Who Can Really Say?

Jimmy Carter is an Idiot

Jimmy Carter was commonly portrayed by editorial cartoonist's as having a big smile with huge teeth. This was a mistake, since those teeth obviously were smaller -- at least small enough to permit him to stick his foot, 'nay his lower leg up to the knee, into his mouth.

Carter was interviewed last night on Nerfball Hardball, and came up with this gem:

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you the question about—this is going to cause some trouble with people—but as an historian now and studying the Revolutionary War as it was fought out in the South in those last years of the War, insurgency against a powerful British force, do you see any parallels between the fighting that we did on our side and the fighting that is going on in Iraq today?

CARTER: Well, one parallel is that the Revolutionary War, more than any other war up until recently, has been the most bloody war we‘ve fought. I think another parallel is that in some ways the Revolutionary War could have been avoided. It was an unnecessary war.

Had the British Parliament been a little more sensitive to the colonial‘s really legitimate complaints and requests the war could have been avoided completely, and of course now we would have been a free country now as is Canada and India and Australia, having gotten our independence in a nonviolent way.

I think in many ways the British were very misled in going to war against America and in trying to enforce their will on people who were quite different from them at the time.

Other's have pointed out the error (and it's not even a small one) about the relative bloodiness of the Revolutionary War. But for the unconvinced, try the tables here. To be fair, Carter said "up until recently" to qualify his remarks. So let's see how that works out. How recent? WWII with over a million casualties and over 400,000 dead? WWII stands still today as the beginning of the "modern era" in many ways, although arguably that's changing. How about WWI? 300,000 casualties and over 100,000 dead there. But that's a stretch to call it recent. Ahh -- we get to the Civil War, with at least 500,000 dead on both sides. By no account can the Civil War be considered recent.

Oh, and the terribly brutal Revolutionary War? 4,435 battle deaths, and another 6,200 or so wounded. Is it any wonder that the Dems sat Michael Moore next to Carter at the convention?

But it just gets better. Carter is correct that the initial friction between the Colonies and the Crown was that the Crown was treating the Colonies like, well, colonies, and the Colonists didn't much appreciate it. But saying today, 230 to 240 years after the fact that a lack of sensitivity underly the problem is so an atrocious historical error. Sensitivity in the sense he means it is a decidedly 20th Century creation. He's placing an early 21st Century patina over the world in the late 18th Century without basis. I'm sure the Roman's weren't particularly sensitive either, but viewing their ultimate defeat at the hands of the various and oh so sensitive Goths, Visigoths, etc., it isn't particularly helpful, is it?

But the very best part is next -- the British were misled(!) into war, against a "quite different" people! Benjamin Franklin spent over a decade in England trying mightily to get the Crown and Parliament to acknowledge that the Colonists were not different, and that if only the Brits would treat them similarly things could be worked out. Carter's living in a dream world. But you know, I'd never really considered the point -- maybe he's on to something. I wait with baited breath for Carter to explain all of the other misled wars, recent and otherwise.

Linked to the Beltway Traffic Jam.

Posted by Peter at October 20, 2004 07:45 PM