Former President Jimmy Carter, 90, who has always had a penchant for embracing violent leaders who hate American values, had kind words for the brutal Cuban Communist dictator Fidel Castro after Castro’ death on Friday.
The Atlanta-based Carter Center released this statement from Carter:
Rosalynn and I share our sympathies with the Castro family and the Cuban people on the death of Fidel Castro. We remember fondly our visits with him in Cuba and his love of his country. We wish the Cuban citizens peace and prosperity in the years ahead.
A declassified Presidential Directive, dated March 15, 1977, signed by Carter, stated: “I have concluded that we should attempt to achieve normalization of our relations with Cuba.” The Carter directive also accused U.S.-based exile groups of conducting terror attacks against Cuba, stating, “The Attorney General should take all necessary steps permitted by law to prevent terrorist or any illegal actions launched from within the United States against Cuba . . .”
That was the first time a President ordered normalization of U.S. relations with Castro’s Cuba to be an explicit foreign policy goal of the United States. On March 19, 1977, Carter allowed the US travel restrictions implemented by John Fitzgerald Kennedy in February 1963 to lapse. Kennedy had banned US citizens from traveling to or making financial transactions with Cuba. On September 1, 1977, the Carter Administration opened an Interests Section in Havana, technically part of the Swiss embassy. Cuba opened an Interests Section in Washington, DC.
In 2002, Castro invited Carter to Cuba. Carter soke to the Cuban people in Spanish and called on the U.S. to lift the embargo on Cuba.
In 2011, Carter traveled to Cuba in 2011 to meet President Raul Castro.
Carter also embraced arch-terrorist murderer PLO chief Yasser Arafat; as Douglas Brinkley, Carter’s biographer and analyst, wrote in The Unfinished Presidency, “There was no world leader Jimmy Carter was more eager to know than Yasir Arafat.” Carter even wrote a speech for Arafat to give to the West:
“On May 24 Carter drafted on his home computer the strategy and wording for a generic speech Arafat was to deliver soon for Western ears . . .” Said Carter, “The audience is not the Security Council, but the world community. The objective of the speech should be to secure maximum sympathy and support of other world leaders . . . ”
