The Carter Presidency Revisited

[MisterP]

15. we *poured* money into the mujads under Carter and the ISI set up

he same Saudi-brokered channels that created--nay, WERE al-Qaeda: Cyclone's arms, money, and radical pipeline started in 1979 and Azzam came in 1980 under CIA and ISI auspices, heading the "Afghan Arab" networks that Afghan mujahedeen depended on (though to be fair many mujads weren't Taliban but simply smack-runners) if Carter's off the hook for Afghanistan, then how's Reagan not? this is all a matter of public record--heck, it's a matter of plain formal logic: there's no way to argue that luring the USSR into Afghanistan has nothing to do with 9-11

1977-9 Carter's foreign policy had been marked by a human-rights emphasis: Chile, Guatemala, and South Africa were particularly punished--Americans were heartened that Iran even had a Muslim Martin Luther in Ali Shariati! There were still some uncomfortable allies, like Somoza and the Shah (who got more money than Israel does even today IIRC). The Iranian Revolution was a staggering blow to everyone in Washington, and Carter was particularly stung by the pro-Carter Democrat Jeane Kirkpatrick's noisy assault on his foreign policy--replacing "moderate autocrats friendly to the U.S. with less friendly autocrats of extremist persuasion." At the very least the WH needed intel so the CIA firings were slowed down--and officers started building up their private empires, particularly with the human and financial resources the Afghan adventure was providing. Vietnam, the Church Committee, Carter's human-rights focus, even the "New World Informational Order" had spooked the establishment and enraged the spooks, generating not only the neocons as a movement but as a center of power and influence that could massage foreign policy in its favor.

the neocon worldview started creeping into foreign policy in the late 70s: Carter compared the assassination of Amin to WWII and brought back the Domino Theory--typical Cold-Warrior tropes--but much more dangerously the incoming arrivals of both parties after 1978 would see any hostage situation, any overthrow, any STRIKE was a surefire sign that Moscow was advancing and freedom retreating: all problems were due to failure to restrain “Soviet expansionism”; so the Carter WH not only set up the massive ISI-handled networks that the Reagan WH bought into, it also laid the ideological grounds for its own demise, handing the terms of the 1980 debate over to the GOP and freeing the CIA to act on its own; Carter was also the one who struggled mightily to keep the Nicaraguan National Guard in power 1979 and, failing that, use Honduras not only as a refuge for Somoza's child-butchers to raid Nicaragua but a militarized stronghold against regional revolutions--a "new Nicaragua"; next door, El Salvador got millions in "clean counterinsurgency" aid under Carter, and he patched up with Guatemala; this all not only laid material and ideological foundations for Reagan's revival of the Cold War, but gave it a bipartisan legitimation: it made its logic bipartisan, and made Dems who'd otherwise oppose these interventions think that this time we're finally "doing it right"

so the question is--how does this foreign-policy shift reflect on Carter as a person? Carter was massively and increasingly uncomfortable with the resurgence of the sort of CIA he'd run to dissolve, was sick of feeling carefully manipulated by the "old hands," feeling that every time he sat down with Brzezinski or any staffer they were just there to snow him, to keep the reformist in the dark; he'd let himself get spooked (in both senses of the word) after Iran, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, Angola, Afghanistan, Ethiopia--had found himself thinking like the people who'd caused the global problems he'd run to reverse 1976, had found himself turned intolerant of any social change abroad; he'd even been browbeaten into cutting capital gains 40%; Truman, Eisenhower, and LBJ all went through these same regretful processes after the stepped down, but Carter was feeling this in 1980, especially as his own men October Surprised him, and a second term would've swung differently by 1982: I might add that Carter is in fact one of the few goddamned noble souls in the WH this century, above even JFK and FDR (nobility-wise at least)