Back to the future in the Middle East with Jimmy Carter III

I wonder if Barack Obama is so young and ignorant of history that he doesn't know what happened the last time we had a liberal Democrat President who bent over backwards trying to make Islamic "friends"?

I refer, of course, to James Earl Carter Jr., whose long, miserable four years in office led to the Arab oil embargo that crippled our national economy and the Iranian terrorists' takeover of our embassy there leading to 444 days of American hostages held by our Islamic "friends."

As usual, Charles Krauthammer provides a history lesson to point out the utterly astonishing stupidity of Obama's speech about the need for the U.S. to become "friends" with Islam again.

Is it "new" to acknowledge Muslim interests and show respect to the Muslim world? Obama doesn't just think so, he said so again to millions in his al-Arabiya interview, insisting on the need to "restore" the "same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago."

Astonishing. In these most recent 20 years -- the alleged winter of our disrespect of the Islamic world -- America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for them. It engaged in five military campaigns, every one of which involved -- and resulted in -- the liberation of a Muslim people: Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The two Balkan interventions -- as well as the failed 1992-93 Somali intervention to feed starving African Muslims (43 Americans were killed) -- were humanitarian exercises of the highest order, there being no significant U.S. strategic interest at stake. In these 20 years, this nation has done more for suffering and oppressed Muslims than any nation, Muslim or non-Muslim, anywhere on earth. Why are we apologizing?

And what of that happy U.S.-Muslim relationship that Obama imagines existed "as recently as 20 or 30 years ago" that he has now come to restore? Thirty years ago, 1979, saw the greatest U.S.-Muslim rupture in our 233-year history: Iran's radical Islamic revolution, the seizure of the U.S. embassy, the 14 months of America held hostage.

Which came just a few years after the Arab oil embargo that sent the United States into a long and punishing recession. Which, in turn, was preceded by the kidnapping and cold-blooded execution by Arab terrorists of the U.S. ambassador in Sudan and his charge d'affaires.

This is to say nothing of the Marine barracks massacre of 1983, and the innumerable attacks on U.S. embassies and installations around the world during what Obama now characterizes as the halcyon days of U.S.-Islamic relations.

As my dear wife has commented, Sir Charles can say more with fewer words than anybody when he cuts through the smog of fuzzy liberal thinking to lay bare the truth of what's going on here.

Exhibit 2 on Obama's stupidity/blindness/whatever on how to be "friends" to Iran.

Barack Obama is drafting a letter to the "Iranian people," which, as the linked BBC piece points out, is designed to reassure the delightfully cordial Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

State department officials have composed at least three drafts of the letter, which gives assurances that Washington does not want to overthrow the Islamic regime, but merely seeks a change in its behaviour.

In other words, Barack Obama intends to validate the repressive regime that currently perpetrates numerous (and heinous) human rights violations. And it will make the lives of dissenters infinitely more difficult.

Jimmy Carter didn't get it, when he played pen pals with Iran's leadership in 1988. And now, it seems, neither does the Obama administration.

I rest my case. God help the U.S. of A. And please Lord, lead us out of this 4-year nightmare.