By Mehdi Hasan
Photos: YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons
How should we remember the late Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States? Pundits will argue over his domestic policy, especially his economic record, which wasn’t great – inflation, interest rates, and unemployment all shot up on his watch between 1977 and 1981.
Others will debate his foreign policy record – which featured major wins for him like the Camp David and the Panama Canal peace treaties, but also major losses like the Iranian hostage crisis.
But it’s what Carter said after he left office that will stick with me, because not only was he perhaps the most beloved ex-president, but he also wasn’t afraid to speak some blunt truths to the American people.
Here are the most surprising Jimmy Carter quotes you may not have heard before – and probably won’t get mentioned in most of his obituaries.
- Let’s start with 2015. When the now-late president said, “I think the American superpower goal should be to be the champion of peace,” only to later follow it with the assertion that “we are the most warlike country on earth.” Carter also pointed out that the US had been at peace for only 16 of its then 242 years as a nation, four of which were on his watch.
- Regarding the invasion of Iraq, already in 2004, Carter told The Independent newspaper in the UK “there was no reason for us to become involved in Iraq recently. That was a war based on lies and misinterpretations from London and from Washington.”
- In 2006, he doubled down on that statement, calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to step down, and saying that he and Vice President Dick Cheney quote, “deliberately misled the American people about the danger in Iraq.”…
