I concur.

Good thing he wasn't around during WWII.

I saw the interview last night and have been looking all day for the transcript, thanks!

He's apparently gone round the bend. I guess 'the shot heard round the world' shouldn't have been fired?

Maybe he should just up his Vitamin E intake to help those brain adhesions...

But, you know we'd have nationalized healthcare. And really, isn't that what it's all about? And as a resident who lives on the path of Sherman's march to the sea, it's especially infuriating that my former Governor (never mind President) doesn't know that more people died in GEORGIA alone in the Civil War than did in the total Revolutionary War. But, that war was fought over all this neo-con idealogy about liberty, freedom, no taxation without representation. I mean, the Revolutionary War was just so unnecessary.

...one hammer short of a full tool belt.

Carter is indeed an idiot. Or, as TNR called him 10 or 12 years when Bosnia was erupting, "the amoral American fool."

In 3 days of fighting at Antietam alone, more Americans were killed than in the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, and the War of 1812, combined. This man is criminally stupid, and everyone who's still alive who voted for him should be hauled up on charges.

Let's suppose that the national emabarrassment - Carter is correct in his ignorant assumption that freedom would have eventually been "granted" if not won.

Does the fool suggest the action to gain freedom should never be taken because a remote possibility existed that in the perhaps distant future it may have been proven to have been unnecessary???

Sounds like the Kerryish "If I knew then what I know now" bullshit.

Kerry's election would represent the second Carter term. If enough voters can remember when that idiot was president, it could make the difference.

Sounds like he thinks the American Revolution was "the wrong war at the wrong place and the wrong time". How did this guy ever get elected to any office, much less president of the US?!

"...the Revolutionary War, more than any other war up until recently, has been the most bloody war we‘ve fought..."

Did anybody else notice the "until recently"? You don't think he's trying to make the case that Iraq is "the most bloody war we've [ever] fought" do you??

That by itself would rank right up there with the Revolutionary war being "unnecessary".

Of course, it's hard to top his recent complaints that the Republicans are trying to steal the vote in Florida "because they're allowing Nader on the ballot"...

On the bright side, we would have never had a Carter presidency that way...

Though it would have been a shame to miss somebody like,oh say... Lincoln.

(On the other hand, Carter was the catalyst for Reagan's ascent, so some good came of it.)

As a Southerner, I would love to see Mr Carter's thoughts on the War of Northern Agression. I think we could have peacably divided this country, kept millions of minorities to do our every bidding and avoided a lot of senseless bloodshed if that "divider, not a uniter" Abe Lincoln would have just been willing to negotiate.
Where was Jimmy Carter and the UN when we really needed them?

I'm not a historian, or a political science expert (nor did I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night), but does anybody else think that without the loss on the battlefields of America to the upstart revolutionaries, that perhaps there might not have been easy handovers of sovereignty in Canada, Australia, and India?

Tar. Feathers. Rail.

I guess we can now add King George to the list of dictators who's butts Jimmy Cater has kissed.

... but ... but ... armed conflict is bad.

Anything is better than people actually dying ... especially if you can get a bunch of politicos sitting around in a room to talk!

His comments have some merit. If the 1930's-40's German government had just listened to the really legitimate Polish complaints during their occupation they could have eventually won their freedom. Had the SS been a little more sensitive to the Jewish plight in their camps, they would have let them go.

Basically he's saying if history hadn't happened the way it did, it would have been different. Thanks Jimmy!

Two sandwiches short of a picnic.

What about that lead in question by Mathews? Talk about asking a question in a way to illicit a particular answer. But, Carter surprised him with an even more radical answer than he wanted to get.

Carter's a jack@ss. We all know that. I am more disappointed in Matthews in that he didn't call him on that inanity. Matthews also said something like "In 1979 you really tried to understand what was in the heads of those Arab so-called students who held the hostages in the US Embassy in Tehran." I yelled at the radio when I heard this because the Iranians are not Arabs. When I checked the transcript last night, it had been changed to Iranians. I call "shenanigans" on both of them.

I stand second to none in hatred of and contempt for America's Great National Nightmare, but he's technically correct.

Until a few years before the Declaration of Independance most Colonials thought of themselves as not Americans but as Englishmen living on another continent. Most of the demands of the early revolutionaries boiled down to demands for the rights that every English citizen IN ENGLAND enjoyed, but Colonials were denied (and Thomas Paine said so, IIRC). If in (say) 1770, the Parliament had uncorked a declaration that Colonials would have full English civil rights, including freedom from punitive taxation and at least a token number of seats in the House of Commons, a lot of support for a Continental Congress would've evaporated ('No taxation withour representation', right? Kinda takes the wind out of your sails if you get... representatives).

Of course, after the English decided to "put down" and punish us ignorant Colonists, it quickly became too late to fix things. Cornwallis' hiring of Indians to burn out the households of "rebels" in the South and a similar campaign of atrocities in New York quickly turned entire regions from Loyalist to no-compromise Continental and there was no turning back. By the time the Crown actually took things seriously to send an offer of concessions to end the war the only deal we would accept was independance.

Amusing to think about what might have been had the English had a single spark of Common Sense, though.

As far as casualties, think of them in terms of total population and things start looking a little worse. Yeah, we lost more men that that during a bad week at the Somme, but WE HAD MORE MEN TO LOSE THEN. 30k total casualties is a big number when there's not that many of you to begin with.

Source: Bruce & William Catton, Bold and Magnificent Dream: Americaªs Founding Years, 1492-1815

Matthews call ANY Bush critic on ANYTHING? This "host" will go down on anyone who bashes the president, and as he watches his dream of being a Kerry speechwriter become more tenuous it only grows worse--for host and guest.

This just in!

Dateline--Oslo: The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has just voted to strip the Peace Prize from all but one of its recipients since 1900, and re-awarded the prizes to one James Earl Carter of Plains, Georgia.

"We felt compelled to act," explained Ragnar Dunderhead, who spoke for the committee to the media. "Mr. Carter has gone on record as opposing the very creation of the United States of America. Since all enlightened world citizens know that the United States has been the source of all evil in the world since at least 1900, it is obvious that the implementation of Mr. Carter's worldview would have led to the best of all possible worlds from the dawn of the 20th century onward. Our choice was clear--and we made it."

When reached and asked for a comment, Mr. Carter--who is currently in the process of planning his "Loving Anti-American Dictators '05" world tour-- expressed his thanks to the Committee and announced that he would spend the prize money on Chap-Stick and kneepads.

Matthews asks about parallels between the current Iraq war and the American Revolution. Carter says the Revolution was unnecessary; okay, that's very debatable, but at least it ties in with Iraq. (He also says, "I think in many ways the British were very misled in going to war against America..." Given more time, I'm sure he would have explained how George III lied to the British people.)

Okay, but what does JC mean by saying the Revolution was sort of, kind of "the most bloody war we've fought"? I mean, how does that connect to Iraq? Was he going to go on and claim that Iraq has been very bloody??? (He does say "...tens of thousands of innocent civilians killed...", so it's not just history he gets wrong.)

I also loved this quote from Carter the Historian: "Well, I think almost any reasonable person who knew history would say that you can’t go into an alien environment and force by rule of arms by forcing the people to adopt a strange concept..." Is he saying that no army ever succeeded in forcibly changing a government? Jimmy, it's called "conquering"; try the encyclopedia under Romans, or Mongols, or Normans, or Russians, or Spanish...

In the "for what it's worth, because I got curious and looked it up" file, I wondered if Carter might have been correct on some measurement of casualties as a percentage of population.

Short answer: No. Census data says the U.S. population in 1860 was about 31 million, about 7.75 times the 1790 figure of 3.9 million. In "1860 people," the Revolutionary War casualty figure would be 232,500 - higher, but still no comparison with the Revolution.

Oops, meant to say "still no comparison with the Civil War" there....

Dave P., by ratio of closest census population to casualties in the wars, the War Between the States was still the most costly (3.1% of population were casualties in the Civil War to 0.75% in the Revolutionary War)

Sources: www.census.gov and the round figures stated in this post

Ahhh. Dave beat me to it by 7 minutes.

More Americans fell in two days at Shiloh in 1862 than in the Revolutionary War. In fact, there were as many people killed at Shiloh as there were at Wateloo. This got Gen. grant labelled a butcher and yet, as some have noted before, there were twenty more Waterloos to come.

More Americans fell in twenty minutes at Cold Harbor in 1864 than in the Revolutionary War.

Skipping right past WWI and WWII, Jimmy Carter also forgot about the 36,000 Americans who died in a UN-sanctioned action in North Korea, and, gulp, the 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam, where John Kerry served, don't you know?

I'm beginning to wonder if Nancy Reagan and Rosalynn Carter won't be doing bipartisan Alzheimer's commercials together soon.

Jimmy Carter, the US Naval Academy just called. They want their diploma back.

My opinion of him was low before, but now it's six feet below the belly of a pregnant snake.

Jimmy Carter HAS ALWAYS been an idiot. Credible and Scholarly Historians have already placed him as the worst President in America's history. He is trying to change that by becoming a historian himself, but he has failed there also.

PJ-

Historically speaking, you actually should look those empires up and note that they all eventually failed to do what they set out to do. Maybe that is the point. Big picture.

Also - comparing the Civil War to the Revolutionary War in terms of percentage of population is funny since the Civil War was a war fought ONLY by Americans. Of course the casualties as a percentage of population was higher...every time anyone died, it was an American. Also I think he's historically accurate but that the entire argument is irrelevant. I do think the Rev. War could have been avoided. Then again, the Civil War could have as well. What's the point? I say the whole diatribe was irrelevant because it makes no sense to compare the Rev. War to Iraq, as much as I disagree with Iraq. There is little similarity between the two.

You know, that's always bugged me about Carter: Here's a guy who came up as a nuke tech in Elmo Zumwalt's Nuclear navy- not a placew where dumbasses or even the merely average were known to flourish. He comes home, takes over and runs a sucessful family business. And then he goes into politics and BAM- instant lobotomy. Whassupwitdat?

Having been presented with better data, I will drop the casualties issue- though Britton makes a good point about the Civil War.

Britton's point is not well taken. Even if you divide the Civil War casualties by 2 to reflect the fact it was a war fought entirely by Americans, you have approx. 1.5% (according to Jon's numbers). That's still twice as many killed in the Civil War as a percentage of population.
Also, it is difficult to truly say if an event is "avoidable". I mean, if the French had won the 7 years (French and Indian) war, we might have been a part of the French Revolution. Wouldn't that have been fun?
Dave P., for another perspective, look at Gordon Wood's _The Radicalism of the American Revolution_. Based on his description of the period, even if Parliament had granted us the rights we sought, there might still have been a Revolution because of the growing differnces in American and British society, most notably in the area of social hierarchies. Also, suppose Parliament gave us the rights of "other Englishment"? The vast majority of Englishmen of the time were disenfranchised. There had been few changes to the districts representing Parliament since its inception, and old Market towns might only have 3 or 4 citizens who could vote, while in growing urban areas there would be hundreds, if not thousands of voters per district. That kind of democract might not have assuaged the colonists.

It is sad that a man that used to lead the most powerful, most vibrant (well...other than when he had double digit inflation, double-digit mortgage rates, and failed to lead to get American hostages out of Iran for 444 days) nation feels that we should not have had our independence. It was all a "misunderstanding", and if the British were more "sensitive", there wouldn't be a problem. I don't think so!

Just when we thought giving away the Pananma Canal was the dumbest thing this pant load could do; he continues to amaze!

Being a Canadian neighbor who moved in with ya'll, I'd have to agree as well. Only a fool would do that. It's fine and all for Canadians to wonder about it (it isn't our country), but a former president? Does the man have any sense of the sacred? Those soldiers died for freedom, and he says that it wasn't worth it?

btw
... but ... but ... armed conflict is bad.

Anything is better than people actually dying ... especially if you can get a bunch of politicos sitting around in a room to talk!

Yes, but while they sit around and talk, outside, people are actually dying.

Robert: Six feet below the belly of a pregnant snake?

I was thinking more like six feet...
below a load of whale poop.

"Historically speaking, you actually should look those empires up and note that they all eventually failed to do what they set out to do. Maybe that is the point. Big picture."

Hmmm.

The Roman Empire, taking Antony's suicide as the terminus a quo, lasted a minimum of 506 years (and may still be going, if you hypothesize that it underwent the mother of all Chapter 11 reorganization and is d/b/a "the Roman Catholic Church"). It also Latinized Italy, Gaul, Iberia, and Romania.

No doubt, a leftist in the Republic of Iraq in 4000 CE will write -- in English, Arabic having been a dead language for centuries -- "The Empire of the West ultimately failed in what it set out to do". And he'll be just as wrong.

I don't believe Carter actually believes anything he said to Matthews. Instead, Carter joins the ranks of those who will distort history for their own short term immediate gain. He is but a hack.

While his statement on the American Revolution is revolting in and of itself, his most astounding answer was in response to this question from Matthews:What do you make of this new philosophy, Mr. President, that we can go into countries like Iraq and that we can use our force of arms and our economic might to transform them into democracies? It’s the new conservative philosophy. It’s the Bush doctrine, whatever you want to call it. What do you make of it?

Carter: I don’t think it’s ever been proven to be accurate as a premise that you can go into an alien society with force of arms and destroying a major portion of that country and killing their people to make them adopt a new form of government and to accept new rulers.

And Matthews has no follow-up to such a statement?

Well, I imagine any ninth grade history student might suggest that the Japanese and the Germans might have a different answer to that question.

So much as been perverted and manipulated in the last four years, that I don't know how long it will take this country to recover. And moonbats, spare me your lectures about Bush The Liar. Unless and until you repudiate these Moorians in your midst, you are all but hacks.

This tells you everything you need to know re: Carter and how much the Left now lionizes him. Not only did he get his historical facts wrong (stock in trade for the Left) but of course, he wants us to become a vassal state of a guess what, European power. Typical.

Yeah, the boy ain't right.
Grew up in Gettysburg, now there was a blood bath...

Carter is a dumbass. It just proves how bad we where politically in 76 to elect this clown President. As an Air Force vet, the only good thing I can say for Carter is he approved the ALCM and avionics upgrade of the B-52 after he killed the B-1A. As a former B-52 guy, those avionics have made the B-52 a much better weapons system, but I digress. It is interesting that he used the "if only more sensitive" to bemoan the English Parliment in the 1770's.

Is sensitive the liberal code word for pussy?

I am no historian, but alot of people died during India's non-violent independance movement, and England descided not to fight it after WWII (to their credit)

It is an interesting construct to imagine the US as a British colony into the last century. Would England have pushed for westward expansion? Would France have sold the Louisiana Purchase to there hated rival? How would Britsh colonial rule affect slavery? Would it have ended sooner, or lasted past 1865?
Would a British colony across the pond be able to help defeat Germany in two wars?

I think if we had stayed a colony longer, the world would very very different.

Jimmy Carter is three jars short of a jar of peanuts. Do the math.

Britton:

Your point is not well-taken -- the Revolutionary War was fought only between English subjects, with de-facto independence not arriving until Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown.

Had Washington and Co. failed, the legalism of a Declaration would not have spared the Revolutionaries from hanging, drawing, and quartering as penalty for rebellion against the Crown.

"The most EX of America's ex-presidents."
--PJ O'Rourke, on Preznit Peanut.

The Simpsons were right all along. "Jimmy Carter?! He's history's greatest monster!"

I don't believe Carter actually believes anything he said to Matthews. Instead, Carter joins the ranks of those who will distort history for their own short term immediate gain. He is but a hack.

That's what I don't get- what on earth does he hope to gain by saying such nonsense? We're never going to re-elect the guy.

Jimmy carter that no good tory he should be tarred and feathered and have hot tea poured down his throat just what has that dweeb been smoking? sound like he has been nipping from some loco weed