Carter: Iraq is "one of the greatest blunders" ever by an American President and Israel is operating Apartheid in Palestine.

Jimmy Carter has called the invasion of Iraq, "one of the greatest blunders that American presidents have ever made". When he was then asked if Iraq was worse that Vietnam he stated:

I think it's going to be a close call, but perhaps much more vividly known by the rest of the world than Vietnam was.

He then went on to state that America could claim victory in Iraq were it able to withdraw it's troops leaving behind a "viable democracy". I am sure Carter, even as he says these words, knows that this is an impossible dream. Unless all Americans have simply lost their marbles when it comes to this conflict.

Bush continues to rant diatribes that bear no relation to reality:

The war on terror that we fight today is more than a military conflict, it is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century.

And in this struggle, we can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren.

To view the current battle against terrorists in this "struggle of the century"/apocalyptic way, is typical Bush/Blair hyperbole. They love the notion that a couple of hundred Afghanis armed with box cutters and suicide bombs are somehow equivalent to Hitler - a man who formed the largest army the world, at that point, had ever seen. They love to view the terrorist threat in this way because they are then cast in the role of Churchill and the rest of us, who refuse to see the world in this way, are cast in the role of Neville Chamberlain.

It's garbage. And I would have hoped Carter would have defined it as such. However, there is a long tradition of past American President's refusing to criticise present ones, so maybe he was simply following that convention.

He did, however, make one very good point about steps the US could take to reassure Iraq and her neighbours regarding American intentions:

I would immediately convene an international conference and let it be known -- which is not known now -- that America has no desire to maintain a permanent military presence in Iraq. Almost every Arab leader with whom I have discussed this issue in the last year or two believe that the current plan is some day, 20 years from now, still to have a military presence of the United States inside Iraq.

As I have previously reported, the US has plans to build six enduring bases in Iraq and to use the country as "an unsinkable aircraft carrier for its troops and bases for years to come."

Carter then went on to discuss his new book, "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid", which should be applauded for the title alone. For a former US President to be brave enough to use the word Apartheid when discussing Israeli policy towards the Palestinians is a welcome change from the normal asinine language that US commentators use when discussing this conflict.

Carter was careful to explain that Apartheid was not being carried out in Israel, where a large Arab population live, but he did talk of Apartheid in the Occupied Territories:

However, in the West Bank, in the occupied territories, a horrible example of apartheid is being perpetrated against the Palestinians who live there. Israel has penetrated and occupied, confiscated and colonized major portions of the territory belonging to the Palestinians.

In order to do that, they have now built roads between those isolated settlements -- about -- well, more than 200 of them. And those roads connect those settlements but they are exclusively to be used by Israelis.

So the Palestinians are separated from their own land. And in order to keep the Palestinians from objecting to this, the Israelis have arrested and imprisoned about 9,000 Palestinians, including 300 children, some of them 12 years old, and others women, about 100 women.

And, in the process, the Palestinians are completely treated as inferior citizens. This is not...

BLITZER: What...

CARTER: This is not based on racism, is the last thing I want to say. It's based on a minority of Israelis -- and I say that very carefully -- a minority of Israelis who refuse to swap land for peace.

At This point Blitzer spluttered and started to repeat the mantra about the great offer that we all know Barak never actually made. At this point Carter does a very good job of dismantling that oft repeated lie - that Barak accepted a deal that Arafat later refused - and Carter points out that such a deal was never accepted by the Israelis.

This lie is repeated because of a passage in Clinton's book in which Clinton makes a claim that the facts simply don't back up.

Carter also did well when Blitzer attempted to put the blame for all the recent violence on the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit:

CARTER: Israel withdrew from Gaza and then the Palestinians -- what precipitated this was not the Katusha rockets, it was the seizure of an Israeli soldier, which was probably a mistake on their side.

So the Palestinians do hold one Israeli soldier.

The Israelis hold 9,200 Palestinians, as I said earlier, including 300 children and about 100 women.

And as soon as the Palestinians took this soldier, immediately they offered to swap this soldier to the Israelis for a limited number of women and children being held by the Israelis in prison.

The Israelis rejected that offer.

I find it so refreshing that a former American President is willing to challenge the status quo regarding how the US view the Israeli/Palestine situation. If more Americans were as fair as Carter is being, the US would not be as hated throughout the globe as she currently finds herself.

And it seems Carter is more than willing to engage in the argument on his own terms:

CARTER: And I hope it will provoke a discussion and a debate in this country, which is always missing, as you know.

BLITZER: Well, you'd better believe it's provoking a lot of debate right now.

It's very seldom that any US politician even attempts to acknowledge that there is such a thing as a Palestinian viewpoint, and Carter is to be applauded for, not only acknowledging it, but setting out to defend it publicly.

The usual sources will now seek to attack him and accuse him of being anti-Semitic. But Carter is opening a debate that Americans, most of all, need to hear. They are blindly backing an Israeli government that many of us can see are engaging in acts that closely resemble those of the now dismantled South African Apartheid regime.

Even Archbishop Desmond Tutu has hinted that he sees Apartheid in Israel's actions:

I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.

This is an argument that even US Liberals seem to want to avoid having. I am always amazed that the US Liberals seem to abandon all of their core values when it comes to this subject and to allow the Israelis more rope than they would allow any other nation in similar circumstances.

Carter is very brave to venture on to this territory. Liberals would do well to listen to the argument that he is making.

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tag: Bush, Iraq, Iraq war, "Stay the course", Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Apartheid, Jimmy Carter,