Explaing Obama’s addiction to the Middle East peace process.
Readers who are familiar with the Stockholm Syndrome will recall that it refers to a hostage-taking 1973 incident in that Swedish capital city. Over time, the hostages began to look to their captors as friends and protectors rather than the murderous kidnapers that they truly were.
We are seeing something similar in what I call the Camp David Syndrome. President Obama has just announced the latest effort toward crafting a Middle East Peace Settlement. That grand-sounding title is Beltway-speak for “let’s lean on Israel to gain some street cred with the Euros.” He’s chosen Hillary Clinton as his negotiator.
In 1978, Jimmy Carter brought Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin together to his mountain top presidential retreat in Maryland’s beautiful Catoctin Mountains. There, over days of intense negotiation, Carter brokered what became known in diplomatic lore as the Camp David Accords. Under those agreements, Israel agreed to withdraw her forces from the Sinai Peninsula that she had seized in the lightning Six-Day War of 1967, and re-captured during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. That war had been launched by Egypt’s Sadat — showing the characteristic respect for other faiths that Muslims habitually show — the Jewish High Holy Days of that year.
Carter hailed his achievement as something just shy of the Second Coming. It wasn’t. Carter was led up to that mountain by growing problems on the plain below. Americans were becoming increasingly disenchanted with Jimmy’s fecklessness on the domestic front. High interest rates made home ownership impossible for young couples, long gas lines frayed nerves, and rising unemployment made everyone edgy. But Carter felt that success on the international scene could bring him and his embattled party some goodwill from American voters.
It didn’t. Barely six weeks after the media hullabaloo over the Camp David Accords, voters trooped to the polls and spanked Carter’s party. Between 1978 and 1980, voters gave Republicans 46 seats in the House of Representatives, five more seats than the GOP had lost in the watershed post-Watergate election of 1974.
Still, the myth persists that a Middle East peace agreement will translate into electoral success at home. Carter proved to be a one-trick pony. He received a sharp kick from voters in 1980. They put the pony permanently out to pasture.
What Carter achieved at Camp David is not replicable today. That’s because the Israelis in 1978 did not want to occupy Sinai. They agreed that it did not materially contribute to their security. (Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir used to joke that the Almighty had led the Children of Abraham out of bondage in Egypt, called them to wander for forty years, and told them to settle on the only piece of real estate in the Middle East that has no oil!)
So Carter’s fabled diplomacy was not really necessary to persuade the Israelis to disgorge territory that had never been Israeli and that they did not really want. And President Anwar Sadat had a firm grip over Egypt, which one Egyptian diplomat described as the only real nation in the Arab world. “The rest are just tribes with flags,” that Arab diplomat memorably said. Besides, Sadat needed money. And the U.S. was ready to purchase a peace.
Despite the fact that Jimmy Carter got a shellacking at the polls in 1978 and 1980, Presidents persist in pursuing the brass ring, or an elusive Nobel Prize, for brokering a Mideast Peace Settlement.
Bill Clinton tried it in 2000. He was playing out an exhausted presidency, grasping for straws. He summoned Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the “reformed” terrorist leader, Yassir Arafat, to the U.S. He tried to arrange another Camp David breakthrough. Barak made extraordinary concessions, even dangerous ones. No dice. Arafat fomented a second “intifada” against Israel. Clinton’s party lost the next Presidential Election.
Then, there was the 2007 Annapolis Conference on Mideast Peace. President George W. Bush chose that week after Thanksgiving to bring a wide range of Arab and Israeli negotiators to the U.S. Naval Academy’s historic Yard. Some of the Arab delegates refused to enter the same doorway as the Israelis had entered. Some peace talks. The best we can say for this effort is that it could have been worse. It might have lasted two days instead of just one. And Bush’s party lost the next Presidential Election.
What was considered historic about the Annapolis Conference is that for the first time all parties agreed to a “two-state solution.” Did the Arab delegates who attended, the ones who refused to enter the same doorway as the Israelis, agree that Israel would be one of those two states? Don’t ask.
What we have yet to hear is why the U.S. should want a Palestinian state to be formed in the Mideast. When the Israelis evacuated from Gaza and the local residents held elections, they promptly voted in Hamas, the terrorist organization. Hamas supporters stormed the residence of the late Yassir Arafat and stole his Nobel “Peace” Prize. Now, there’s poetic justice.
On the West Bank, Arafat’s loyal lieutenant, Abu Abbas, maintains a precarious perch. The U.S. is giving $900 million in aid to his so-called Authority for allegedly humanitarian purposes. This is where bombers use ambulances to run rockets to and from Palestinian hospitals and where children dance in mock explosive belts before PTA meetings in schools named for suicide bombers. This is what we want more of? For Peace’s sake? For Pete’s sake!
I was amazed to see President Obama come on TV so soon to call for a Mideast breakthrough. I didn’t think he was in that much trouble on the domestic front already.
ADVERTISEMENT
SPONSORED LINKS
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
H/T to National Review Online
drudge ette obama| 9.25.09 @ 6:30AM
The comparison of Obama to Jimmy Carter is historically reversed. One day we will say that Carter was as bad a Obama, but not as bad. That is because Carter's established legacy as the worst of the worst will be overtaken by Obama.
They share some similarities: no profound exhibition of patriotism and love of this country. Extenuated narcissistic personalities, no dying on their own sword by either, greater good only as they define it, tin-eared actions and statements, and thinking that they actually can change the world. Jimmy still gets his nose wet when he should be changing something else, and Obama is at the UN selling us short and about to do the same today at the G-20 meeting.
drudge ette obama| 9.25.09 @ 6:41AM
Hillary Clinton has one more chance, here and now, to be stand for something that remotely resembles a patriotic politician. She debated on the Obama's naive view of sitting down with the dictators, now she serves as this country's facilitator in that very activity.
Make a big speech, denounce the tone of the Obama speech, state it doe not represent America's view, and resign.
Do this Hillary. Be a patriot.
S.L. Toddard| 9.25.09 @ 8:20AM
"When the Israelis evacuated from Gaza and the local residents held elections, they promptly voted in Hamas, the terrorist organization"
...proving beyond any doubt that the Neoconservative's ideological drive to promote "democracy" for all peoples is farcical and counter-productive. Some peoples do not want, and should not have, democracy. Democracy is a *result* of European civilization, not a *cause*.
Alan Brooks| 9.25.09 @ 9:38AM
Agreed for once, Todd. There will never be peace there. So give Bavaria or, better yet, a reconstituted Prussia, to Israel.
I'll never give up mentioning that; or how the Soviets started WW4 (Cold War being WW3) by invading Afghanistan. You've met your match :)
S.L. Toddard| 9.25.09 @ 9:56AM
Honestly, I agree 100% that Jews should have been given a large, fertile swath of Germany after WWII as reparations. It certainly would have made more sense, as they had at least *some* claim to land in Germany and *no* claim to the lands of Arabs in Palestine.
Alan Brooks| 9.25.09 @ 12:26PM
We could both suggest Israel be relocated (though relocating Israel is an oxymoron) to Deutschland.
Albeit, mein freund, nein mensch would take us seriously, naturlich.
They sense I'm a squishy conservative; and you are... ? Was are du?
Du are like nailing Jello to der wall, du are all uber der Autobahn. All uber der karte.
Du must do die business und get der arse off der can to leave der John, mein fuhrer. Jahwohl!
Alan Brooks| 9.25.09 @ 12:30PM
Ja-wohl, Tod-dard,
Ja-wohl
by the way, you say nothing about Brezhnev starting der krieg, '78- '79.
Only Bush.
Alan Brooks| 9.25.09 @ 9:41AM
"I fear not Toddard,
as I walk through the valley of Death.
For I'm the biggest SOB in the valley"
Galen| 9.25.09 @ 10:09AM
Sadat made peace with Israel because haviing gotten Russia out of Egypt he didn't want it back in as Carter proposed to do with a big conerence in Geneva. Camp David ratified a deal already made without Carter.
KyMouse| 9.25.09 @ 12:40PM
Mr. Stoddard, I'm not Jewish, but even I know that the land of Israel is central to the religion, culture and history of the Jewish people. Germany isn't; neither is Uganda or any other country.
A major tenet of Judaism is the injunction not to forget Jerusalem, the site of the Temple. Jewish holidays and festivals are connected to that land and its seasons. Many Jews pray facing Jerusalem, and almost all say "Next year in Jerusalem" every Passover.
No one, not even you, can prevent what God promises in the Bible. There are many passages that proclaim God's gift of the land of Israel to His Jewish people. The 36th and 37th chapters of Ezekiel, for example, contain this promise: "Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel...and I shall place you in your own land; then shall you know that I the Lord have spoken it, and performed it, says the Lord" (37:12, 14). And through the prophet Amos, God promised, "I will plant them upon their own land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them..." (Amos 9:15).
Many people dismiss the Bible as merely a book written by Jews (which, therefore, says what they want it to say about the land), but its pages record accurate prophecies that the Jews would be driven out of their land and would suffer in other countries, but finally be brought back to their homeland. What other nation has been forcibly removed from their homeland, settled in almost every other country, yet returned to their homeland almost 2,000 years later? And returned speaking the same language, acknowledging the same God, and preserving many of the customs of their ancient ancestors?
The late evangelist Zola Levitt, a Jewish believer in Jesus, often pointed out that the people who show you around the Pyramids have little in common with those who built those monuments--they don't worship Horus, Anubis or Ra, they worship Allah; and they write in Arabic, not hieroglyphics. But if the prophet Isaiah walked down any Israeli street today, he could speak quite easily with any Hebrew-speaking person he passed. That's one example of the continuity that is such a part of the Jewish experience and the Jewish connection to the land of Israel.
Today, the Israeli population is about 20 percent Arab, and a recent poll indicated that the vast majority of Arab Israelis would rather live there than in any other country. Arabs have served in the Knesset since its very beginning in the late 1940s (hmmm....how many Jews are elected representatives in Arab countries?).
Israel has always been, and willl always be, the homeland of the Jewish people. Even you can't change that.
Alan Brooks| 9.25.09 @ 3:39PM
"Mr. Stoddard, I'm not Jewish, but even I know that the land of Israel is central to the religion, culture and history of the Jewish people. Germany isn't "
Sure. I was pulling Stoddard's leg; but not too hard-- it might come off.
S.L. Toddard| 9.25.09 @ 7:36PM
"There are many passages that proclaim God's gift of the land of Israel to His Jewish people"
Yes, I believe the Koran says something about Muslims converting infidels by the sword. I'm not sure that it makes it legitimate when they do so, however. And certain Christian denominations believe that under the New Covenant, Israel is a spiritual nation encompassing all those who accept Christ.
What we know for sure, however, is that Arabs that lived in Palestine did not owe their land to anyone, and they had it taken from them. It's a legitimate cause for grievance, obviously, especially since this dispossession happened in living memory.
Alan Brooks| 9.26.09 @ 8:21PM
Todd,
I think we are agreed that a portion of Germany should (in our fantasy-island AS daydream) be given to Israel.
We'll leave it at that, because this war will continue for decades, and sitting at our computers doesn't change anything whatsoever..
LNC| 9.28.09 @ 3:11PM
Todd and Alan,
Just a quick note of correction. "Palestine" was an administrative unit in the old Ottoman Empire, populated by Arab and Jew. Beginning in the late 19th centuy the Jewish community, aided and funded by their brethern in America and Europe, began buying large tracts of what is now Israel. When the Republic was created in 1948 the Jewish people held legal claim to roughly 60% of the land, to include tracts in what is now the West Bank.
I say this by way of sayng that there is a pernicous fallacy in most arguments about the Arab-Israeli conflict. This idea that the world "gave" Palestine to the Jews is a half truth. The Jews legally owned a good deal of the land. What the "World" did was to carve out additional territories to be administered under the new government of Israel.
It should be remembered that this very "world organization" formed Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. We hear no such calls as you have made (tongue in cheek, I think) that we should give portions of Indonesia to a new Saudi govenrment despite the fact that Saudis have lived and traded there for centuries.
Furthermore, this new government (Israel) did not have a policy of forcing ethnic Arabs from their homes, nor of dispossessing these same people through the courts (as was done to Jews living throughout the Middle East from 1948-1960). Were this the case, the one million Arab Israelis now living in Palestine would be living elsewhere.
No, the exodus of many Arab Palestinians was the direct result of the invasion of Palestine by the Arab League on the very day that the nation of Israel was formed. These people were promised a return to their lands once the Arab cause was triumphant. Sixty years on these people are still refugees, kept in this condition by the very people (their Arab brothers) who swear support to the "Palestinian" cause.
The Palestinian Arab Refugees are among the most exploited on earth. A great injustice has been done them, but laying it at the door of Israel is just absurd.
Al Adab| 9.25.09 @ 12:43PM
Simple. Read: "I want a Nobel Peace Prize too".
Like America, that prize once meant something.
Alan Brooks| 9.26.09 @ 8:17PM
but Arab countries are mostly third world cesspools, not fit for animals..
Alan Brooks| 9.26.09 @ 8:44PM
America IS bad, but nightmarish Arab third world cesspools are so much worse.
Ron Holt| 9.25.09 @ 3:26PM
All land since the beginning of time belongs only to those strong enough to take and hold it. There is no "right" to land on this earth. First come, first serve, does not apply.
KyMouse| 9.25.09 @ 4:35PM
The Jews are the only people who have a land grant directly from God. For example, God's promise to the Jewish people through Jacob, in Genesis 28:13-15: "I am the Lord God of Abraham...and the God of Isaac; the land whereon you lie , to you I will give it, and to your seed...behold, I am with you, and will keep you in all places wherever you go , and will bring you again into this land..."
Believe that or not, but there it is. Over the past 62 years or more, we've seen Israel be reborn and withstand attack after attack from her enemies. I believe God keeps His promises, and I hope you'll believe it someday, too.
Dan| 9.25.09 @ 5:20PM
Forget Carter and Clintom. Obama is leaning on Israel because he is a closet Mulim, a Jew hater ( a member of Rev. Wright's church for 19 years ) and knows he will get the liberal, far left Jewish vote no matter what happens to Israel.
Pete| 9.25.09 @ 5:31PM
Slightly off topic, but am I the only one who thinks the Clintons are biding their time, waiting to kneecap the Messiah at the exact right moment? It is WAY too soon for them to act, but there is no way they will let last year stand without retaliating in some fashion. They got out race-carded, out-lied, out-corrupted, out-organized...out-everything-ed and I bet it eats at their souls (if they have any) every minute of every day.
Paul McGrath| 9.25.09 @ 6:35PM
Good point, Pete, but I suspect it will be the other way around. Watch for Hillary to get knee-capped. She'll be fired and completely out of power before the end of 2010. Mark my words.
Pete| 9.25.09 @ 8:24PM
I know he's marginalized her and thinks he can control her now, but I can't help but think her bitter brain is scheming away. Only time will tell I suppose.
Serge from Wellington| 9.25.09 @ 8:38PM
S.L. Toddard| 9.25.09 @ 7:36PM:
What we know for sure, however, is that Arabs that lived in Palestine did not owe their land to anyone, and they had it taken from them.
We know?! Sorry, it's just you, and only because someone had lied to you... or is it you who's lying?
Arabs who lived in Palestine came there as indentured labour brought by the estate owners residing in Damascus and Cairo. Those latifundistas received their estates as award for services to Ottoman (Turkish) Empire which conquered Palestine in 1516, andthey had no real ownership: the Sultan whims could see the lands passed to someone else for any sort of favours.
The only uninterrupted history in the Holy Land is Jewish history, Mr Liberal Flooder!
S.L. Toddard| 9.26.09 @ 11:19AM
"Arabs who lived in Palestine came there as indentured labour... etc"
Even if that were true, the fashion in which they arrived centuries ago is hardly relevant to the fact that Arabs that lived in Palestine did not owe their land to anyone, and they had it taken from them. That's not even in dispute.
Serge from Wellington| 9.26.09 @ 7:04PM
Arabs did not own the land, and thus they did not owe it to anyone, that's true. One cannot owe something they have not... and something not in exitence cannot be taken from them.
But I see you are quite content with the land which Jews own there for millenia being taken from them... double standards? Hell, no! Your standard is actually quite straightforward: screw the Joo!
loulou| 9.25.09 @ 11:26PM
Toddard needs to read some history. He is misinformed and blissfully unaware of his ignorance. Maybe he should start with "From Time Immemorial" by Joan Peters.
birmingham| 9.29.09 @ 10:47PM
Toddard is a site troll and should be ignored.
Timothy L. Pennell| 9.26.09 @ 8:57AM
The way our MUSLIM President gets off on B*TCH SLAPPING the Jews all the time, and with his Universal health Care Plan that will Cull the Heard, by witholding aid to the OLD, and the INFIRM - (with the Mentally Disabled not far behind) - his 'Presidential retreat' is looking more and more like 'The EAGLES' NEST'?
(And don't give me any of that - "He's not a Muslim" garbage. He was BORN to a MUSLIM FATHER. That makes him a MUSLIM. And he knows it. And so do you.)
S.L. Toddard| 9.26.09 @ 12:07PM
^^ this is why the GOP is a world-wide laughingstock. When people talk about tea-partiers as deranged, bug-eyed lunatics, they're talking about people like this guy, and accusations like his.
Kurt| 9.27.09 @ 11:40AM
You are an ignorant intellectual, because most of us deranged, bug-eyed lunatics that go to tea parties only back the GOP because, for the most part, the GOP strips liberty at a slower rate than the Donkey party. The US is becoming this laughing stock because the GOP and the Donkey bicker while the global elite salivates. Tea-partiers loath this Mr. Todd.
Margie| 9.26.09 @ 2:12PM
^^this is why the Left is a world-wide laughingstock. When people talk about Obama-maniacs as deranged, bug-eyed lunatics, they're talking about people like this guy (or is it gal?), and accusations like this.
Nick| 9.26.09 @ 4:39PM
For all the useful idiots out there who reflexively attack Israel (like the good little reactionaries you are), let me educate you on why you hate Israel so much. You guys obviously don't know why, based on your stale, rehashed diatribes.
When Israel chose to be pro-West in the early '50s, the evil Soviets (the "bad guys") backed the Arab nations against the Jews. The Soviets would go on to train the PLO to be terrorists. In fact, most all Moslem terrorism can be traced back to KGB or Warsaw Pact training.
Since the Soviet Union was now anti-Israeli and pro "Palestinian", the Ring Laudner Juniors and Alger Hiss' of their day had to convince their useful idiots to be the same.
And you reactionary lefties have been anti-Israel ever since. That is, ever since Moscow decided that you would be.
One could say that you guys are pathologically anti-Israel. You will spread any lie that supports evil Hamas and Hezzbollah, and condemns peaceful Israel.
But hey, it helps you to serve your master, Lucifer, the prince of lies.
Margie| 9.27.09 @ 6:02PM
Excellent lesson, Nick. Not that I need to tell you! We try and try to teach those on the Left. We give them wonderful truth, actual history lessons with care and concern that if possible they will learn and acknowledge they have been wrong. But we only find that in so doing that there is no reasoning with evil.
Nick| 9.27.09 @ 8:00PM
Thanks Margie.
Yes, most of the time it is like casting pearls before swine.
But if I can reach just one commie lovin' lefty, all my typing will not have been in vain.
KyMouse| 9.28.09 @ 9:39PM
Concerning the accusation of "theft" of Arab lands by Israel: In the early years of the 20th century, absentee landlords in Lebanon, Egypt and Syria owned much of the land that "Palestinians" call theirs today. Approximately 8 out of every 10 Arabs in the area were not landowners but nomads, Bedouins or very poor subsistence farmers or shepherds.
Jewish people who began purchasing back their ancient homeland deliberately selected portions of land that weren't being farmed, and in many cases were swamps, and therefore unoccupied. Later, the Jews began buying cultivated land, and
found willing buyers among Arabs who wanted to move to the growing towns along the coast.
The Jewish Virtual Library adds this: "When John Hope Simpson arrived in Palestine in May 1930, he observed: 'They [Jews] paid high prices for the land, and in addition they paid to certain of the occupants of those lands a considerable amount of money which they were not legally bound to pay.'
"In 1931, Lewis French conducted a survey of landlessness and eventually offered new plots to any Arabs who had been 'dispossessed.' British officials received more than 3,000 applications, of which 80 percent were ruled invalid by the Government’s legal adviser because the applicants were not landless Arabs. This left only about 600 landless Arabs, 100 of whom accepted the Government land offer.
"In April 1936, a new outbreak of Arab attacks on Jews was instigated by a Syrian guerrilla named Fawzi alQawukji, the commander of the Arab Liberation Army. By November, when the British finally sent a new commission headed by Lord Peel to investigate, 89 Jews had been killed and more than 300 wounded.
"The Peel Commission’s report found that Arab complaints about Jewish land acquisition were baseless. It pointed out that 'much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when it was purchased....there was at the time of the earlier sales little evidence that the owners possessed either the resources or training needed to develop the land.' Moreover, the Commission found the shortage was 'due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population.' The report concluded that the presence of Jews in Palestine, along with the work of the British Administration, had resulted in higher wages, an improved standard of living and ample employment opportunities.
"In his memoirs, Transjordan’s King Abdullah wrote: 'It is made quite clear to all, both by the map drawn up by the Simpson Commission and by another compiled by the Peel Commission, that the Arabs are as prodigal in selling their land as they are in useless wailing and weeping (emphasis in the original).'
"Even at the height of the Arab revolt in 1938, the British High Commissioner to Palestine believed the Arab landowners were complaining about sales to Jews to drive up prices for lands they wished to sell. Many Arab landowners had been so terrorized by Arab rebels they decided to leave Palestine and sell their property to the Jews.
"The Jews were paying exorbitant prices to wealthy landowners for small tracts of arid land. 'In 1944, Jews paid between $1,000 and $1,100 per acre in Palestine, mostly for arid or semiarid land; in the same year, rich black soil in Iowa was selling for about $110 per acre.'
"By 1947, Jewish holdings in Palestine amounted to about 463,000 acres. Approximately 45,000 of these acres were acquired from the Mandatory Government; 30,000 were bought from various churches and 387,500 were purchased from Arabs. Analyses of land purchases from 1880 to 1948 show that 73 percent of Jewish plots were purchased from large landowners, not poor fellahin. Those who sold land included the mayors of Gaza, Jerusalem and Jaffa. As’ad elShuqeiri, a Muslim religious scholar and father of PLO chairman Ahmed Shuqeiri, took Jewish money for his land. Even King Abdullah leased land to the Jews. In fact, many leaders of the Arab nationalist movement, including members of the Muslim Supreme Council, sold land to Jews."
Nick| 9.28.09 @ 10:57PM
KyMouse,
If you are going to recite historical facts about the Jewish-Arab conflict here at AS, you should know the kind of logic you will encounter (if you haven't already):
*If you support *Israel*, you are a Neo-con. If you don't think the targeting and killing of Jewish civilians by *radical* Moslems is O.K., you are a Neo-con. If you think randomly launching lethal rockets into Jewish *neighborhoods* is evil, you are a Neo-con. If you don't agree that *Hamas* and *Hezzbollah* are *freedom fighters*, not *terrorists*, you are a Neo-con. If you *think* an *Israeli* *Apache* *taking out* a *Hamas leader* with a *Hellfire missle* is *self-defense*, you are a Neo-con.*
-S.L. Toddard
The Most *Conservative* Person in the World
and Grand Arbiter of Who Is and Is Not *Conservative*
KyMouse| 9.29.09 @ 8:04AM
Very true, Nick. When pesky facts get in the way, some people to resort to labeling.
Keep up the good work.
Will Cousins| 10.1.09 @ 10:11AM
"Carter was led up to that mountain by growing problems on the plain below".
So, what you're saying is, Americans had trouble getting on the property ladder for a few years because Carter had to be selfish and stop Egyptians and Israelis killing each other. As Egypt is and was a real power in the region, this was a huge step forward- since then, despite fights with Hizbollah & Hamas, Israel has not fought a full-on war with a neighbouring power (unless Bibi gets his way, and they nuke Tehran).
But this huge step forward was pointless because (your twisted logic supposes) Carter focused on peace instead of the housing market.
What a pathetic point of view.
Will Cousins| 10.1.09 @ 10:13AM
"voters trooped to the polls and spanked Carter's party".
I think thats a comment on the shortsighted priorities of voters, not Jimmy Carter.
Air Toxins | 3.12.10 @ 12:54AM
Whoever brokers a mid-east peace deal is going to win a Nobel peace prize. Oh wait...