The two lives of Jimmy Carter: Service to humanity and servitude to US Imperialism

The passing of Jimmy Carter on Sunday has been instructive, both in terms of the public reaction and the narratives that have been crafted to accompany his death.

On one hand we have the Jimmy Carter to supported the work of Habitat for Humanity, not just financially, but by wielding a hammer on numerous occasions. Then there is the Jimmy Cater who started The Carter Center, which promoted conflict resolution, provided election observers and promoted human rights.

There was also the Jimmy Carter who wrote the 2006 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Not only did this book name the unjust policy of Israel – Apartheid – it provided a substantive critique of US policy in the Middle East. 

This narrative, the Jimmy Carter that embraced humanity and practiced being in service to others should be celebrated and cherished. However, the post-White House Jimmy Carter should in no way be confused with the Jimmy Carter presidency. 

As President, Jimmy Carter continued and maintained much of the Cold War policies that his predecessors did, such as:

• Maintaining the US Embargo on Cuba, along with regular efforts to either assassinate Fidel Castro or disrupt Cuban life. See Clara Nieto’s book, Masters of War: Latin America and US Aggression.
• The Carter Administration increased US military aid to Indonesia, which continued its military occupation of East Timor, thus bringing the death toll to an estimated 200,000 by the end of 1979. See Norman Solomon’s book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
• Carter continued supporting the Angolan military dictator Jonas Savimbi, with US weapons and CIA support. See William Blum’s book, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since WWII. 
• President Carter also supported the brutal Shah of Iran and his death squads forces, known as SAVAK. The Carter Administration then botched an effort to rescue US citizens after the Iranian revolution of 1979, which also involved US troops. See William Blum’s book, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since WWII. 
• In 1979, there was a revolution in Nicaragua, an uprising begun by the Sandinistas. The uprising brought about the end of the Somoza dictatorship, which the US had supported for decades. The Carter Administration supported the Nicaragua military right through 1979, and laid the ground work for the former Nicaragua soldiers, which eventually became the terrorist group known as the Contras. See Nathan Robinson’s book, The Myth of American Idealism: How US Foreign Policy Endangers the World.
• After the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 1979, the Carter Administration, under the leadership of his national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, gave military aid to the Afghani opposition forces to, in the words of Brzezinski – The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. “We now have the opportunity of giving the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet Empire. Brzezinski failed to mention that the Afghani’s they were providing over $1 billion in military aid were the Mujahideen, Islamic fundamentalists that included Osama bin Laden, then later morphed into the Taliban. 
• In the last few years of the Carter Administration, he continued providing military aid, training and weapons to the Guatemalan military dictatorship and the Salvadoran military dictatorship. In February of 1980, Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero sent Carter a letter demanding that the US government stop sending weapons to El Salvador, but they would welcome humanitarian aid. In Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman’s book, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, the co-authors write: “The Carter Administration had been so disturbed by  Romero’s opposition to its policies that it had secretly lobbied the pope to curb the archbishop.” Romero was assassinated one month later while saying mass in San Salvador. The assassins were trained at the US Army School of the Americans, located at Fort Benning in Georgia. 
• The Carter Administration maintained massive US military aid to Israel, despite the ongoing Israeli occupation and apartheid policies against the Palestinians.
• The Carter Administration also defended and financed the hundreds of US military bases around the world, along with a massive annual US military budget. President Carter also maintain nuclear weapons superiority during his presidency, even introducing a new group of nuclear weapons.

A great deal more could be said about how President Carter perpetuated US Imperialism abroad, which always translated into lack of funds for adequate housing, health care, education and other basic necessities that all people living in the US should benefit from.

For more critical analysis of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, see the following articles:

https://jacobin.com/series/jimmy-carter-obituary

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/30/jimmy-carter-the-false-savoir/ 

https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/jimmy-carter-worsened-the-american-malaise-he-decried/ 

Noam Chomsky – The Crimes of U.S. Presidents