I note a response to my previous post from Chad at CCK.
Does he really believe this crap?
If Carter were President and terrorists were shooting rockets into the U.S. from, say, Cuba, would he strike back? Probably not ...
And if he does really believe it, what else is going on inside his head?
Chad seems to mistake me for Professor Schaff, and erroneously attributes my post to my colleague. I can't come down too hard on him for this, as we at SDP have made the same mistake regarding the various bloggers at CCK. At any rate, the quote above is mine. Here is what else is going on inside my head.
My comment rested on two facts. First, when the U.S. embassy in Tehran was captured during the Iranian revolution and the embassy personnel taken hostage, that was an explicit occupation of American soil. It was an act of war against the United States. The territory inside an American embassy is U.S. territory. Carter did nothing about it for over a year, and only acted when he grasped that his reelection was on the line. Instead of bringing American power to bear in an impressive way, he attempted a Hollywood rescue that ended in disaster. So we know what Carter actually did when American soil was attacked.
Second, in his Der Spiegel interview, Carter is clearly saying that the Israelis should have allowed Hezbollah to shower Israel with missiles without attacking "the entire nation of Lebanon." That would mean fighting Hezbollah without trying to cut off its sources of resupply from Syria and Iran. It would mean that Lebanon would be protected from the consequences of allowing Hezbollah to operate from its territory. Now I took this as an honest statement of what Carter believes, and has always believed. So I assumed that he would act as he now thinks the Israeli's should have acted (grin and bear it) were he President and were we to be similarly assaulted. If so, we know what Carter would have done if American soil was attacked by missiles: nothing.
Of course there are alternative interpretations of Carter's remarks. Maybe he expects Israel to act in a way that he would never have acted if similar circumstances has arisen while he was President. If Chad thinks so, he might have attempted to make the argument. But that would be out of character.
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