Jimmah Wants To “Hep”

Former President Jimmy “The Peanut Farmer” Carter has offered his services to the Trump Administration ahead of a meeting with North Korea to discuss denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

The 93-year-old bonehead sweetened the pot by citing his “20 hours of experience” working with previous senior officials in the hermit nation.

After Carter returned from talks with the North Koreans in June 1994, the New York Times reported, “Mr. Carter, who returned from his trip late Saturday, unabashedly provided an encouraging and unqualified account of his accomplishments. ‘I personally believe that the crisis is over,’ he said.”

In the summer of 1994, North Korea began the process of removing their spent fuel rods from the reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear facility. The idea was to provide them with enough plutonium to build a nuclear weapon. As a result, the global community demanded inspections, but North Korea wasn’t having any of that. 

Hans Blix, UN weapons inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who was a cross between Mr. Magoo and Inspector Clouseau, gave up any notion of carrying out inspections and the Clinton Administration was forced to push sanctions through the UN. North Korea viewed any sanctions as an act of war. It got so bad that then-Defense Secretary William Perry actually thought war was on the horizon.

Then in stepped the resplendent Jimmy Carter. Carter had acted as a mediator before with Pyongyang, but never at the invitation of the State Department. But the crisis of 1994 changed that calculus. 

Carter entered North Korea and met personally with Kim Il Sung. Going far beyond his instructions, he described the American effort to impose sanctions as a serious mistake and reached out to Kim with specific proposals designed to end the standoff. 

Carter’s intervention averted a possible war, one that would likely have had tremendous consequences, and it became the basis for what would become the 1994 Agreed Framework. 

Yet, those who now celebrate his post-presidential legacy of peacemaking need to consider the long-term consequences of his actions in North Korea. The immediate ramifications of the Yongbyon strike or even a tight sanctions policy in 1994 would likely have been severe. The costs of inaction that summer, however, proved to be far more severe over the coming decades.

The Kim family remained in power in the North, perpetuating one of the most brutal totalitarian regimes in modern history. The country continued its nuclear efforts in defiance of the 1994 agreement and is now believed to have 15-20 nuclear weapons and significantly improved delivery systems, along with a massive collection of chemical and biological weapons. It continues to harass the South and threaten the stability of East Asia and is an active player in the international black market for nuclear technology, narcotics and counterfeit American bills, among other things. 

Carter’s belief in the moral superiority of choosing diplomacy rather than force is a mistake that, two decades later, the world is still paying for.

Carter was a bumbling fool.  The worst president this country ever had until the ascendency of The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer.

Who can forget the gas crisis of 1979 when lines formed from Maine to Hayne just to buy gas for the car? Or Jimmah’s conservation program to discourage oil consumption and his comical suggestion Americans should wear sweaters to offset turning down the thermostat in the winter?

Who can forget him ceding control of the American-built Panama Canal?  Or the 444-day-long Iranian hostage crisis? Or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan?  What about my very favorite─the killer rabbit incident?

On Monday the New York Times reported a video “appearing to show the arrival in Beijing of an old-style green train of the kind used by North Korea’s leaders fueled intense speculation on Monday that a high-level North Korean delegation, perhaps even one led by Kim Jong Un, was meeting Chinese leaders ahead of Mr. Kim’s planned meeting with President Trump and South Korea’s president.”

On Monday as well, good ole Jimmah demonstrated his madcap naiveté on CBS This Morning saying, “I think John Bolton is a disaster for our country.  Maybe one of the worst mistakes that President Trump has made since he’s been in office.  He has been advocating a war with North Korea for a long time and even an attack on Iran.”

I think “Mr. Gutless Wonder” would do well to sit this one out.