Conferring with the President

That venerably righteous, lance-tongued elder statesman, former American president, Jimmy Carter, is at it again. Understandably, since the Middle East and its unnervingly complex intrigues is his 'specialty', although he reserves his right to impose his humanitarian and progressive views on that troublesome continent of Africa, as well.

Mr. Carter continues to stand as tall as his years will permit him, with the experience garnered through his international travels, and as president of that great United States of America, at a time of huge social and political turmoil.

One would think he is far more self-assured and can avail himself of far more knowledge and integrity through his experiences than he appeared in 1979, when he was vexed, perplexed and completely unnerved by the fall of the Shah of Iran and the inexplicable rise of the fiercely Islamist Ayatollah Khomeini.

When Iranian passions ran high and volubly named the United States as the Great Devil whom Islam must defeat, taking 66 American embassy diplomats and workers hostage for 444 agonizing, and frightfully indecisive days. He could claim the inglorious blight of failed negotiating attempts for their release.

Along with the ill-fated and amazingly amateur Operation Eagle Claw rescue operation in 1980, which failed miserably. The mission saw the destruction of two aircraft, the deaths of no fewer than eight American servicemen, attempting to do their sworn duty on behalf of the President of the United States of America.

It would take the following year to see the release of the hostages, just in time for President Carter to turn over the seal of office to his successor, a far more able administrator. Who successfully faced down the world's most tyrannical ideology. And may not have been in full possession of his intellectual faculties at the time. Which leads one to question the extent of Mr. Carter's.

Yet here is Jimmy Carter, doing his inevitable shtick again: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, he has declared, must leave office. On the authority of his having brokered the 1979 peace accord between Egypt and Israel, one that was initiated without him, one that would have been inevitable, given the courage and determination of Anwar Sadat, but which success in helping to implement has been the shining star of his legacy in office.
President Mubarak has "become more politically corrupt" of late, he opinioned, determined to "perpetuate himself in office". And the current crisis in Egypt represents "...the most profound situation in the Middle East since I left office". It is interesting that this protest is given greater substance than that which occurred in Iran, than the American invasion of Iraq and the subsequent horrendous descent into violent chaos between Sunni and Shia.

But President Carter is a man of international stature. When he names the only democracy in the Middle East which should represent as a model of governance for its neighbours, an Apartheid state, it could not conceivably be construed as vicious slander. A simple misunderstanding of someone who cannot conceive of a Jewish state whereas Arab states make profoundly good sense.

And he is a Nobel laureate, after all.

Like the current president, Mr. Obama. Two American presidents, thirty years apart in their administrations, each of whom has faced an upheaval in the Middle East in countries which they held impressive levels of influence with. History may question President Carter's inept handling of the Iranian Revolution. But Mr. Carter has taken it upon himself to question President Obama's handling of the current situation, shaping up as the Egyptian Evolution.

He did not, presumably, confer beforehand with the current president.