The USA Today story is headlined: “Breaking tradition, Carter rips Bush’s policies.”

Breaking whose tradition? Certainly not Carter’s. He has done little else but criticize President Bush. Back in 2002, you’ll recall, he was given the Nobel Peace Prize, explicitly given that year to a prominent critic of the Bush administration in order to send a message to that adminstration; a so-called “kick in the leg.” Carter happily accepted and used the publicity to criticize the current President of the United States even more - and this internationally, and in a time of war. And his criticism of the current President Bush is nothing new. Carter certainly qualifies as the most bitter living ex-president - never missing a chance to be ungracious to the Republicans who have succeeded him. And, let’s face it, there’s little love lost between him and Bill Clinton either. He is a spectacularly frustrated and unhappy man.

Today’s latest example is from a breakfast with reporters, promoting his new Bush-bashing book, “Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis”:

Former President Jimmy Carter said Thursday that “fundamentalism” under George W. Bush has resulted in a “dramatic and profound and unprecedented change” in American policy that threatens the United States at home and abroad.

Carter, who is promoting a new book critical of Bush, faulted the Bush administration for “an unprecedented and overt … merger of the church and state, of religion and politics.”
…
He said the natural “arrogance” of second-term presidents is exacerbated by a fundamentalism under Bush that causes many of his supporters and those who work in his administration to believe that “I am right because I am close to God (and) anybody who disagrees with me is inherently wrong, and therefore inferior.”

Carter acknowledged that both he and Bush proclaim their Christian faith as part of their governing philosophy, but the similarity ends there.

“I don’t have any doubt that he is very sincere about his Christian faith,” Carter said of Bush. “There are some differences in interpretation. … I have a commitment to worship the Prince of Peace, not the prince of pre-emptive war. I believe that Christ taught us to give special attention to the plight of the poor.”

Bush, he said, “has committed himself to extol the advantages of the rich.”

So, Carter believes Bush is “very sincere” about worshipping the prince of pre-emptive war and rich people.

After hearing this stuff, I would suggest that when Jimmy Carter and Michael Moore shared a box at last year’s Democratic Convention, it might well have been Michael saying, “Don’t you think you’re going a little off the deep end with this whole Bush-hating thing, Mr. President?”

Later, the man who helped initiate the rise of violent, extremist Islamism (by giving them their first modern day victory: the imprisonment of 52 Americans for 444 days while America sat seemingly helpless) gives the kind of advice regarding this war that one should expect from him: it’s all our fault, so now let’s surrender.

Carter said Arab leaders he regularly consults with believe the United States intends to maintain permanent military bases in Iraq irrespective of how that country’s transformation to self-rule plays out. Removing U.S. forces from Muslim nations could reduce “95 percent” of the terrorist threat from Islamic fundamentalism, Carter said.

So, Jimbo is consulting with Arab dictators and tyrants who are advising him that the United States needs to stop all this stuff about instilling democracy in their backyard, and then everything will be OK - just like it was on September 10th, 2001.

(Note to the Bush adminstration: maybe there’s room for one more tenant at one of those “black sites” in eastern Europe?)

And yet, the worst is still to come. He manages to correctly criticize his own party’s excessive fascination with preserving the unlimited abortion license, while wrapping it up in some of the most jaw-dropping moral, logical, and yes, religious incoherence that anyone could possibly wish for.

“I have never been convinced … that Jesus Christ would approve abortion,” Carter said, adding that as president, “I did everything I could under Roe vs. Wade … to minimize the need for abortion.”

But many Democratic leaders today “are overemphasizing the abortion issue,” Carter said.

“Many Democrats like me have some concern, say, about late-term abortions where you kill a baby as it is emerging from its mother’s womb,” he said. “And to make that a litmus test of democracy, I think, hurts our party.”

So Carter has “never been convinced” that Jesus Christ would approve abortion. I guess that means that he has strongly suspected that Jesus would be into this flushing-of-fetuses-down-the-toilet business, but the evidence has just never quite reached the tipping point for him.

As for instances of abortion at or near 9 months, where “you kill a baby as it is emerging from its mother’s womb,” this worshipper of the Prince of Peace has “some concerns” in that area.

Well, on one thing in this interview, Carter was dead-on accurate. That was when he said that when it comes to their Christian faith, there are “some differences in interpretation” between him and President George W. Bush.

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