Jimmy Carter is Insane

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6281085 He proves with this interview that he has completely lost his mind. Why do people still listen to this loon? To think that we actually elected this man President...

EDIT: I am adding my responce to the comments here because I cannot format the text in the comments section. Sorry for the long post!

Jimmy Carter Bullsh*t from Hardball

In response to your question, this is why I, a “reasonable intelligent person” would “question his intellectual ability or judgment.”

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you the question about…the Revolutionary War as it was fought out in the South in those last years of the War, insurgency against a powerful British force, do you see any parallels between the fighting that we did on our side and the fighting that is going on in Iraq today?

This is a stupid question designed to plug Carter’s book while attacking the current administration.

CARTER: Well, one parallel is that the Revolutionary War, more than any other war up until recently, has been the most bloody war we‘ve fought.

This statement is complete crap. It has no basis in fact, whatsoever. Let’s look at the facts related to US war casualties “until recently:”
American Revolution – total killed 4435, wounded 6188, duration 8 years.
War of 1812 – total killed 2260, wounded 4505, duration 3 years.
Mexican War – total killed 13,283, wounded 4152, duration 2 years.
Civil War (Union) – total killed 364,511, wounded 281,881, duration 5 years.
Spanish-American War – total killed 2446, wounded 1662, duration less than a year.
World War I – total killed 116,516, wounded 204,002, duration just over a year.
World War II – total killed 405,399, wounded 671,846, duration 4 years.
Korean War – total killed 36,574, wounded 103,284, duration 3 years.
Vietnam War – total killed 58,209, wounded 153,303, duration 9 years.
Persian Gulf War – total killed 382, wounded 467, duration a few months.

Just a brief look at this list shows that the American Revolution is not even in the top half of our “most bloody wars.” Why would he say this? Either he is stupid or he is a liar.

I think another parallel is that in some ways the Revolutionary War could have been avoided. It was an unnecessary war.

This is a complete revisionist fantasy, deliberately phrased as to use current Democratic talking points – “It was an unnecessary war.” He is talking exclusively about Iraq here.

Had the British Parliament been a little more sensitive to the colonial‘s really legitimate complaints and requests the war could have been avoided completely, and of course now we would have been a free country now as is Canada and India and Australia, having gotten our independence in a nonviolent way.

This is what is commonly referred to mental masturbation. It is in the same league as people who like to speculate on why Hitler lost WWII. He assumes that Canada, India and Australia could have peacefully gained their independence without the American Revolution. This is known as a fallacious association.

I think in many ways the British were very misled in going to war against America and in trying to enforce their will on people who were quite different from them at the time.

Again, he is using party talking points here. Just how were the British misled into the American Revolution?

MATTHEWS: The president has said he had miscalculated in terms of not realizing how the war would proceed from the initial knockout of Saddam‘s forces, including the Revolutionary Guard, and then what he faced on the ground in terms of the insurgency.

Whatever…

Do you think as an historian you would have foreseen, had you been president, the nationalistic fight of those people in Iraq once we got in there?

As a historian, the idea that you can foresee future events is ludicrous. No one can foresee the future, not even Jimmy Carter.

CARTER: Well, I think almost any reasonable person who knew history would say that you can‘t go into an alien environment and force by rule of arms by forcing the people to adopt a strange concept.

This is truly an amazing thing to say. The implication is that the Iraqi people are not capable of understanding democracy. I am a reasonable person and I believe that the Iraqi people are more than ready to decide their own fate rather than living in fear and terror.

And also when we were so destructive in going into Iraq with tens of thousands of innocent civilians killed and now it‘s still, up until this moment now many months later there is still a great deal of animosity toward American troops. And there is no doubt that American troops‘ presence is stimulating additional violence.

There was a war, people died, it is a tragedy but this is clearly overstated. He should read “Dawn Over Baghdad” by Karl Zinmeister. The Iraq War is the most “sensitive” war any nation has ever fought. The US military’s ability to pinpoint a target is unmatched in history. No one does it better.

MATTHEWS: What do you make of this new philosophy, Mr. President, that we can go into countries like Iraq and that we can use our force of arms and our economic might to transform them into democracies? It‘s the new conservative philosophy. It‘s the Bush doctrine, whatever you want to call it. What do you make of it?

Another leading question. This is not a new philosophy, it is only new in the context of no longer waiting for an attack before we strike the bad guys.

CARTER: I don‘t think it‘s ever been proven to be accurate as a premise that you can go into an alien society, win with force of arms, destroying a major portion of that country and killing their people to make them adopt a new form of government and to accept new rulers.

Wow! This guy is a historian, as Chris Matthews has repeatedly pointed out, and he does not believe that this can be done? Has he forgotten Germany after WWII? What about Japan? Italy? These countries were completely transformed as a direct result of military and economic action, not internal revolution. History is full of these types of transformations.

Obviously, the only way out of this quagmire that we have formed in Iraq now is to have some guarantee of withdrawal of American troops and turning their premises of the Iraqis over to them politically and to the international community to help on an equal basis and a shared basis with many allies both in economic and military concerns in the future.

This is getting very tiring, after this point I will be done with this crap. Iraq is not a quagmire. Is it a difficult project? Yes. Will US troops be there for a long time? Yes. We will be based in Iraq much the same way as we spent the last 50 years in Germany. The boys are not coming home. Get over it!

I have no more time or energy for this. I hope this clarifies my opinion.