Comment on Afghans Compromise on Special Forces Ban

Recent press accounts indicate that Republican intermediaries—including former Treasury Secretary and Texas Gov. John Connally—meddled in the Iranian hostage crisis to benefit Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign. This reporting has raised anew one of the major “what if” questions in recent American political history: would Jimmy Carter, who died on Sunday, Dec.

Jimmy Carter was not a president of the first rank, but he managed by dint of unceasing effort to become an iconic world leader, with an inspiring, if often contentious, legacy as a dogged peacemaker and a decent and ethical problem-solver. His presidency—beset by a horrible economy, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the seizure of American hostages in Iran—was a stunning political failure but a greater substantive success than was recognized when he was crushed for reelection by Ronald Reagan in 1980. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] In today’s world of perpetual military intervention, it’s striking that not a single bomb was dropped or shot fired in combat by American forces on Carter’s watch, and his leadership helped prevent at least five wars—in Panama, Israel, and Iran when he was president, and in Haiti and North Korea after he left office.

The presidency of Jimmy Carter, who died on Dec. 29 at age 100, is typically understood as bland and ineffective—perhaps best symbolized by the uninspiring cardigan sweaters he favored wearing in office. Four decades of subsequent good works have transformed Carter’s cardigan into a symbol of something more wholesome, humble even.

Some U. S. presidents have the (mis)fortune of having their entire foreign policy defined by their handling of one part of the world. For Jimmy Carter, who died on Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024, aged 100, it was the Middle East. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] There, he reached his highest point as a peacemaker and his lowest one as a seemingly inept protector of Americans.

The career of Jimmy Carter, the U. S. President who died on Dec. 29 at age 100, will be remembered for many things: his peanut-farming background, his speedy rise to political fame and fall after one term, his handling — or mishandling — of the energy crisis and the Iran hostage crisis. Another achievement, from early in his career, may be less well known, but is just as worthy of remembrance. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] [video id=pf0TUDlq autostart="viewable"] The mid-1970s, when Carter became a national public figure, was a time of transition, full of the aftershocks of the progress and devastation that had characterized the previous decade, not least in the arena of the civil rights movement.

ATLANTA — Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer who won the presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal and Vietnam War, endured humbling defeat after one tumultuous term and then redefined life after the White House as a global humanitarian, has died. He was 100 years old. The longest-lived American president died on Sunday, more than a year after entering hospice care, at his home in the small town of Plains, Georgia, where he and his wife, Rosalynn, who died at 96 in November 2023, spent most of their lives, The Carter Center said. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “Our founder, former U.