The Jimmy Carter Remarks: The Transcript
Some (I’m talking to you, Peter! – but you were right to be skeptical) have questioned whether Jimmy Carter really said the things the New York Sun alleged him to say. Let’s go to the transcript. On the mistaken assumptions of U.S. policy vis-a-vis Israel:
Let me first review the official position of the United States. From Dwight Eisenhower to the road map of George W. Bush, our policy has been that Israel’s borders coincide with those of 1949. The United States has consistently stated since 1967 that U.N. Resolution 242 is binding on Israel as a foreign power that is occupying Palestinian territory. To quote its key commitments, “The inadmissability of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every state in the area can live in security, and the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the territories occupied in the recent conflict” — I’m still quoting — “and a termination of all claims or states of belligernecy, and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty of territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries, free from threats or acts of violence.”
That United Nations Resolution 242 is the foundation for any possibility of peace in the future. These exact words have been accepted and reemphasized by Israel at Camp David in 1978, and in Oslo in 1993. But permanent settlements have been considered by some as, quote, “creating facts on the ground” clearly designed to preclude withdrawal from the occupied territories. There were just a few hundred settlers in the West Bank and Gaza when I became president, and all my predecessors had categorized each settlement as both illegal and an obstacle to peace.
The religious shot at Bush:
Anyway, I believe — and I’m sure you know better than I because of your distinguished position — that the essence of my faith is one of peace. We worship the Prince of Peace, not preemptive war.
On subverting the will of the current administration by actively campaigning against it at the UN:
So I devoted one evening in New York, and I think 17 of the most recalcitrant and powerful members came and had supper with me. These were — the United States was represented there, plus Cuba and Egypt and Pakistan — the whole group of them who have — (laughter) — who were somewhat troublesome. (Laughter.) I felt at the end of that evening and President Eliasson did too that we made great progress, and one of the things I assured them of was that the United States was not going to try to dominate all the other nations in the world in the Human Rights Council.
Well, the next day, our ambassador to the United States came out and demanded that in the new council, that all the permanent members of the Security Council would be permanent members, which subverted exactly what I had promised them. So I called Condoleezza Rice and told her about the problem, and she said that that statement by our representative was not going to be honored.
Well, we reached a good compromise, in my opinion, not what I wanted and not what Kofi Annan wanted, not what the United States wanted, not what Egypt wanted, not what Europe wanted, but it was a very good compromise and a great improvement over the existing debacle of the present Human Rights Commission.
This will be a much more effective organization. It will meet at least 10 times as many days per year. It will not be bogged down constantly in just arguments between the United States and Cuba, going all over the world trying to get enough votes to condemn each other. (Laughter.) It will be a good screening process to make sure that despicable members cannot be on the council. It will be reduced in size. A lot of improvements. I don’t want to take up any more time with it.
But unfortunately, despite my entreaties to the secretary of State, the United States did come out against it. And I understand that within the administration there’s a lot of argument; it’s not a clear decision. There are a lot of people in Washington who think that we should have endorsed this compromise.
This morning, by the way, the European Union came out in favor of it, which is a major step forward. So my hope is that when the vote is taken in the General Assembly, soon, with President Eliasson supervising, that the other countries would out-vote the United States and it will be adopted.
It’s right there…the report was accurate…
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I read the entire transcript, but very quickly, as I’m off to attend my daughter’s fourth grade talent show. It seemed pretty reasonable to me – it was a long exegesis of the Isreali-Palestinian conflict and, I think, an accurate one. It was not anti-Isreal (“First, Israel’s right to exist and to live in peace must be recognized and accepted by Palestinians and all other neighbors. Second, the killing of innocent people by suicide bombs or other acts of violence cannot be condoned.”) Nor was it pro-Hamas (“the last thing I want to do is to be a spokesman for or a supporter of Hamas or to condone the terrible atrocities that they have perpetrated.”) His prescription for the future seems reasonable (“In the short term, I believe the best approach is to follow Wolfensohn’s advice. Give the dust a chance to settle in Palestine and await the outcome of Israel’s election later this month — at about the same time, by the way, that the new Palestinian government will be formed.”) He was complementary to George H W Bush (“a major breakthrough in the peace process occurred under President George H.W. Bush and Secretary James Baker at Madrid”), and I didn’t read it as being anti-George W Bush (“In 2002, President George W. Bush endorsed an Arab proposal to normalize relations with Israel in exchange for withdrawal to its own borders. And the following year he and other members of the international Quartet reemphasized U.N. Resolution 242 as a basis for a permanent agreement and called for a sovereign Palestinian state side by side with Israel.”)
The Condi Rice thing looks confusing: it appears to me that Rice disavowed what Bolton said.
Again, I read it quickly and cursorily – but if you read the entire transcript, it doesn’t seem like a big deal to me.
No, no big deal at all – if you think it’s acceptable for ex-Presidents to carry on diplomacy that contradicts official U.S. policy, then it’s great! Really, peter, earlier you admitted that it was troubling – now you reflexively retreat into apologetics…very disappointing…
In fact, peter, you earlier called the remarks bizarre, and were skeptical because they were so damaging…yet, though the transcript backs up the NY Sun report word for word (despite your assurance that it was probably bogus), now you’re just hunky-dory with it all!
Very, very, very disappointing…you wear blinders, my friend, where the NY Times and Jimmy Carter are concerned…
Ex-prez Carter works against US interests
And doing his level best to undermine the President at every turn. Via the NYSun:
President Carter personally called Secretary of State Rice to try to convince her to reverse her U.N. ambassador’s position on changes to the U.N. Human Rights …
Not at all — when you read the entire transcript, it becomes evident that the NY Sun report was inaccurate, because it takes Carter’s remarks out of context and distorts them. In the question and answer session, someone from the UN asks about the Human Rights Commission.
1) The Sun article makes it appear as though Carter’s speech was about the UN — it wasn’t.
2) More importantly, the Sun omits the reason why Carter spoke to the 17 diplomats. The Carter Center has been involved in the UN’s reoganization efforts. Carter was invited by the President of the General Assembly because “he was having a very great problem in getting the key players to come together and agree to a reasonable compromise.” So Carter accepted the invitation, went to New York, and did what he could to mediate.
This is a good thing. Carter is a mediator who was asked by the UN to help because all sides regard him as an honest broker. This is what ex-Presidents should do.
This is not what the article reports. The article makes it appear that Jimmy Carter spoke to the diplomats on his own volition to conduct a shadow foreign policy. Nothing could be further from the truth. For example, when Carter says “we reached a good compromise,” the implication in the story is that he was mediating on behalf of the US. He wasn’t. He was acting at the invitation of the UN and doing what mediators do: reach compromises.
3) When the article quotes Carter saying he assured the delegates that the US wouldn’t dominate the other countries, the article implies that he is giving US government assurance. When you see it in the full context — a mediator appearing at UN invitation — what you have is something very different. And, in fact, he was correct, as Rice “said that that statement by our representative was not going to be honored.”
But that’s not what the article says. (“He tried to undermine officials at lower levels in an effort to influence policy.”) He was not undermining officials: he was mediating at the UN’s request, representing the Carter Center, not the US Government.
Moreover, the article starts with “President Carter personally called Secretary of State Rice to try to convince her to reverse her U.N. ambassador’s position on changes to the U.N. Human Rights Commission.” What the article doesn’t say is that Rice agreed with him. This is a clear distortion.
4) The bit about hoping for the compromise he forged to be adopted — contrary to the US position — is similarly overblown. The article makes it seem as though Carter went out campaigning against US foreign policy. He didn’t. He was asked to mediate a compromise, he did so, the US took a contrary position, and he said that he thought his compromise was a better deal. Again, by omitting the context of Carter’s speech to the 17 diplomats, the Sun report distorts what happened.
5) The article reports that “Mr. Carter then went on to attack American Christians who support Israel.” He doesn’t. Nor would he: after all, Carter is an American Christian who supports Isreal.
6) As for “the mistaken assumptions of U.S. policy vis-a-vis Israel:” what exactly are the mistaken assumptions? It seems to me that his exegesis is factual.
7) When (in answer to a seminary President) Carter says “the essence of my faith is one of peace. We worship the Prince of Peace, not preemptive war,” he is correct. I’m not an expert on evangelical Christianity, but I don’t think there is anything in the gospel which talks about waging war on a country which never attacked you.
The bottom line is that you have a reasoned and cogent speech which is distorted by a partisan newspaper to make it seem very different. It will be sent around the blogosphere to convince people that Jimmy Carter is really Ramsey Clark in disguise. Carter is a good man who does good things, like promoting democracy by supervising elections and trying to bring disparate parties together as a mediator. It is shameful that his reputation should be slimed by partisans looking to score cheap points.
Preposterous, peter – your answer to everything uncomfortable is it was ‘out of context’ – I don’t care if Jimmy Carter was invited by Moses himself to ‘mediate’ UN differences – he is directly (and you cannot contradict this, because it is factual) negotiating against the official US stance. That’s not his job…no one elected or appointed him as a US representative – in fact, we threw his sorry butt out after four painful, humiliating years.
Carter does attack conservative Chrisitians, to the accompanying laughter in the transcript – I needn’t point it out, I assume you can read well enough. Give me one instance of a passage in the article that turned out to be incorrect – and prove it by pointing to both the passage and the transcript.
If you think Jimmy Carter is a great man – and clearly you do – and if you think that Israel should withdraw to the 1949 borders, despite 3 seperate Arab-initiated wars to destroy it, you are welcome to advocate it. Just don’t expect me to go along for your fantasy where Carter isn’t a partisan and the rest of the world is…
Sorry, Peter, but I have trouble accepting any speech in which a former Cold War president draws an equivalency between the behavior on the Human Rights Commission of the US and Cuba as reasoned and cogent:
“It will not be bogged down constantly in just arguments between the United States and Cuba, going all over the world trying to get enough votes to condemn each other.”
In other words, the actions of the US on the old Human Rights Commission to curb Cuban human rights abuses were a bureaucratic trick, just like the Cuban efforts to humiliate and discredit the US by exploiting the Commission.
And that was a laugh line.
At this point, it doesn’t surprise me all that much that Carter would try to make an end run around the administration on an issue like this, but I do think his references to the Secretary of State deserve a closer look. Carter claims that Rice told him she was not going to support Bolton’s statement, but then says she did just that. That means that 1) Bolton spoke out of turn and Rice disavowed his statement, 2) Rice lied to Carter when she talked to him on the phone or 3) Rice said no such thing. Option one seems somewhat unlikely to me given that what the US has done was consistent with Bolton’s statement(s) on the proposal for the Council–and quite frankly, had he done something like that without consulting with his boss he would not have his job for very long. 2) I suppose you could argue this, but why would she lie? 3) Would this be the first time Carter heard what he wanted to hear rather than what the person he was talking to was actually saying? I know I am predisposed to think the worst of him as you are of Rice, but I wonder if Carter claimed in the additional negotiations when he reached that “good compramise” that he had the assurances of the Secretary of State that Bolton’s statement would not be supported to give himself greater weight and legitimacy on the international stage?
Seems to me it’s a question worth asking, because as far as I can tell, all the public statements of the State Department and the US Ambassador to the UN on this topic have been perfectly consistent. Now we have Mr. Carter claiming, with absolutely no proof, that there is dissention in the ranks–most dramatically a rift between Secretary Rice and Ambassador Bolton–which is a claim that benefits no one but himself if he’s trying to establish himself as the “true” voice of the US on this issue.
1) Yes, it is true that “no one elected or appointed him as a US representative.” He wasn’t there as a US representative — he was there as the head of the Carter Center. What is your suggestion? That the Carter Center shouldn’t work with the UN (at the UN’s request) to help their reorgnanization? Or that, when invited to mediate among 17 diplomats, he decline the invitation? Or that he accept the invitation but only parrot current US policy?
After Reagan retired, he went to his ranch and wasn’t heard from often. Aside from doing the tsunami thing with Clinton, George Bush has more or less kept to himself. Clinton did Habitat for Humanity, started the Carter Center, supervised 62 elections, and teaches Sunday School. I give him a lot of credit for that.
I also give him credit for accepting the UN invitation to mediate. He can’t do that job without independence from US foreign policy. Apparently your belief is that an ex-President ought not to get involved in current affairs, or if he (or in 2017, she) does, he/she ought to be a de facto spokesman for current US policy. I disagree.
2) I assume that the attack on conservative Christians is this:
“there’s a fairly substantial and very influential group of Christians who believe that the final coming of Jesus Christ can only occur after the entire Holy Land is taken over by Israel. And that includes the destruction, for instance, of the Dome of the Rock and other Arab or non-Christian groups.”
I’m not Christian so maybe I lack a sensitivity to these things, but where’s the attack? Sounds like a statement of fact to me.
3) “Give me one instance of a passage in the article that turned out to be incorrect:” the article talks about a meeting Carter had with seventeen diplomats, but neglects to point out that it was a UN-sponsored meeting that he was invited to attend to resolve a dispute. As a result, the article makes Carter look like a loose cannon trying to conduct a shadow foreign policy, when in reality he was responding to the request of the President of the UN General Assembly. It is as bad as if a newspaper ran a story with the headline “Cheney Shoots Whittington in Cold Blood.” Things look very different when placed in context.
AE: It seems to me that what Carter is saying is that the Human Rights Commission became a charade, not that there is an equivalency between what the US and Cuba did — when he mentions that “despicable members” were on the council, he is echoing what John Bolton (and a lot of others, including the Times) have been saying — I don’t mean to be Clinton-like in parsing the speech, but I get a different read than you do.
My guess is that what happened was option 4: Bush overrode Rice. I doubt that she lied.
Incidentally, I’m not predisposed to think the worst of Rice — I happen to like her (and Powell) quite a lot. I think she is one of the best people in the Bush administration. (That may sound like being the third tallest person in Japan, but that’s not how I mean it).
All right, I’ll give you this much…third tallest person in Japan is a good line…
I like that line too.
But Peter, not to flog a dead horse–but if Carter wanted to say that the Commission had become a charade he could have simply said so and not cracked a joke in which he blames Cuba and the US equally for the failure. Do you think those were random choices? I give Carter more credit than that.
Rice has expressed nothing but respect for Bolton and admiration for his job performance–she did so publicly in an interview in the middle of December, for example, right when she was supposed to be rejecting his position on this. And do you really think Bush would over-ride his prime favorite Rice in favor of Bolton? I just don’t see it.
When I see the line “it will not be bogged down constantly in just arguments between the United States and Cuba, going all over the world trying to get enough votes to condemn each other,” what I read is that instead of being confined to one conflict — US vs. Cuba — the reorganized commission would be able to look at other instances of human rights abuses. Perhaps your reading is a fair reading too — but it wasn’t what came to mind when I first read it.
I absolutely think Bush would over-ride Rice — I think that Rumsfeld and Cheney have much greater sway than Rice does, and my guess is that a strong voice from any of the three would trump Rice –
That may have been true at one time, but the current conventional wisdom, for what it’s worth, is that Condi’s star has risen while Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s have declined…
Furthermore, Rumsfeld and Rice are making a big show of working together–the co-ordination between defense and state is actually quite remarkable and such a dramatic change from the way things worked with Powell. So again, I just don’t see her on the outside here, either in terms of Bush or Rumsfeld. Cheney I can’t speak to. He’s inscrutable.
“I don’t care if Jimmy Carter was invited by Moses himself to ‘mediate’ UN differences – he is directly negotiating against the official US stance.”
Assuming that Carter even knew what the official US stance was — and there is a significant indication that he did not — obviously, any negotiated settlement between these recalcitrant UN members and the US (for it was clearly mentioned that a US representative was present as well…) would likely differ from Bolton’s preferred stance, put forward after this proposed settlement had been hammered out.
“That’s not his job…no one elected or appointed him as a US representative…”
Which perhaps explains why Carter wasn’t there as a US representative, but as a mediator, at the request of the UN. That *WAS* his job, after all.