Oh, I think there should have been a healing process, all right. But one that imposed no obligations of a draft resister or deserter is way too one sided for my taste. It is forgiveness without atonement, to my mind.
President Ford’s approach to this subject was to exchange amnesty for draft evaders for two years of community service, and amnesty for deserters for two years of peacetime military service. That seems like a better approach to me.
I thought Ford pardoned the draft evaders.
Nope. Carter, in his first week in office.
Thinking back, I’m not sure these helped much. I won’t say it was a bad thing, just that it alone didn’t really change the situation.
I think that Carter did it the right way. The country was split too hard. I was a teenager when the war ended. The thought of being drafted and having to go to Nam was all too real. Luckily, by the time I turned 18, the war was over.
I’m 54 years old. Without getting into specifics, I’ve never felt so pesimistic of the future during the Carter administration until now.
I understand all of that. I really do. But what about those guys that opposed the war but decided that they had an obligation and did not evade the draft?
They made a sacrifice, often a pretty big one, because our society demanded it from them. And later they came to find out that society would have been okay with it had they just waited for their amnesty.
Even some community service would have been something - a recognition that a score was being settled on both sides.
The Ford amnesty program was moderate and reasonable. The Carter one was not.
This wasn’t part of his Presidency but the Carter brokered/Clinton solution to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program was to provide them with a nuclear power plant. What every crazy Dictator wants for Christmas. And they don’t even have to thank Jesus for it.
If the President has a bully pulpit, Carter had more of a “virginal High School Chess Club Treasurer with taped glasses” pulpit.
I don’t think that’s necessarily fair. Suppose you’re a baseball broadcaster and you’re doing a game where Bobby Bonds his the ball over 500 feet. You might say “Son of a gun, that Bonds can sure hit.” It doesn’t necessarily follow that this is a revelation to you, you might just be restating what you already knew full well to be true. Perhaps it was the same with Jordan and O’Neill.
Back to Carter:
Panama Canal Treaty. A big plus. I think it sent a message to other nations great and small that the United States was interested in treating other nations with dignity and respect. Let’s face it, the Panamanians weren’t given a lot of choice in the original treaty.
Olympic boycott. Plus. The athletes whined, but it was a non-violent way to show violent disapproval.
Camp David. Big Plus. Did it lead to lasting peace in the Middle East? No. But it did demonstrate that progress was possible.
SALT II. Big plus.
Vietnam draft dodger amnesty. Big plus. The war had split the country. Bringing back those opposed to the war was a needed step in the healing process. It was the right thing to do, just as Ford was right to pardon Nixon.
Jimmy Carter was in my opinion the most morally upright person to occupy the Oval Office. I think history will be kind to him.
smiling bandit:
You’ve got to be kidding. Egypt was at the forefront of every attack on Israel prior to Camp David. They had the largest army. The Sinai was the single best avenue for an anti-Israel army to attack through…no mountainous Golan Heights, no Jordan River in need of bridging.
Sure, there were and are still plenty of Arabs who hate Israel. But the scale of hostilities and loss of life were greatly reduced by the CD Accords.
Yes, apparently the fact that there used to be a Mid-East war about every 7 - 10 years is lost upon today’s youth. :rolleyes: 
MLS post is 100% correct in my opinion and basically what I was going to post.
Poor President/very nice man.
But Egypt had a great many reasons to avoid future war with Israel; it had not been to Egypt’s interest. More to the point, America has had, for no reason I can understand, a lot of pull with Egypt for a long time, and it had been government policy to lean on The Land of the Nile when they got out of hand.
In short, Egypt wanted to avoid angering Israel and gets its land back, and Israel was OK with that. The Camp David Accords, while nice, were basically a face-saving measure which stamped the politics which everyone already understood were pretty much a done deal. If it had not happened, I still don’t see Egypt continuing to attack Israel; they had too much to lose and too little chance of success.
smiling bandit:
Yet a mere six years earlier, they thought it was in their national interest. And six years prior to that. And nine years prior to that…
Did they have reasons to avoid war? Sure. Did they avoid war? Not until they signed the Camp David Peace Agreement.
How long is “a long time” to you? The United States has only really had pull with them since they decided to ditch Soviet patronage (which all the Arab nations relied on since the Six-Day War) in favor of American foreign aid and weaponry…in other words, since the beginning of the process that concluded in the Camp David Peace Treaty.
FWIW, there’s an article on Carter in today’s Washington Times.
Interesting article, I completely agree with the one part you quoted.
He is definately a better Ex-President than he was as President.
I wonder what sort of Ex-President this Bush will be, I betting on a low profile one.
Jim
I was going to a graduate school of international studies soon after the Carter administration, and I heard plenty of political views from around the world. I gathered that Argentinians praised Carter for keeping up pressure for human rights on their junta, while South African blacks were not at all happy with the lack of effect of Carter’s human rights policies on the apartheid regime. Apparently he was more of an international hit in Latin America.
Carter was elected after the country had been seriously damaged by the whole Nixon-Watergate-Ford-Pardon debacle. I think any Democrat would have been won that election.
He wasn’t a great President, but what he has done since his Presidency has proven him to be capable of greatness.
Not that it’s completely germane to the point of your post, but this statement is almost certainly untrue. You must be forgetting that the election was not determined until the wee hours of the morning, when Ohio and Hawaii went Democrat. And Governor Carter was able to get as far as he did primarily because he was a Beltway “outsider.” Certainly, Mo Udall would have had a tougher time; George Wallace would have been DOA.
Had the President of the United States not said during a televised debate that, “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration,” he likely would have been elected. That blunder, in the second debate, killed the momentum he was gaining after waxing Carter in the first debate. It’s kind of ironic that the statement turned out to be true, as events in Poland itself showed starting a mere 4 years later. However, stating it in simplistic terms on national television was the verbal equivalent of having five-o’clock shadow. :smack: