winmck said:

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You give Carter too much credit……

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flown-the-coop said:

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If I got anything out of order or completely wrong, have at it. And obviously I have quite a bit of individual perspective and opinion in the below.

Bear with me here as I go on a bit of a run through some major events of 1979, the Carter Administrations anticipation of and reaction to these events, and the results still impacting us nearly 50 years later.

Five major geopolitical events occur in the MIddle East during the year 1979:

- The Iranian Revolution, later termed the Islamic Revolution of Iran
- The Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty
- Saddam Hussein's Takeover of Iran
- Grand Mosque Seizure in Mecca
- Iran Hostage Crisis

Many folks are getting up to speed on the 1979 revolution in Iran. I will not go into that great detail, but the quick of it is the Shah had become increasingly corrupt and losing grip on power, reacting by seizing a tighter grip which resulted in attempts to silence those challengers including the exile of a guy named Rumatoidullah Kohmeni. Some power struggles in neighboring Iraq had led to Kohmeni going to France where his teaching spread, ironically quicker back into Iran from France and protests erupt, shah is chased out, Kohmeni is helped Joe Biden style from the French airplane and boom, Islamic Republic of Japan.

Carter and friends are taken by surprise at this development, including the CIA issuing a report the year prior that Iran showed no signs of revolution and Carter hosting shah at state dinner where shah bragged about stability further pissing off dissidents in Iran and driving them to support Rumatoidullah Kohmeni. Score Number 1 huge ****up of 1979 by Carter admin from state department to intelligence operations.

Number 2 huge **** up is all on Jimmy boy. Seeking to score one on the Rus, Carter sees an opportunity to cozy up to the Islamists in Egypt and the tired Jews (from 3 or 4 wars with the a-rabs since founding in 1948) brokers a "peace deal" between the two countries. Neat, right? Not so much. Pisses the Arab world off royally causing ever growing hatred of the new Zionist state. Egypt dude goes home and is much castigated for making deal with the evil Semites.

Jews also feel jilted and though they are tired they realize the fight for them will never be over. Building on Number 1 **** Up, these developments solidify Khomenis grip on power in Iran and though many millions supported getting rid of the shah, not as many millions supported a theocracy by crazy hatin arse Quran thumping ayatollah with an iron grip on power, but Carter's personally brokered peace deal had other results.

Number 3 is the again bit unanticipated Saddam takeover of Iraq. Think this may just be Jimmy boy dozing off after too many bloodys on a Sunday morn, but the resulting gift here is the newly minted Saddam regime was poorly managed and quite possibly greenlighting Saddam's invasion of neighbor next door Iran. And guess what that did… further solidified the Number 1 **** up, the now huger one.

Coming in at Number 4 is the Grand Mosque Seizure in Mecca - this was another where we probably just didn't put enough of an eye on. Sunni Muslims who also have on affinity for all things mythical Mahdi decided the year was right to take over the grand mosque at the end of Hajj. Other than being a cool story of history (French paratroopers supposedly converted to Islam so they could assist in retaking the mosque), the Carter gift here are the missed signals, missed opportunities and lingering effects.

Part of the siege was to demand the ouster of the Saud royal family. This led to a big time turtling of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia over threats to their power. With ****up #3 above, Saddam would one day invade Kuwait causing Saudi to get scared and when offered assistance one day by a wealthy son, they chose the USA behind door #2. That jilted son was one Osama bin Laden who then continued on a jihadist journey of hating all things who had once ever pissed him off. The other miss here is that the concept of radical Islamism is not just a Shia thing, the Sunnis have their crazies too.

And the Iran taking of US hostages in the final year of the Carter admin. This one is straight up on Carter having no business ever participating in foreign relations and for that matter being POTUS. Biden level dumb. Sunday School teacher Jimmy hosts the deposed Shah of Iran for cancer treatments in the US. Our old buddy from Act 1 sees this as a great opportunity to solidify his still tenuous grip on his newly imagined Islamic Republic of Iran. Though he denies ordering it, the protests are encouraged and allowed.

The Carter admin in the years leading to and the year of 1979 have caused this Country and the world great harm for 50 years. It's why it's important to vote on policy and not feelz, smart experienced businessmen and not baptist closeted alcoholic peanut farmers from Georgia.

Tl;dr Carter is the spawn of the devil and the world would be a better place if he had never been born.

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91AggieLawyer said:

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flown-the-coop said:

---

If I got anything out of order or completely wrong, have at it. And obviously I have quite a bit of individual perspective and opinion in the below.

Bear with me here as I go on a bit of a run through some major events of 1979, the Carter Administrations anticipation of and reaction to these events, and the results still impacting us nearly 50 years later.

Five major geopolitical events occur in the MIddle East during the year 1979:

- The Iranian Revolution, later termed the Islamic Revolution of Iran
- The Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty
- Saddam Hussein's Takeover of Iran
- Grand Mosque Seizure in Mecca
- Iran Hostage Crisis

Many folks are getting up to speed on the 1979 revolution in Iran. I will not go into that great detail, but the quick of it is the Shah had become increasingly corrupt and losing grip on power, reacting by seizing a tighter grip which resulted in attempts to silence those challengers including the exile of a guy named Rumatoidullah Kohmeni. Some power struggles in neighboring Iraq had led to Kohmeni going to France where his teaching spread, ironically quicker back into Iran from France and protests erupt, shah is chased out, Kohmeni is helped Joe Biden style from the French airplane and boom, Islamic Republic of Japan.

Carter and friends are taken by surprise at this development, including the CIA issuing a report the year prior that Iran showed no signs of revolution and Carter hosting shah at state dinner where shah bragged about stability further pissing off dissidents in Iran and driving them to support Rumatoidullah Kohmeni. Score Number 1 huge ****up of 1979 by Carter admin from state department to intelligence operations.

Number 2 huge **** up is all on Jimmy boy. Seeking to score one on the Rus, Carter sees an opportunity to cozy up to the Islamists in Egypt and the tired Jews (from 3 or 4 wars with the a-rabs since founding in 1948) brokers a "peace deal" between the two countries. Neat, right? Not so much. Pisses the Arab world off royally causing ever growing hatred of the new Zionist state. Egypt dude goes home and is much castigated for making deal with the evil Semites.

Jews also feel jilted and though they are tired they realize the fight for them will never be over. Building on Number 1 **** Up, these developments solidify Khomenis grip on power in Iran and though many millions supported getting rid of the shah, not as many millions supported a theocracy by crazy hatin arse Quran thumping ayatollah with an iron grip on power, but Carter's personally brokered peace deal had other results.

Number 3 is the again bit unanticipated Saddam takeover of Iraq. Think this may just be Jimmy boy dozing off after too many bloodys on a Sunday morn, but the resulting gift here is the newly minted Saddam regime was poorly managed and quite possibly greenlighting Saddam's invasion of neighbor next door Iran. And guess what that did… further solidified the Number 1 **** up, the now huger one.

Coming in at Number 4 is the Grand Mosque Seizure in Mecca - this was another where we probably just didn't put enough of an eye on. Sunni Muslims who also have on affinity for all things mythical Mahdi decided the year was right to take over the grand mosque at the end of Hajj. Other than being a cool story of history (French paratroopers supposedly converted to Islam so they could assist in retaking the mosque), the Carter gift here are the missed signals, missed opportunities and lingering effects.

Part of the siege was to demand the ouster of the Saud royal family. This led to a big time turtling of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia over threats to their power. With ****up #3 above, Saddam would one day invade Kuwait causing Saudi to get scared and when offered assistance one day by a wealthy son, they chose the USA behind door #2. That jilted son was one Osama bin Laden who then continued on a jihadist journey of hating all things who had once ever pissed him off. The other miss here is that the concept of radical Islamism is not just a Shia thing, the Sunnis have their crazies too.

And the Iran taking of US hostages in the final year of the Carter admin. This one is straight up on Carter having no business ever participating in foreign relations and for that matter being POTUS. Biden level dumb. Sunday School teacher Jimmy hosts the deposed Shah of Iran for cancer treatments in the US. Our old buddy from Act 1 sees this as a great opportunity to solidify his still tenuous grip on his newly imagined Islamic Republic of Iran. Though he denies ordering it, the protests are encouraged and allowed.

The Carter admin in the years leading to and the year of 1979 have caused this Country and the world great harm for 50 years. It's why it's important to vote on policy and not feelz, smart experienced businessmen and not baptist closeted alcoholic peanut farmers from Georgia.

Tl;dr Carter is the spawn of the devil and the world would be a better place if he had never been born.

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I agree with about 80% of what you laid out here. It isn't really that I disagree, but I have to say, in fairness, that had Nixon avoided scandal and Reagan been elected in '76 (don't know if he would have even ran then had Nixon not resigned and Ford not been President), I'm not sure things would have been a great deal different. Hear me out.

We were SOLELY focused on communism through the '80s. The '70s, even before Carter, introduced world terrorism. Sure, it was primarily Islamic based, but regardless, we were woefully unprepared for it and even Reagan during his actual term didn't do a lot to stop it. I think a Reagan (or even other Republican) term from '76-80 MIGHT have avoided what we saw in Iran -- or at least, responded to it in a far more meaningful way than Carter's appeasement approach -- but would that have been enough? I ask that honestly as I hesitate to voice an opinion here. I don't think one, even in hindsight, could guess anywhere near accurately.

Our eye, since the '50s, were on the Soviets and they were still a threat in the late '70s. We NOW know we should have paid more attention and directed more resources to terrorism at least a decade earlier than we did. But I did policy debate in HS and briefly in college in the early and mid-80s. Terrorism RARELY came up. And this was an event where "nuclear war is good" and the Malthusian population bomb nightmare scenarios were ran without any blushing. I know you're thinking, "that's not real world and has nothing to do with anything," and you're largely right. But my point is that intelligent HS and college kids that are researching ANYTHING to try and gain an advantage in a debate event -- and would have had they stumbled on terrorism -- never bothered with it. That means literature (mags, newspapers, journals, etc.) largely ignored it.

We wasted 56K+ lives in Vietnam fighting an enemy that was easily beatable by other means. We're still dealing with a problem that started after Vietnam and many Presidents have had no answers to or largely ignored.

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Quote:

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Five major geopolitical events occur in the MIddle East during the year 1979:

- The Iranian Revolution, later termed the Islamic Revolution of Iran
- The Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty
- Saddam Hussein's Takeover of Iran
- Grand Mosque Seizure in Mecca
- Iran Hostage Crisis

Many folks are getting up to speed on the 1979 revolution in Iran. I will not go into that great detail, but the quick of it is the Shah had become increasingly corrupt and losing grip on power, reacting by seizing a tighter grip which resulted in attempts to silence those challengers including the exile of a guy named Rumatoidullah Kohmeni. Some power struggles in neighboring Iraq had led to Kohmeni going to France where his teaching spread, ironically quicker back into Iran from France and protests erupt, shah is chased out, Kohmeni is helped Joe Biden style from the French airplane and boom, Islamic Republic of Japan.

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ts5641 said:

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Always thought Carter would be the worst president of my lifetime, but Sotero and biden blew him out of the water. Not even close.

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mjschiller said:

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LBJ was worse than Carter. LBJ broke up the black families by the Civil Rights Act and "take from the rich and give to the poor". LBJ was a gangster. George Parr, Duval Co. Judge, had dead people voting for LBJ to get him elected senator.

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docb said:

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Tl;dr Carter is the spawn of the devil and the world would be a better place if he had never been born.

Seriously WTF is wrong with you?

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flown-the-coop said:

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docb said:

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Tl;dr Carter is the spawn of the devil and the world would be a better place if he had never been born.

Seriously WTF is wrong with you?

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Going to assume you didn't read the OP if your conclusion on what I wrote is that there is something wrong with me and not Carter.

I stand by what I wrote. All you got is some vague seemingly ad hommish response. Engage in discussion or just move on. Easy choices.

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docb said:

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flown-the-coop said:

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docb said:

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Tl;dr Carter is the spawn of the devil and the world would be a better place if he had never been born.

Seriously WTF is wrong with you?

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Going to assume you didn't read the OP if your conclusion on what I wrote is that there is something wrong with me and not Carter.

I stand by what I wrote. All you got is some vague seemingly ad hommish response. Engage in discussion or just move on. Easy choices.

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Would you think it would be appropriate for someone to say wishing you were never born the world would be a better place?

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Ag In Ok said:

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Throw in the siege of our embassy in Pakistan.

1979 was the fulcrum that moved so much of our world to what we see today. I was too young to notice, after all Speed Racer reruns were far too cool

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nortex97 said:

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flown-the-coop said:

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winmck said:

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You give Carter too much credit……

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Notice the use of both Carter as the person and Carter as the admin.

Admittedly many things were indeed decades in the making. 1979 was by all accounts a very consequential year, and a very poor time for the USA to have a mediocre to weak POTUS. When you combine those, you get decades of consequences.

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Keep in mind the horrific race communist Andy Young. Carter surrounded himself with terrible people intentionally, Obama-like. Carter facilitated sending the ayatollah to Tehran after telling the Shah to leave because he thought he would be a 'ghandi like reformer.' He was just the most evil, terrible president in history, who led to death and suffering everywhere he looked.

But Carter did:

-Give up the Panama Canal because he felt bad about American greatness
-Assist Mugabe and Nkomo in killing Rhodesia in the name of race communist
-Let the Weather Underground, FALN, and Black Panthers get away with domestic terror campaigns
-Pardon draft dodgers… https://t.co/VJtyJwQi3d pic.twitter.com/tMYf8aL6s3

— Will Tanner (@Will_Tanner_1) March 25, 2026

Not enough people hold Jimmy Carter's memory with contempt, imho.

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flown-the-coop said:

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docb said:

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Tl;dr Carter is the spawn of the devil and the world would be a better place if he had never been born.

Seriously WTF is wrong with you?

---

Going to assume you didn't read the OP if your conclusion on what I wrote is that there is something wrong with me and not Carter.

I stand by what I wrote. All you got is some vague seemingly ad hommish response. Engage in discussion or just move on. Easy choices.

---

91AggieLawyer said:

---

flown-the-coop said:

---

If I got anything out of order or completely wrong, have at it. And obviously I have quite a bit of individual perspective and opinion in the below.

Bear with me here as I go on a bit of a run through some major events of 1979, the Carter Administrations anticipation of and reaction to these events, and the results still impacting us nearly 50 years later.

Five major geopolitical events occur in the MIddle East during the year 1979:

- The Iranian Revolution, later termed the Islamic Revolution of Iran
- The Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty
- Saddam Hussein's Takeover of Iran
- Grand Mosque Seizure in Mecca
- Iran Hostage Crisis

Many folks are getting up to speed on the 1979 revolution in Iran. I will not go into that great detail, but the quick of it is the Shah had become increasingly corrupt and losing grip on power, reacting by seizing a tighter grip which resulted in attempts to silence those challengers including the exile of a guy named Rumatoidullah Kohmeni. Some power struggles in neighboring Iraq had led to Kohmeni going to France where his teaching spread, ironically quicker back into Iran from France and protests erupt, shah is chased out, Kohmeni is helped Joe Biden style from the French airplane and boom, Islamic Republic of Japan.

Carter and friends are taken by surprise at this development, including the CIA issuing a report the year prior that Iran showed no signs of revolution and Carter hosting shah at state dinner where shah bragged about stability further pissing off dissidents in Iran and driving them to support Rumatoidullah Kohmeni. Score Number 1 huge ****up of 1979 by Carter admin from state department to intelligence operations.

Number 2 huge **** up is all on Jimmy boy. Seeking to score one on the Rus, Carter sees an opportunity to cozy up to the Islamists in Egypt and the tired Jews (from 3 or 4 wars with the a-rabs since founding in 1948) brokers a "peace deal" between the two countries. Neat, right? Not so much. Pisses the Arab world off royally causing ever growing hatred of the new Zionist state. Egypt dude goes home and is much castigated for making deal with the evil Semites.

Jews also feel jilted and though they are tired they realize the fight for them will never be over. Building on Number 1 **** Up, these developments solidify Khomenis grip on power in Iran and though many millions supported getting rid of the shah, not as many millions supported a theocracy by crazy hatin arse Quran thumping ayatollah with an iron grip on power, but Carter's personally brokered peace deal had other results.

Number 3 is the again bit unanticipated Saddam takeover of Iraq. Think this may just be Jimmy boy dozing off after too many bloodys on a Sunday morn, but the resulting gift here is the newly minted Saddam regime was poorly managed and quite possibly greenlighting Saddam's invasion of neighbor next door Iran. And guess what that did… further solidified the Number 1 **** up, the now huger one.

Coming in at Number 4 is the Grand Mosque Seizure in Mecca - this was another where we probably just didn't put enough of an eye on. Sunni Muslims who also have on affinity for all things mythical Mahdi decided the year was right to take over the grand mosque at the end of Hajj. Other than being a cool story of history (French paratroopers supposedly converted to Islam so they could assist in retaking the mosque), the Carter gift here are the missed signals, missed opportunities and lingering effects.

Part of the siege was to demand the ouster of the Saud royal family. This led to a big time turtling of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia over threats to their power. With ****up #3 above, Saddam would one day invade Kuwait causing Saudi to get scared and when offered assistance one day by a wealthy son, they chose the USA behind door #2. That jilted son was one Osama bin Laden who then continued on a jihadist journey of hating all things who had once ever pissed him off. The other miss here is that the concept of radical Islamism is not just a Shia thing, the Sunnis have their crazies too.

And the Iran taking of US hostages in the final year of the Carter admin. This one is straight up on Carter having no business ever participating in foreign relations and for that matter being POTUS. Biden level dumb. Sunday School teacher Jimmy hosts the deposed Shah of Iran for cancer treatments in the US. Our old buddy from Act 1 sees this as a great opportunity to solidify his still tenuous grip on his newly imagined Islamic Republic of Iran. Though he denies ordering it, the protests are encouraged and allowed.

The Carter admin in the years leading to and the year of 1979 have caused this Country and the world great harm for 50 years. It's why it's important to vote on policy and not feelz, smart experienced businessmen and not baptist closeted alcoholic peanut farmers from Georgia.

Tl;dr Carter is the spawn of the devil and the world would be a better place if he had never been born.

---

I agree with about 80% of what you laid out here. It isn't really that I disagree, but I have to say, in fairness, that had Nixon avoided scandal and Reagan been elected in '76 (don't know if he would have even ran then had Nixon not resigned and Ford not been President), I'm not sure things would have been a great deal different. Hear me out.

We were SOLELY focused on communism through the '80s. The '70s, even before Carter, introduced world terrorism. Sure, it was primarily Islamic based, but regardless, we were woefully unprepared for it and even Reagan during his actual term didn't do a lot to stop it. I think a Reagan (or even other Republican) term from '76-80 MIGHT have avoided what we saw in Iran -- or at least, responded to it in a far more meaningful way than Carter's appeasement approach -- but would that have been enough? I ask that honestly as I hesitate to voice an opinion here. I don't think one, even in hindsight, could guess anywhere near accurately.

Our eye, since the '50s, were on the Soviets and they were still a threat in the late '70s. We NOW know we should have paid more attention and directed more resources to terrorism at least a decade earlier than we did. But I did policy debate in HS and briefly in college in the early and mid-80s. Terrorism RARELY came up. And this was an event where "nuclear war is good" and the Malthusian population bomb nightmare scenarios were ran without any blushing. I know you're thinking, "that's not real world and has nothing to do with anything," and you're largely right. But my point is that intelligent HS and college kids that are researching ANYTHING to try and gain an advantage in a debate event -- and would have had they stumbled on terrorism -- never bothered with it. That means literature (mags, newspapers, journals, etc.) largely ignored it.

We wasted 56K+ lives in Vietnam fighting an enemy that was easily beatable by other means. We're still dealing with a problem that started after Vietnam and many Presidents have had no answers to or largely ignored.

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SunrayAg said:

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Carter was the most incompetent president ever.

LBJ was the most evil president ever.

Obama was the most anti American president ever.

And yet Biden and his puppeteers were enough of all 3, that they managed to do more harm to the country than the other 3 combined.

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Quote:

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I've mentioned it before here but the best book I've ever read on what happened in Iran is "Whirlwind" by James Clavell of "Shogun" fame. The book itself is a fictional account of a UK helicopter company that services oil rigs in Iran in 1979. It starts the day the Ayatollah flew into Tehran and how the takeover happened. It tells every angle and gets deep into the culture of Iran and all of the varying interests from the Soviets to the Brits to the Americans to the varying tribes within Iran to the Mullahs to the average Iranian merchants to the Shah loyalists and beyond. He wrote it just a few years after it all happened and it has so much information and perspective in it that make you really understand how complex it is.

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