There’s something about the cocktail of hopeless naivete, bitterness, self-loathing, spite and just plain stupidity that is “Jimmy Carter” that is just … breathtaking.

Here’s a man who, if I’m not mistaken, graduated from Annapolis and went on to a stint in the Navy working with nuclear submarines. One would think that he’d be at least passingly familiar with two sources of nuclear fissile material, plutonium and uranium. Yet, in negotiating with North Korea about suspending their plutonium bomb development, but doesn’t bother to do anything about their ability to develop a uranium bomb.

And then he negotiates a five-year period during which the North Koreans would be free from any kind of verification that they were complying with the agreement.

But what should we expect from a man who relied on his daughter Amy for advice on nuclear strategy?

Here is a man who admonished Americans for their “inordinate fear of communism,” kissed Leonid Brezhnev on the cheek, and later said, “I was far too trusting of Mr. Brezhnev” when the latter repaid his naivete by invading Afghanistan. Yet more than a decade later, he’d obviously learned nothing about dealing with communist dictators: for he clearly trusted the North Koreans to be true to their word.

And here is a man who, when the North Koreans’ agreement-busting nuclear weapon program has progressed so far along that they can’t hide it any more in 2000, and they finally come out and openly admit to breaching said agreement, has the insolent gall to blame George Bush for what was so obviously predictable back in 1994.

“You called them ‘evil!’ That hurt their feelings! How could they not build a bomb after such a display of insensitivity?”

On a different note, stonemeister above asks whether anyone has blamed George Bush for the Hawaii earthquake. Don’t worry, it’ll come … I have a sister who blames him for the earthquake in the Indian Ocean a couple of years back, the one that triggered those lethal tsunami. The “logic” goes like this:

1. Oil companies were conducting seismic tests off Australia before the earthquake;

2. Australian prime minister John Howard is a “Bush crony”;

3. Those tests couldn’t have happened without Howard’s backing, and he in turn must’ve been put up to it by George Bush in order to curry favor with his “oil buddies”;

4. The seismic tests must’ve caused the earthquake; ergo…

5. George Bush was responsible for the earthquake.

Seriously.

It’s like that old parlor game, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” only substitute George Bush and then in six steps or fewer link him up as the indirect if not proximate cause of anything that has gone wrong, is wrong or may go wrong in the world. We’ve just watched Jimmy Carter do it ….

Spurius Ligustinus on October 18, 2006 at 12:38 PM