damn near up to the end.

RIP

A seemingly good guy who, IMO, got a pretty raw deal with regard to his presidency. Not to say he did nothing wrong, just that I think as far as US presidents go, he was one of the more respectable, decent human beings of the lot, and I think a lot of what went wrong during his presidency was outside his control. And sadly the man who took his seat
as a result of those things started us on a downward and backward trajectory, and we're still falling/walking backwards.

I wonder if how he was viewed changed over the years was of any comfort to him.

He's certainly the most likable former president in modern history, by a long shot. An actual altruist and serviceperson, which is already more than can be said about just about every other former president dating back like 70 years.

because they didn't want anything to help him win again. The day Reagan took office, they were released. That's sickening, or at least it should be.

But, repugs gonna repug.

Dumb as fuck.

time after time, policy or stances we think would kill their party only helps them grow stronger.

Almost seems as if the repugs(thanks Brew) staged the whole thing. Kinda brings to mind other staged events by them like 9/11, Jan6, etc.

this crossed over to the latter.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter

of Afghanistan with the objective of inducing the USSR to intervene militarily and "giving to the USSR its Vietnam war", explicitly stated as such to Carter by his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski (see interview swipe below).

It helped in doing just that, and in the process a million Afghans were killed, millions more were driven from their homes and became refugees, the country was utterly destroyed, and led to the never-ending cycle of war, chaos, and destruction in Afghanistan for the next four decades plus and counting.

So yeah, fuck Jimmy Carter too.


https://dgibbs.arizona.edu/content/brzezinski-interview

The Brzezinski Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur (1998)

Translated from the French by William Blum and David N. Gibbs. This translation was published in Gibbs, "Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Retrospect," International Politics 37, no. 2, 2000, pp. 241-242. For article full text, click here.

Original French version appeared in "Les Révélations d'un Ancien Conseilleur de Carter: ‘Oui, la CIA est Entrée en Afghanistan avant les Russes...’" Le Nouvel Observateur , January 15-21, 1998, p. 76. Click here for original French text.

Note that all ellipses appeared in the original transcript, as published in Le Nouvel Observateur.

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs that the American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahiddin in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. Is this period, you were the national security advisor to President Carter. You therefore played a key role in this affair. Is this correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahiddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention .

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into the war and looked for a way to provoke it?

B: It wasn’t quite like that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q : When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret US involvement in Afghanistan , nobody believed them . However, there was an element of truth in this. You don’t regret any of this today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war." Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime , a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B : What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q : “Some agitated Moslems”? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today...

B: Nonsense! It is said that the West has a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid: There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner, without demagoguery or emotionalism. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among fundamentalist Saudi Arabia , moderate Morocco, militarist Pakistan, pro-Western Egypt, or secularist Central Asia? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries...