Ripping Into Carter

Investor's Business Daily is frankly appalled at the most recent appalling outburst by Jimmy Carter. The editors take Carter to the woodshed.

As the Gaza Strip flamed into Hamas gang warfare and the West Bank slid into another civil war, Carter — cozy in distant Ireland accepting another "human rights" award — found cause Tuesday to blame America first for all the violence.

Amid wine, cheese and good feeling, America's worst ex-president drew a bead on the West. The refusal by the U.S., Israel and the EU to support Hamas, an armed terror group that just launched a coup d'etat and civil war in full view of the world, was nothing but a "criminal" act at the root of the trouble there, Carter asserted.

"The United States and Israel decided to punish all the people in Palestine and did everything they could to deter a compromise between Hamas and Fatah," he said.

The statement was so malevolent and illogical as to border on insane. Carter wasn't honest enough to say he was rooting for terrorists who started a terrifying new war in the region and trashed what little democratic rule the Palestinians had. Instead, he tut-tutted the West for being insufficiently sensitive to the fact that Hamas thugs were democratically elected in 2006 in an "orderly and fair" vote.

When one party has started a civil war, democracy isn't exactly the issue anymore. Just being elected does not justify making warfare on your fellow citizens. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repeatedly points out that those who are elected democratically have an obligation to govern democratically or they aren't democrats. Hamas has blown its right to democracy.

Carter also misstated and distorted technical aspects of democratic rule in the Palestinian Authority itself, further calling into question his intentions. Hamas' 42% plurality in the last parliamentary election gave the terror group a right to participate in government, but not absolute power.

Carter neglected to notice that President Mahmoud Abbas, Palestine's head of state, not only had a full democratic right to appoint Hamas members to his Cabinet, but he also had the right to dismiss them as he did Thursday. Carter's selective respect for the power-sharing aspect of Palestine's democracy stands out as significantly skewed toward Hamas.

This really is a new low for Carter. I would dearly love for some reporters to ask the Democratic party candidates their opinions on Carter's anti-American, pro-terrorist screed. Because they should be put on the spot over the remarks of a former president from their party. They really should.