Jimmy Carter Wants U.S. to Lose U.N. Vote

Via the Guide to Midwestern Culture, a story about former President Jimmy Carter wanting the United States to lose a vote in the United Nations. According to the New York Sun:

President Carter personally called Secretary of State Rice to try to convince her to reverse her U.N. ambassador’s position on changes to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, the former president recalled yesterday in a talk in which he also criticized President Bush’s Christian bona fides and misstated past American policies on Israel.

Mr. Carter said he made a personal promise to ambassadors from Egypt, Pakistan, and Cuba on the U.N. change issue that was undermined by America’s ambassador, John Bolton. “My hope is that when the vote is taken,” he told the Council on Foreign Relations, “the other members will outvote the United States.”

What exactly was the issue?

The topic was the ongoing negotiations on an attempt to replace the widely discredited Geneva-based Human Rights Commission with a more accountable Human Rights Council.

The Human Rights Commission is notorious for counting among its membership the most notorious regimes on the planet, including the Sudan, China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Viet Nam and Zimbabwe.

Carter went on to attack the religious convictions of President Bush, and the State of Israel:

Asked yesterday about his views on religion, Mr. Carter said, “The essence of my faith is one of peace.” In a clear swipe at Mr. Bush’s faith, and to a round of applause, he then added, “We worship the prince of peace, not of pre-emptive war.” Mr. Carter then went on to attack American Christians who support Israel.

He also reiterated his known view that most of the problems in the Israeli-Arab front derive from Israel’s settlement policies and its building of a defensive barrier in what he insisted on calling “Palestine.”

For a long while, when Carter was simply building houses for Habitat for Humanity, we classed Carter with Herbert Hoover as an inept president who had a distinguished ex-presidency.

But more and more, Carter looks like an inept president who has been a downright sordid ex-president.