By Ami Isseroff
Remember Jimmy Carter, the crusading human rights warrior who got a Nobel prize for his efforts, and who initiated an international boycott of the Olympic games in Moscow because of Soviet rights violations? Sure you do. Around the world, Carter tried to pressure US supported regimes into respecting human rights, sometimes taking extreme measures. When Iranian generals wanted to suppress the Khomeini uprising, Carter administration officials were sent to warn them to respect human rights.
Jimmy's quest for human rights and justice have brought him to meet with a certain Middle East leader whose name comes up very often when human rights are mentioned.
Recognize the people in the photo? On the left - Jimmy Carter, the human rights advocate. On the right, Bashar Assad, the "leader" of Syria. In the Middle East, an area known for sand, camel dung, Hashish, petroleum and human rights violations, Bashar Assad's regime is an egregious leader in the human rights field, competing with world-class champs like Muammar Ghaddafi. Assad the second and Assad the first organized the occupation of Lebanon, murdering anyone who disagreed with them. Syrian opposition leaders are routinely jailed - if they are lucky. Syria's Kurdish minority is brutally suppressed. Sure Syria has elections. Assad is very popular - he got 99% of the vote because nobody else was really running against him.
Carter isn't meeting only with Assad, but with Khaled Meshal, the real head of the genocidal religious fanatic group, Hamas. Hamas's idea of democracy and human rights is slicing up opposition leaders into steaks and sending the pieces to their families, or throwing them off of tall buildings after breaking their kneecaps.
That is the distinguished record in human rights advocacy of the two leaders that Carter has been meeting with in Damascus. Both leaders are boycotted by the US state department, but Carter doesn't believe in boycotts any more.
Seasoned and honest Middle East observers understand that nothing can come of these meetings except legitimation of Assad and Meshal. Michael Young notes in the Daily Star that there is no point in negotiating with Hamas. He calls Carter A fool on a fool's errand. Tariq Alhomayed writes in as Sharq al Awsat:
Carter's meeting with Khaled Meshaal could harm the Palestinian cause and inter-Palestinian reconciliation more than benefitting it. One should recall House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's meeting with Bashar Assad in Damascus following the Democratic victory in US Congress.
Following that meeting, the entire region was suddenly deflated after Damascus received the wrong message and acted based upon it, along with Iran, in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. New disasters broke out in the entire region after the Syrian-Iranian alliance and their followers, Hezbollah and Hamas, assumed that President Bush had become a lame duck and that they were capable of implementing their agendas.
Jimmy Carter has given Bashar Assad and Khaled Meshal a great gift - legitimation from a "supporter of human rights." It seems that fake elections, murder of opponents and suppression of minorities now have the "Halal" or "Kosher" stamp from a chief Rabbi/Imam of human rights. But in doing so, Carter has effectively destroyed his own reputation as a champion of freedom and decency.
Ami Isseroff
Original content is Copyright by the author 2008.
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