Thursday, November 26, 2009              

In praise of Jimmy Carter
By Edwin Madunagu

HE is my favourite (former) American President. But it has not always been so. Jimmy Carter, now aged 85 years, was the 39th President of the United States of America. A candidate of the Democratic Party, Carter served for only one term: from January 20, 1977 to January 20, 1981. A deeply and sincerely religious man, our subject emerged from relative obscurity to become President. I have read in several places that when Jimmy Carter told his mother in 1976 that he intended to run for President, the surprised woman asked: "President of what?"

The consciousness of American imperialism is the beginning of radical consciousness of international politics. But I hope that it is no longer possible to depict anti-American imperialism as anti-America or, worse still, anti-American people. I am anti-American imperialism, but definitely not anti-America. I had become conscious of American imperialism by the time Jimmy Carter became President in January 1977. Beyond this, I had also matured enough to know that there could be marginal differences between American Presidents and between American governments. Despite the commitment of all American Presidents and governments to imperialism, the differences we have observed could be significant enough for one to rate one President above another and one government better than another. A President and a government may also be bad enough that even radical anti-imperialists may genuinely and reasonably anticipate a better successor. Thus there was relative relief when Carter succeeded Gerald Ford whose imperial arrogance irritated even "moderate" African rulers.

In the years following Jimmy Carter's four-year tenure, I carried with me three memories of his regime. The first was what seemed to me then as Carter's more than casual romance with "democracy" and "human rights", especially the latter. The second was his rather close relationship with General Olusegun Obasanjo who was Nigeria's military ruler when Carter assumed office. The relationship continued after both men had left office. The third memory was, at that time, the "mother" of memories: The "hostage war" between imperial America under President Carter and the young Islamic Republic of Iran under Ayatolla Ruhollah Khomeini.

November 4, 1979 is a date I remember very well because of two events that took place on that day. It was the day, a Sunday, that late Tai Solarin came out, in his Sunday Tribune column, with the piece The stolen presidency, in which he alleged that Shehu Shagari's Presidency, inaugurated five weeks earlier, was stolen electorally and judicially; and that this presidency would push the country towards a one-party dictatorship. Later that day, the news came that radical Iranian students had breached the security of the American Embassy in Teheran and held all the staff hostage. The 62 Americans were held for more than a year. An attempt made by President Carter to free them through a military raid in April 1980 ended in failure. The hostages were only released hours after Ronald Reagan took office on January 20, 1981. It was an irony that the release was effected, peacefully, by the most right-wing of American Presidents in recent history, a man whose relationship with Margaret Thatcher and the Pope at the time was called an "unholy Alliance" by an irreverent West European.

One of the most radical actions taken by the invading Iranian students was the seizure of tens of thousands of classified documents. These documents embodied, among other things, decades of secret relationships between the American state and several countries of the Third World. The students systematically disseminated these documents to radical movements throughout the world. We have received a thick dossier on several Nigerians who were in the payroll of America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as informants and agents. The Nigerians were in various professions: academia, journalism, business, military, politics, foreign service, etc. We made good use of the information but also paid dearly for it: The exposure of powerful Nigerians sparked off a chain of events which ended with the murder of one of our members in Calabar. The embassy debacle was the main reason for Carter's failure to win re-election in November 1980.

Yes, Jimmy Carter was not re-elected President. But, on leaving office, he became what he could not have been while in office: an American President with a truly human heart - especially in relation to American state's and American people's relationship with the rest of the world. The immediate inspiration for my present appreciation of the former President was his widely circulated statement dated July 14, 2009 and titled The words of god do not justify cruelty to women, with the subtitle Discrimination and abuse wrongly backed by doctrine are damaging to society. It was a lucid and powerfully argued statement, backed by the Holy Bible and statutes of the United Nations, on the human rights of women by an international statesman whose religious beliefs I had earlier described as deep and genuine. I shall return to this statement, but first a quick check on what our subject has been doing since leaving office almost 29 years ago.

Like most mainstream politicians in America, Jimmy Carter is a wealthy man. But while some are wealthy and good, others are wealthy and bad - all within the severe restrictions, imposed by the dominant, and their chosen, ideology. Since leaving office, Jimmy carter, a good wealthy man, has established The Carter Centre (for the promotion of human rights across the globe), built a presidential library and taught at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, his home state which, before becoming President, he had governed for a couple of years. He has written many books and received many honours at home and abroad including the Nobel Peace Prize (2002). His life out of office has been a very active one. In 1994, Jimmy Carter, acting as a secret peace envoy, helped the incumbent American President, Bill Clinton, establish the framework for the re-establishment of official contact, and eventual negotiation, between America and North Korea. Between 2002 and 2003, carter and his Centre helped negotiate the Geneva Accord between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

A strong critic of American policy in the Middle East, Carter has, in recent years, visited Syria and held discussions with the exiled leaders of Hamas, the Islamist rulers of the Palestinian territory called the Gaza Strip. In May 2008, according to one credible report, "while arguing that the United States should directly talk to Iran, Carter stated that Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal". Using his personal authority and credibility and utilising the agency of The Carter Centre, Jimmy Carter helped negotiate the Nairobi Agreement between Sudan and Uganda. In 2007, he joined the internationally respected organisation of elder statesmen and stateswomen called The Elders which had been created by Nelson Mandela. The Elders "offer their influence and experience to support peace building, help address major cases of human suffering and promote shared interests of humanity". A delegation of the orgnanisation which included Carter, toured Darfur, Sudan, in October 2007. In the same year he visited Dublin, Ireland, and held talks on human rights with the Irish President. In November 2008, Carter, along with some members of The Elders, was prevented from entering Zimbabwe to discuss human rights.

In Latin America, Carter's activities include the following: He led a high-powered American mission to Haiti in 1994. He visited Cuba in May 2002 and held extended discussions with Fidel Castro and other government officials. According to a credible report, Carter "was allowed to address the Cuban public, uncensored, on national television and radio with a speech that he wrote and presented in Spanish. In the speech, he called on the U.S. to end an effective 43-year-old economic embargo on Cuba and Castro to hold free elections, improve human rights and allow greater civil liberties". He met with "political dissidents". According to BBC news, the visit made Carter the "first President of the United States of America, in or out of office to visit the island since the Cuban revolution of 1959".

At home Jimmy Carter has been a consistent critic of America's domestic and foreign policies. In particular, he was very critical of George W. Bush and America's war on Iraq. He was very critical of Tony Blair's uncritical, if not slavish, relationship with George Bush. Carter's opposition to the death penalty is well known: "As you know, the United States is one of the few countries which still carry out the death penalty despite the ongoing tragedy of wrongful conviction and gross racial and class-based disparities that make impossible the fair implementation of this ultimate punishment".

I want to end this appreciation with only three excerpts from Carter's statement on the human rights of women. The first is a quote from the Holy Bible. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). Two: "This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. It is widespread. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths". Three: "The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter".