Carter: I Would Have Beaten Reagan if I Were “Manly”

October 1, 2014 by Daniel Greenfield

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Jimmy Carter would have beaten Ronald Reagan if only he had shown he was more “manly” by bombing Iran, according to the former president’s own analysis of his 1980 election defeat.

More than three decades after he was ousted from the White House, Mr Carter said firmer action during the Iranian hostage crisis would have secured a second term in office.

“I could’ve been re-elected if I’d taken military action against Iran, shown that I was strong and resolute and, um, manly and so forth,” Mr Carter told CNBC.

But the Democrat former president, whose name is used by Republicans as a byword for weakness, said he was comfortable with the restraint he had shown.

“I could have wiped Iran off the map with the weapons that we had, but in the process a lot of innocent people would have been killed, probably including the hostages and so I stood up against all that,” he said.

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Carter offers up an Obamaesque strawman. Either wipe Iran off the map or let it continue terrorizing America. It’s a false choice.

Iran could have been forced to release the hostages through means far short of wiping it off the map. The problem is that the Carter Administration wanted an Islamic Iran as part of its Green Belt strategy for Islamic promotion. The same strategy that led it to begin sending aid to Afghanistan.

Carter’s failure when it came to the hostages hurt him, but that was mainly because it played into his larger image as a whining failure who couldn’t manage to do anything right. If Carter were overseeing successes at home, the hostage crisis would not have hurt Mr. Malaise that badly. Reagan messed up Lebanon and walked away from it. Carter however had nothing but failures.

Americans saw an inept leader being pushed around by everyone.

Read more: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenf...f-i-were-manly/