Probably so, though he does have some wins that are worthwhile with regards to foreign policy. The Good Friday Accords are still holding despite Brexit, and Datyon is most certainly flawed, but his decision to bomb in Serbia to stop the invasion of Kosovo was absolutely the correct decision (that is what brought Serbs out in protest against Milosevic - and he most certainly stopped more acts of genocide there). And the last positive movement we’ve had on Isreal-Palestine is certainly Oslo, though it’s been all lost ground since then.
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Depends on what metric we’re going by.
For example, Clinton never had the military round up 120,000 Americans and send them to internment camps for several years just because they shared ancestry with a geopolitical enemy.
ETA: Also, Clinton never embarked on any military adventures half as disastrous as LBJ’s escalation of the Vietnam War.
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your examples are both true but unlike clinton who tragically cut back on programs and eligibility, roosevelt ushered in the modern welfare state in the united states while johnson greatly expanded it. unlike roosevelt who famously welcomed the hatred of his opponents in the 0.01% and on the right, clinton generally backed down from confronting them. and unlike johnson who pushed hard for increased civil rights and voting rights for african-americans, clinton more frequently sacrificed the interests of the african-american parts of the democratic party base.
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Still I think you have to concede that there are several metrics by which other Democratic Presidents could be rated much worse than Bill Clinton.
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yes, there may be some individual metrics by which clinton comes off better than another, i still think that on an overall basis, for the period i specified, clinton is the worst. in overall comparison to roosevelt, truman, kennedy, johnson, carter, obama, and biden (so far) i believe clinton comes in last.
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Clearly there was a way to deal with it that wasn’t his appointed Fed chief jacking up interest rates. POTUS has ultimate responsibility for what happens. And Voelker’s handling of the problem has adverse effects continuing til now.
Carter had the mujahideen set up from which Al’Qaida developed, not from Palestinians. Armed them, financed them, set them loose on the kind of liberal Afghan state the Blob now claims existed when Biden withdrew. Carter and Brzezinski started US actions against Afghanistan continuing to date albeit by different means.
So, as far as I can tell, you don’t have any opposition to his actual message, just the source, because it’s coming from him?
Or do you disagree with what he was saying?
Seems like you’re attacking the messenger, and distracting from the message…
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If any single person can be said to bear the responsibility for “setting up” the mujahideen it would be Afghan politician Sibghatullah Mojaddedi.
It’s true that the mujahideen did get backing from the CIA including some help during the final months of the Carter administration, but the vast majority of Operation Cyclone took place during the Reagan/Bush I years. And you still haven’t named any US President who is more credible or respectable than Jimmy Carter.
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Reagan continued what Carter started. Horse/cart.
A fact is a fact.
I mean, as long as we’re going down this particular off-topic road, the rebellion that started forming as the Soviets invaded Afghanistan didn’t even really have a coalition until the summer of 1980. The US wasn’t the only country funding these many groups, either. Pakistan, the UK, China, and most notably, Saudi Arabia sent piles of money, too.
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Message is correct enough. OTOH, the GOP has been an existential threat for decades. Complaining about same this late in the process, I dunno, seems too little too late. The only hope at this point is a blue tsunami all the way down the ticket in 22. Past as prologue, it’s hard to be hopeful. Thoughts?
My thought is “if you’re trying to help create a Blue Tsunami in 2022 maybe you shouldn’t be hijacking this conversation to shit all over the most progressive Democratic President of the last several generations.”
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Now, now - Reagan expanded wildly the small bit Carter was involved in. And made it into a 40 year conflict- and set up the Taliban via them. Also traded arms to Iran. Had drug trades going to fund these things.
Ran like a scared rabbit from Lebanon after the terrorist attack. Laughed at people dying from AIDS. Etc, etc, etc.
I mean - it’s a fact that you have an irrational hate for Carter that prevents you from addressing his current statements and try to divert onto something else.
This usually occurs when people are reluctant to admit their actual politics.
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Who the best ex-POTUS is is not too germane. But of course it’s Carter. His influence though is debatable.
If Carter didn’t make the mujahideen possible, sure Reagan would have for sure. But that doesn’t change that Carter did. And the kind of force they’d be without American support is questionable. Highly unlikely they’d become what they did without our aid.
Related is that Afghanistan had a relatively liberal state that we went above and beyond to end.
Others here are way more knowledgeable about history, so I’ll leave the “past as prologue” bit to them. But general thoughts? When we hear or read a message that is correct and important, we amplify it, don’t drown it out with a bunch of, “but what about” type stuff. We can hold public figures to account without drowning out important messages they bring to the public sphere.
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I’d just like to note that you went straight from “Carter was a President of limited influence” to “Carter was the one who made the Afghan mujahideen possible” in the space of two sentences.
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Carter? Progressive?
Whoever, you still have an extractive economy.
But thanks for acting like I have any power re elections.
Didn’t he say that they were the moral equivalent of the founding fathers…? Reagan, I mean…
Odd Arne Westad’s The Global Cold War and Vijay Prashad’s The Darker Nations both argued that most historians of the cold war often focus far too much on the interventionism of either the US or Soviets at the expense of actors on the ground in the global south, and argue for focusing more on the people in the third world and how they very much used that global competition for their own needs and advantages…
Plus, I’d argue to think that any single president is responsible for what’s happening in teh world today with regards to US interventionism and it’s impact on the global south is absurd. It’s more about the interactions over a longer period of time, the role of actors on the ground in any particular location and their ability and willingness to exploit CW tensions, and the long term policies of the era that are responsible for the current set of circumstances. Jimmy Carter would not have bungled Iran if we had not helped overthrow their government in the 1950s and kept the increasingly brutal dictator in power in the first place… if there is anywhere that policies tend to be relatively stable between administration to administration, it’s in foreign policy. Very few break from the maintenance of American empire…
You misspelled Eisenhower… Carter hardly started our anti-democratic policies in the Middle East. Every single president in the Cold War era supported brutal dictators. Like many other policies, Carter inherited a mess that he got blamed for not immediately cleaning up
So, we ignore it by pinning the blame on a democratic president that served one term? How the fuck does that make any sense?
No. Reagan got him beat.
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