The Wise Man from Plains

As a native Georgian, I've grown accustomed to being embarrassed by Jimmy Carter's remarks on public policy. His evolution into an elder statesman touted as more effective as an ex-president than he ever was as president surely speaks more to the enervation of left-wing punditry than to anything he's said or done in the past 24 years.

In an interview with the Independent, President Carter (as the headline says) "savages" George Bush and Tony Blair:

"There was no reason for us to become involved in Iraq recently. That was a war based on lies and misinterpretations from London and from Washington, claiming falsely that Saddam Hussein was responsible for [the] 9/11 attacks, claiming falsely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And I think that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair probably knew that many of the allegations were based on uncertain intelligence ... a decision was made to go to war [then people said] 'Let's find a reason to do so."

Yesterday hundreds of thousands protested the liberation of Iraq from one of the most bloodthirsty regimes on earth. Today, an ex-president and Nobel Peace Prize winner with a reputation as a humanitarian attacked the leaders whose policies set in motion the process of bringing the rule of law to the Arab countries of the Middle East. As I noted here yesterday, 57 percent of Iraqis think life is better now than under Saddam, and 71 percent believe their lives will improve in the coming year. Does that matter to Jimmy Carter? Is he naive, or does he deny that the removal of Saddam makes America safer even as it opens the prisons and ends the mass killings in Iraq? Or is his partisanship so naked as to belie his reputation as an honest peacemaker? Perhaps reflecting on the fact that his position concurs with Pat Buchanan's will give Mr. Carter cause to change his mind. It should at least give both men heartburn.