I always admired Jimmy Carter as the greatest post world war two American President. Hailing from a modest background and having nuclear engineering degree, he has worked hard to bring international peace. Even during his presidency he played a crucial role to bring the historic Israel-Egypt peace accord. His soft approach in handling the Iran crisis cost him his presidency just the way Gorbachev’s peace initiative made him unpopular in Russia. Both leaders lost power because both gave more importance to international issues rather than their own selfish national interest.
On the other hand Bush has proven to be the worst and most incompetent American President in the American history. He facilitated the distruction of middle east peace process the moment he assumed office and then induced 11th Sept incident. And then compounded the problems further by invading Iraq on false pretext and made it a total mess. He got world wide support and sympathy after the tragic 11th Sept incident but his subsequent behaviour which led to Iraq war totally wiped out all that support. Today America is diplomatically isolated with just couple of nations with Anglo-saxon majority by his side. I believe the current american campaign against so called terrorism may continue for a century just like the one between England and France in 18th century.
On economic front, Bush has delivered four deficit budget out of his five years of presidency which tells volume to his accomplishment. After having the greatest surplus budget during Clinton’s presidency, bush presented to Americans the greatest deficit budget.
Bush has failed diplomatically, economically and politically on all fronts and has made numerous enemies around the world. There are many people like me who once were staunch pro-American and had welcomed the demise of USSR to see a new world order with great hope that ultimate peace would dawn with America being the only super power. But Bush era dashed that hope.
Today Carter’s comment that Bush’s policy on middle east crisis is erroneous and he must quickly pull out from Iraq has great significance. He undoubtedly represents the most prominent sane voice from America.
Let us hope good sense prevails upon Bush.