khomeini after he seized control of Iran and was given the Israeli Embassy in Teheran with the PLO flag flying overhead.

The Carter administration scrambled to assure the new regime that the United States would maintain diplomatic ties with Iran. But on April 1, 1979 the greatest April Fools' joke of all time was played, as Khomeini proclaimed it the first day of the government of God.

In February 1979 Khomeini had boarded an Air France flight to return to Teheran with the blessing of Jimmy Carter. The moment he arrived, he proclaimed: "I will kick his teeth in" - referring to then prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar, who was left in power with a US pledge of support. He was assassinated in Paris by Iranian agents in 1991.

I sat in the home of Gen. Huyser, who told me the shah feared he would lose the country if he implemented Carter's polices. Carter had no desire to see the shah remain in power. He really believed that a cleric - whose Islamist fanaticism he did not understand in the least - would be better for human rights and Iran.

He could have changed history by condemning Khomeini and getting the support of our allies to keep him out of Iran.

[Zanchief]

So now you're using 40 years of hindsight to blast Liberals? That's pretty objective of you.

[Lueyen]

So now you're using 40 years of hindsight to blast Liberals? That's pretty objective of you.

If 40 years in the future Bush Jr. starts advocating military action against a country to dispose it's ruler will you speak up about Iraq or will you just consider it a mistake best forgotten?

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181813074587&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[Arlos]

Typical far-right wing ultra-hawk neo-con claptrap. Places all the blame on "liberals" and none on such destructive foreign policy elements as our assassinations of elected leaders and support for people like Duvalier and Pinochet, among others, INCLUDING the Shah, from many reliable reports.

Oh, and funny, the Iran-Iraq war took place during REAGAN'S term in office, and we backed Saddam to the hilt, even when we knew he was using WMDs. Most of the arming and training of the Mujahadin in Afghanistan (including giving them Stinger missiles) likewise took place under Reagan, and that arming and equipping is what gave the conditions for groups like Al-Qaida to emerge.

So, where's the blame for Reagan's fuckups in the middle east in that diatribe? Remember Iran-Contra?

-Arlos

[Zanchief]

See that's entirely different. If I didn't say a peep about GWB and went on with my life and then 40 years later it seemed that history didn't look favorably on his actions I wouldn’t have much ground to argue the merits of his decisions.

It's clear to pretty much everyone that Bush is really fucking things up. Most of us (not you and Lyion) have been saying it for years. Now it's clear we were right (and you were wrong) and you have changed your tune (kudos). It's unfair to attack policy only 40 years later, since we don't really know the result of what could have happened otherwise. Bush was wrong from the get go. That's the difference.

[Sentro]

Both sides have fucked up alot from past and present. GWB is a fucking idiot but so are half the other left wing junkies along with the right winged ones. I think GWB first term he did a pretty good job but since they he has lost sight in what ever he was looking at or he is an evil genius. As for the war i think generals need to be the ones running it not the public in any way what so ever. Also we need military leaders who are not scared of fucking up there career and to start doing the right thing. Its bad when people get in trouble trying to save the lives of thier own but that is what is happening over here because both sides are trying to put there 2cents in. We are the ones who get hurt not the people bitching about us doing our jobs

[Martrae]

http://www.mikeevansministries.com/

The author is definitely pro-Jerusalem and pro-Christian but he apparently has more insights into the area and it's history than you guys.

[Snero]

I believe it's not his background most people would question, but his objectivity

[Martrae]

It's an editorial, it's not supposed to be objective.

[Snero]

no it's not, but it's also because of this that people are questioning what he wrote, so saying how he's this credible source really doesn't mean anything when thats not what people disagree with

Saying, "well he knows more than you" means jack shit in this kind of an argument

[Martrae]

Not really, it gives his opinion more weight than someone who gets all their information from the TV.

[Lueyen]

Zan, Arlos, yes the article is biased, yes there have been screw ups by individuals on all sides of the political spectrum.. what I was trying to point out is that this article was likely motivated by Carter's actions and words in the here and now.

So when he's still 20 years later pushing in the same general direction he did in the past, and that direction was a miserable failure then addressing the past in the context of the present is pertinent.

Did we see an previous Presidents trying to take on such an active role in world affairs as Carter? No, you don't because regardless of political affiliation most previous presidents recognize that their term is done and their efforts in public view regardless of motive or intent may inhibit the effectiveness of the current Presidency. Now you might think that is justifiable considering our current president, however look at Clinton and ask why he's not doing the same sort of things Carter is (or at least to the same degree). For all the issues I might take with the man at least he has enough sense and decency to realize that the terms he was elected for are over and that sticking his two cents in all the time might not just be detrimental to the current administration but to our foreign policy as a whole.

So no the article doesn't cover mistakes made by every president, but not every president is running around injecting his opinion and publicly criticizing US foreign policy on the world stage.

Truth be told I think Carter annoyed Clinton with his antics.

[Tossica]

Give me a fucking break. The middle east hates the US because of Carter? Haha.

[Lueyen]

Give me a fucking break. The middle east hates the US because of Carter? Haha.

I have to say the conclusion you reached blew my mind. I didn't see how you could read the article and come to that conclusion, until I considered that you probably view radical Islamic leaders much different then I.

When it comes to the nobody average person, I can see them disliking the US because of our foreign policies, but when it comes to the likes of Khomeini and Ahmadinejad the hatred rises not out of something we did, but out of what we are, or more appropriately are not, that being a non Islamic ruled state. Support for Israel is a sore spot, yet the root of that is still the same, a non Islamic nation in the middle east is a something akin to a heresy in their minds.

No I think they actually liked Carter, who attempts to legitimize even to this day organizations like the PLO and Hamas.

[Yamori]

Trying to pin the blame on "the left" or "the right" for causing the current threat of terrorism and the instability/radicalization of middle eastern societies is narrow-sighted.

The primary reasons there are terrorists and massive hatred towards the US is due to our interventionist foreign policy, CIA operations, and our military presence there over the last 50+ years. Period.

To blame it on any specific president is missing the big picture - almost EVERY president post World War 2 is guilty of ever-increasing interventionism and militarism (whether you call it "peacekeeping," "policing the world," "spreading democracy," or "imperialism.") Not a single president has done anything major to stifle or stop it.

The only reason why Bush is bearing the brunt of the blame at the moment is because Iraq doesn't even have the luxury of accomplishing anything beneficial in the expediency of the moment.