Diplomacy: It's often asserted that while Jimmy Carter's presidency was marred by error and incompetence, the peace deal he brokered at Camp David was an unmitigated triumph. Time to pop that bubble, too.
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Carter's effrontery in calling George W. Bush "the worst" president can be traced in part to his supposed success in negotiating the Camp David accords. Signed in March 1978, that deal came about after Carter used the power of the presidency to get Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to talk peace.
A major accomplishment, we're always told. Just ask the Nobel committee, which awarded Carter its Prize for Peace in 2002. But was the agreement as successful as billed?
Let's start with the idea that Carter brought Sadat and Begin together. He didn't. It was Sadat who made perhaps the bravest gesture ever by an Arab leader, traveling to Jerusalem and speaking to the Knesset in 1977, a year before Camp David. It cost him his life.
Carter did provide Israel and Egypt with a venue — the presidential retreat at Camp David. Problem is, the pre-arranged "deal" was struck only after it was clear that the U.S. would give massive aid to both nations to keep them at peace. As Mideast scholar Bernard Lewis would later say, "Obviously, they needed someone to pay the bill, and who but the United States could fulfill that function?"
Even today, thanks to Camp David, Israel and Egypt are the two largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid — between $3 billion and $5 billion a year since 1978. Despite that, only one of the two nations can be called a friend.
Two years after Camp David, Sadat was murdered by Muslim extremists angry at the deal. And today in Egypt, there are no plaques of remembrance, no great monuments to Sadat. Only anger and bitterness.
Israel did return the oil-rich Sinai to Egypt in return for peace. But the "aid" we give Egypt mostly goes to buy U.S. weapons. The average Egyptian has no democracy, and the standard of living has barely budged since 1978.
Nor has our aid bought Egypt's good will. A poll this year by WorldPublicOpinion.org found that 83% of Egyptians believe a main goal of U.S. foreign policy is to undermine the Muslim world.
Also, a majority don't think al-Qaida was behind 9/11. After a landmark 2005 election, 20% of the seats in Egypt's parliament belong to the extremist Islamic Brotherhood. "Peace" doesn't describe the situation. "Cessation of hostilities" might be better.
Even more important is what Camp David didn't achieve: a deal with the Palestinians. Carter failed to get his "friend," PLO terrorist leader Yasser Arafat, to sign on to his vision for peace in the Middle East, though it meant autonomy for the Palestinians.
Why? "Peace for us means the destruction of Israel," Arafat said two years after Camp David. "We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will last for generations." Arafat never renounced those beliefs. And today, thanks to him and his terrorist brethren, the Middle East is as full of bloodshed and hate as it has ever been.
At best, Camp David was a modest diplomatic achievement — certainly not enough to lift Carter from his position as history's worst president.
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