Bush presidency worst in history, says Carter

Having had a pop at Tony Blair for his sycophancy towards George Bush, Jimmy Carter rounded off his weekend by declaring George Bush the worst US President ever. To be fair, they are both targets begging to be attacked, but it is highly unusual for a former President to attack a sitting one. Then again, it is highly unusual for a sitting US President to declare that he is above the law without being impeached so it's the season for unusual and strange happenings.

The White House spokesman yesterday called Mr Carter "increasingly irrelevant", adding that his "reckless personal criticism is out there".

This White House have routinely failed to engage with critics, for instance dismissing Bob Woodward's book "State of Denial" as a "statement of the obvious", but whatever they may have done to minimise the damage from his book, it didn't work. Ever since Katrina, Bush has appeared to be running a Presidency that is increasingly dysfunctional, and his ability to fob off critics with a casual line has proved to be waning.

However, to dismiss a man who - in the last few years - won the Nobel Peace Prize as "increasingly irrelevant", smacks of a sort of desperation.

There will be many who question whether Carter should have been so forthright about a sitting President, but there will be many, many more nodding their heads in agreement.

In a newspaper interview, Mr Carter said of the Bush years: "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history." And speaking on BBC Radio 4, Mr Carter criticised Mr Blair, who leaves office next month, for his close relations with Mr Bush, particularly concerning the Iraq war.

It is certainly true that, under this arrogant and ignorant administration, anti-US feeling across the planet has reached unprecedented levels. It is also true that people like myself have a hard time thinking of a worse President than the one currently holding office.

What have been his achievements? Nixon, for all his faults, opened relations with China. Reagan engaged with Gorbachov.

The only thing I can imagine Bush supporters listing is that he rid the world of Saddam Hussein, although even they would have to admit that chaos has followed in the wake of that action, a chaos that the US has been singularly unable to contain. And indeed, that failure to contain the chaos has led to a marked drop in the way the world views the US as a superpower.

Before the Iraq debacle most of us assumed the US could do as she pleased, but as we have watched the US unable to contain rebellion in a small nation like Iraq, this image of US invincibility has been severely damaged. More worryingly for Americans, under Bush's leadership the US has enjoyed the third lowest ranking in a poll of popular nations, which found the US only beaten to the least popular nation vote by Israel and Iran.

So, he has diminished the US's image as an invincible superpower whilst, simultaneously, making her amongst the least popular countries in the world. And he has done so whilst running his country into unprecedented debt, a debt that even Conservative economists have labelled as "bankrupting America". He has also declared his nations right to attack other nations based on nothing more secure than his belief that they may one day threaten the United States, in effect, dismantling international law. That's quite a track record. And it does mean that he deserves to be considered one of the US's worst ever Presidents.

Indeed, it is on that last point that Carter is most scathing.

He (Carter) told one newspaper, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, over the weekend that Mr Bush had taken a "radical departure from all previous administration policies" with the war. "We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered," Mr Carter said.

The Bush Doctrine is, indeed, an insane policy almost designed to make the US hated worldwide as it smacks so repulsively of Empire. It rips up international law which country's that do not have America's firepower rely upon and, consequently, makes the rest of the world feel less safe.

The Bush Doctrine basically says that the US can do as she wants. And, while I can understand why this must be very pleasing to right wing Americans, I would hope that they could also understand why the rest of the planet - the people who do not live in the most heavily armed nation on Earth - might find this disturbing.

All of the above - the fact he has damaged his own country's reputation as an invincible superpower, the fact he has made his country one of the least popular on earth, and the fact that he has also almost bankrupted his country as he has done so - makes the charge against Bush as the worst President in US history certainly worthy of consideration.

So right wingers might tut tut at Carter attacking a sitting US President, they might even display the arrogance that has made Bush so spectacularly unpopular and dismiss the opinion of the rest of the world as irrelevant, but they should also know that, for each of them that is tutting, there are many more across the world who are agreeing with what Carter has said.

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