On Jan. 20, 2009, Jimmy Carter announced a new plan for peace in the Middle East and appealed to President Barack Obama to implement that plan. He met with Obama just days before the inauguration to attempt to sway him about what the former president called an “unnecessary war” in Gaza. Carter has long been a vocal proponent of establishing an ongoing relationship with Hamas’ terrorist leaders. It appears his influence has already made inroads in Obama’s Middle East policy plans.
Today’s society is replete with makeovers, everything from extreme home makeovers to extreme people makeovers – everything from plastic surgery, to botox, to liposuction and other cosmetic enhancements. However, one of the most extreme makeovers took place in France in the late 1970s when the dour Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was transformed almost overnight into a VIP, the darling of the liberal Western media.
Khomeini received the makeover of all times. This son of an Indian fortuneteller was stripped of his past. His father became the leader of the Khomeini clan who, supposedly, was murdered by Pahlavi’s father. Khomeini graduated from second-rate mullah to academic and renowned holy man. If he was the Eliza Doolittle of this scenario, who was the Henry Higgins? What country (or countries) was so determined to unseat the shah that it was willing to undertake the transformation?
Dominique Lorenz, a journalist for the French Libération, wrote that “having picked Khomeini to overthrow the shah, [the Americans] had to get him out of Iraq, clothe him with respectability, and set him up in Paris; a succession of events which could not have occurred if the leadership in France had been against it.”
In France, Khomeini’s Iranian visitors totaled more than 1,000 per day, all of whom the French blessed or, at the very least, turned a blind eye. The ayatollah became the “Guru of Hate” as he shared his vitriolic dislike for the shah with all who would listen and learn. These disciples, including a number from various American universities, were not coming just to sit at the feet of the “Teacher” and learn; their pockets, lined with money collected through the Bazaar, the commercial system in Iran, were empty when they left Khomeini’s presence. Some estimates place the contributions at approximately 20 million British pounds.
The ayatollah’s compound was reportedly surrounded by representatives of covert agencies from the major powers: the CIA, Britain’s MI-6, Russia’s KGB and the French intelligence organization, SDECE. One has to wonder why an unknown, uncultured, old cleric was the focus of such attention. Intelligence officers from Israel, France and the U.S. stated that the U.S. government wrote checks to Khomeini while he was in Paris in increments of approximately $150 million each. They were delivered through the CIA. One man with whom I spoke stated, “Jimmy Carter should have been tried for treason for aiding and abetting an enemy of the United States.”
Carter perceived Khomeini more as a religious holy man in a grass-roots revolution than the founding father of modern terrorism. Carter’s ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, said, “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint.” Carter’s Iranian ambassador, William Sullivan, said, “Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure.” Carter adviser James Bill proclaimed in a Newsweek interview on Feb. 12, 1979, that Khomeini was not a mad mujahid, but a man of “impeccable integrity and honesty.”
In the midst of the turmoil in Iran or perhaps because of it, President Carter called for a summit on the French Republic island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. Invited to meet with Carter in January 1979 were French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and British Prime Minister James Callaghan. In his memoir, “Answer to History,” the shah wrote: “Giscard said they hoped to ‘evaluate the situation of the world,’ with special emphasis on events in the eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. I believe that during those meetings the French and West Germans agreed with the British and the American proposals for my ouster.” It was at Guadeloupe, according to D’Estaing, that Carter showed his hand in favor of the ouster of the shah.
Giscard d’Estaing expressed his shock at Carter’s lack of regard for a country that had been a close ally for decades:
We were humanly shocked by the way Carter spoke because we knew at the end it would lead to the torture or the killing of the shah. And he [Carter] was not embarrassed at all; no, no, he spoke very lightly of a man that we supported very strongly. … He [Carter] was a bastard of conscience, a moralist, who treats with total lightness the fact of abandoning a man that we had supported together. At least you need to have some emotion. And we didn’t have any discussion. … It was, “We have decided.”
Is Jimmy Carter guilty of treason? In more recent times, he has thumbed his nose at the State Department after having been asked not to meet with leaders of Hamas. Mr. Carter drooled all over Yasser Arafat and went so far as to help him write a speech designed to influence opinion in the terrorist’s favor. Mr. Carter has betrayed the trust of the American people by purporting to represent its government in terrorist lairs; he has denounced the United States and its leaders in the presence of enemy combatants and terrorist leaders.
If not guilty of treason, Mr. Carter is at the very best a quisling, a collaborator with the enemy. Vedkum Quisling was a Norwegian politician who ordered all armed resistance to the Nazi invasion to cease, and gave Norway into the hands of the Germans during World War II. His name is now synonymous with the words “collaborator” and “traitor.” How far will Mr. Carter go in order to make a name for himself?
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