Let's Hope Obama isn't as Naive as Carter
Obama's Charm Offensive and the Global Jihad By Jeff Jacoby EARLY IN HIS presidency, Jimmy Carter set about to a letter US policy toward the Soviet Union. Six days after his inauguration he sent a letter to Soviet ruler Leonid Brezhnev, hailing the two countries' "common efforts towards formation of a more peaceful, just, and humane world" and saluting Brezhnev's supposed "aspiration for strengthening and preserving. . . peace." In a commencement address at Notre Dame, he declared that Americans had shed their "inordinate fear of communism." In the months that followed, Carter slashed the defense budget, scrapped the B-1 bomber, welcomed the Sandinista coup in Nicaragua, and launched diplomatic relations with Cuba's dictator, Fidel Castro. It wasn't until the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 that Carter finally woke up to his naiveté. Moscow's brutal aggression "made a more dramatic change in my opinion of what the Soviets...