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During Carter's presidency, you had the Iranian hostage crisis, the '79 energy crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent end of Détente. I

During Carter's presidency, you had the Iranian hostage crisis, the '79 energy crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent end of Détente. I think Carter has relatively little blame for these things, but nevertheless, it's easy for me to see why people think Carter was a nice guy but too weak.

aaronbrethorst 5y ago
Carter ended the Iranian hostage crisis. https://www.vox.com/2016/1/25/10826056/reagan-iran-hostage-negotiation https://www.vox.com/2016/1/25/10826056/reagan-iran-hostage-n...
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  Let’s not forget how Carter was robbed of the credit, and likely the election, due to the rather suspicious timing of its end. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Surprise_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Surprise_conspiracy_th...
  - buildbot 5y ago
    AKA Treason
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    Here's a transcript of a 1987 broadcast by The Other American's Radio about the October Surprise: https://www.donhopkins.com/home/catalog/text/october-suprise.html https://www.donhopkins.com/home/catalog/text/october-suprise... And a paper I wrote about it in 1988 for a college writing class, with lots citations to sources I looked up in newspaper microfilm archives (what researchers had to do before google and youtube and wikipedia were a thing), plus a couple links at the end I added later when I transcribed it to html, once the world wide web existed: https://www.donhopkins.com/home/documents/OctoberSurprise.html https://www.donhopkins.com/home/documents/OctoberSurprise.ht... Here's my criticism of Carter's response to the hostage crisis, and a description of the failed hostage rescue mission that Oliver North, Richard Secord, and Albert Hakim sabotaged, years before they caused the Iran Contra Scandal by trading arms to Iran for money and hostages, then illegally channeling the money to the Contras: >III. Carter's Response >From the beginning, President Jimmy Carter gave the hostage crisis a high profile. It was the focus his and his country's attention, day after day. But that was exactly wrong approach to take if he wanted to get the hostages out, without making it seem like he conceded to terrorism. Not only did the Iranians benefit from the publicity, but the constant crisis took time away and attention from other important problems, like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the 1980 presidential election. >What Carter should have recognized was that there were different factions in the Iranian government competing with each other for power, and the hostage situation would go on as long as the Iranians could use the situation to their political advantage. If there was not as much attention on the hostage crisis, it would have not been as useful a propaganda tool. >The President threatened a military response if the hostages were harmed or put on trial. The threat was deterrent, not coercive. Such threats are most effective at keeping somebody from doing something they haven't already done. The threat worked. Iran stopped saying they were going to put the hostages on trial and execute them. >Carter considered several courses of military action. He decided not to mine Iranian ports, as that would interfere with other countries, and might provoke the Iranians to harm the hostages. He did however order that a rescue plan be drawn up, but he hoped it wouldn't have to be used. >The other effective measures he took were to freeze Iranian monetary assets, and to impose an arms embargo and economic sanctions. His goal was to get other countries to go along with the embargo and sanctions. >IV. The Hostage Rescue Mission >On April 23, 1980, an abortive Iranian hostage rescue mission took place, conducted under the utmost secrecy. The plan was to storm the American embassy in Tehran, and bring home the hostages. >8 helicopters, 6 C-130 transport planes, and 93 Delta force commandoes secretly invaded Iran. They were to rendezvous at a place in Iran they called Desert One, move out to another point called Desert Two, and then go on to Tehran to rescue the hostages. But Delta force never made it to Desert Two or Tehran. The mission was aborted after three of the eight helicopters failed, on the way to Desert One. The operation was a miserable failure, resulting in an accident that caused the loss of 8 American lives. Later investigation revealed a surprising level of negligence. [4] [7] [13] >Just before the rescue mission took place, several other countries had finally agreed to level economic sanctions on Iran. Some of them agreed to the sanctions because they thought that if they did, the U.S. would not take any military action. They were quite irate when they heard about the rescue mission after the fact. >At least three central figures in the Iran-Contra Scandal were involved with the Iranian hostage rescue mission: Secord, Hakim, an North. >General Richard Secord helped to organize the abortive rescue mission. After the first mission failed, he was the head of the planning group that eventually decided against another rescue attempt. Because the whereabouts of the hostages were unknown, the second rescue attempt (the October Surprise that the Reagan-Bush campaign was so worried about) never happened. >Secord was later suspended from his Pentagon post because of the EATSCO probe. EATSCO is a company that belongs to Edwin Wilson, the CIA operative who is currently serving time in a federal maximum-security prison for, among other things, secretly supplying 43,000 pounds of plastic explosives to Kadaffi. [21] >In 1981, he became Chief Middle East arms-sales adviser to Secretary of Defense Casper W. Weinberger. [21] >Albert Hakim is a wealthy arms merchant, an Iranian exile, and CIA informant, who had a "sensitive intelligence" role in 1980 hostage rescue. He worked for the CIA near the Turkish boarder, handling the logistics of the rescue mission in Tehran. Hakim purchased trucks and vans, and rented a warehouse on the edge of Tehran to hide them in until they were needed for the operation. Unexpectedly however, he skipped town the day before the rescue mission. [2] [13] [25] Later on, in July, 1981, Hakim approached the CIA, with a plan to gain favor with the Iranian government by selling it arms. [22] >Oliver North led a secret detachment to eastern Turkey. He was in the mother ship on the Turkish border awaiting the cue from Secord to fly into Teheran and rescue the hostages. [2] [25] After the first aborted rescue mission, he worked with Secord on a second rescue plan. >According to the October Surprise theory, Secord, North and Hakim did not intend Desert One to carry through. The miserable failure of Carter's Desert One rescue attempt may have been deliberate.
    - DonHopkins 5y ago
      >V. The 1980 Presidential Election [...] >The Reagan-Bush campaign was afraid Carter would rescue the hostages and win the election. Before the election, there were many rumors and security leaks about an "October Surprise" hostage rescue attempt. Richard Werthlin, Reagan-Bush 1980 presidential campaign pollster, determined that an "October Surprise" would end their chances of winning the election. [25] >On April 20, 1980, days before the actual mission, Mike Copeland ran a hypothetical hostage rescue story in the Washington Star that almost exactly predicted the real thing. >Members of the Reagan-Bush campaign formed the October Surprise Working Group, to keep Carter from bringing hostages successfully home. [25] Richard Allen, Reagan's foreign policy advisor, was the head of the group. The group included William Casey, Reagan's 1980 campaign manager, who was later appointed CIA director. Casey was at the heart of the Iran-Contra Scandal, and died before he could testify. The group also included Vice Presidential candidate George Bush, who was eventually elected President of the United States in 1988. [...] >[25] "The October Surprise"; Jane Perry; Executive producer, Eric Schwartz; The Other America's Radio, 1987; Santa Barbara, CA; https://web.archive.org/web/20010720230735/http://www.sumeria.net/politics/oct-sur.html https://web.archive.org/web/20010720230735/http://www.sumeri... >[26] "The Bloody Border"; James Oberg; https://web.archive.org/web/20010420102123/http://www.jamesoberg.com/articles/border.html https://web.archive.org/web/20010420102123/http://www.jameso...
UncleOxidant 5y ago
> the '79 energy crisis Which was a continuation of the energy crisis (and rise in oil prices) that began with the '73 Arab oil embargo.
- robonerd 5y ago
  What matters is how the public perceives the issue at the time of the election. Ditto the Iranian hostage crisis. Those hostages were not yet free by the time of the 1980 election. You can argue their eventually release in 1981 as a result of Carter's actions and that Reagan doesn't deserve credit for it, but that doesn't change the way the public perceived the situation in 1980.
  - lupire 5y ago
    That's what mattered for the election. Not what matters for understanding history and trying to stop repeating the same terrible mistakes.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    What matters now is that disingenuous Republicans like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are still pushing the bald faced lie that Reagan instead of Carter deserves credit for the release of the hostages. https://www.vox.com/2016/1/25/10826056/reagan-iran-hostage-negotiation https://www.vox.com/2016/1/25/10826056/reagan-iran-hostage-n... >The Republican myth of Ronald Reagan and the Iran hostages, debunked [...] >"When I become president," Rubio claimed, "it will be like Ronald Reagan, where as soon as he took office, the hostages were released from Iran," because "our adversaries around the world will know that America is no longer under the command of someone weak like Barack Obama." >Ted Cruz gave a remarkably similar statement the same day on Fox News, saying that the temporary seizure of the US sailors by Iran was "the direct result of the weakness of this presidency," and that "it’s worth remembering, this same nation, Iran, in 1981 released our hostages the day Ronald Reagan was sworn into office." >The problem with this story: Iran released the embassy hostages because of Carter's negotiations, not in spite of them. [...] >But Carter and his negotiators kept working through the very end of his presidency, and eventually, at the last possible moment, they succeeded. On January 19, 1981, the US and Iran signed the Algiers Accords, an agreement brokered by the Algerian government that secured the hostages' release in exchange for concessions by the US, including sanctions relief, the release of frozen Iranian assets, and the creation of the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal that would remove cases against Iran from US courts. >The hostages were released the following day, January 20, 1981 — the day Reagan was inaugurated. >In other words, Rubio and Cruz's version of events is straight-up false. The hostages were released in exchange for sizable concessions from the United States — exactly the sort of process they deride as weak — and not because Ronald Reagan was a tough and scary gentleman whose mere presence in the Oval Office panicked Khomeini into capitulating. [...]

aaronbrethorst 5y ago

Carter ended the Iranian hostage crisis. https://www.vox.com/2016/1/25/10826056/reagan-iran-hostage-negotiation https://www.vox.com/2016/1/25/10826056/reagan-iran-hostage-n...

actually_a_dog 5y ago
Let’s not forget how Carter was robbed of the credit, and likely the election, due to the rather suspicious timing of its end. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Surprise_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Surprise_conspiracy_th...
- buildbot 5y ago
  AKA Treason
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  Here's a transcript of a 1987 broadcast by The Other American's Radio about the October Surprise: https://www.donhopkins.com/home/catalog/text/october-suprise.html https://www.donhopkins.com/home/catalog/text/october-suprise... And a paper I wrote about it in 1988 for a college writing class, with lots citations to sources I looked up in newspaper microfilm archives (what researchers had to do before google and youtube and wikipedia were a thing), plus a couple links at the end I added later when I transcribed it to html, once the world wide web existed: https://www.donhopkins.com/home/documents/OctoberSurprise.html https://www.donhopkins.com/home/documents/OctoberSurprise.ht... Here's my criticism of Carter's response to the hostage crisis, and a description of the failed hostage rescue mission that Oliver North, Richard Secord, and Albert Hakim sabotaged, years before they caused the Iran Contra Scandal by trading arms to Iran for money and hostages, then illegally channeling the money to the Contras: >III. Carter's Response >From the beginning, President Jimmy Carter gave the hostage crisis a high profile. It was the focus his and his country's attention, day after day. But that was exactly wrong approach to take if he wanted to get the hostages out, without making it seem like he conceded to terrorism. Not only did the Iranians benefit from the publicity, but the constant crisis took time away and attention from other important problems, like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the 1980 presidential election. >What Carter should have recognized was that there were different factions in the Iranian government competing with each other for power, and the hostage situation would go on as long as the Iranians could use the situation to their political advantage. If there was not as much attention on the hostage crisis, it would have not been as useful a propaganda tool. >The President threatened a military response if the hostages were harmed or put on trial. The threat was deterrent, not coercive. Such threats are most effective at keeping somebody from doing something they haven't already done. The threat worked. Iran stopped saying they were going to put the hostages on trial and execute them. >Carter considered several courses of military action. He decided not to mine Iranian ports, as that would interfere with other countries, and might provoke the Iranians to harm the hostages. He did however order that a rescue plan be drawn up, but he hoped it wouldn't have to be used. >The other effective measures he took were to freeze Iranian monetary assets, and to impose an arms embargo and economic sanctions. His goal was to get other countries to go along with the embargo and sanctions. >IV. The Hostage Rescue Mission >On April 23, 1980, an abortive Iranian hostage rescue mission took place, conducted under the utmost secrecy. The plan was to storm the American embassy in Tehran, and bring home the hostages. >8 helicopters, 6 C-130 transport planes, and 93 Delta force commandoes secretly invaded Iran. They were to rendezvous at a place in Iran they called Desert One, move out to another point called Desert Two, and then go on to Tehran to rescue the hostages. But Delta force never made it to Desert Two or Tehran. The mission was aborted after three of the eight helicopters failed, on the way to Desert One. The operation was a miserable failure, resulting in an accident that caused the loss of 8 American lives. Later investigation revealed a surprising level of negligence. [4] [7] [13] >Just before the rescue mission took place, several other countries had finally agreed to level economic sanctions on Iran. Some of them agreed to the sanctions because they thought that if they did, the U.S. would not take any military action. They were quite irate when they heard about the rescue mission after the fact. >At least three central figures in the Iran-Contra Scandal were involved with the Iranian hostage rescue mission: Secord, Hakim, an North. >General Richard Secord helped to organize the abortive rescue mission. After the first mission failed, he was the head of the planning group that eventually decided against another rescue attempt. Because the whereabouts of the hostages were unknown, the second rescue attempt (the October Surprise that the Reagan-Bush campaign was so worried about) never happened. >Secord was later suspended from his Pentagon post because of the EATSCO probe. EATSCO is a company that belongs to Edwin Wilson, the CIA operative who is currently serving time in a federal maximum-security prison for, among other things, secretly supplying 43,000 pounds of plastic explosives to Kadaffi. [21] >In 1981, he became Chief Middle East arms-sales adviser to Secretary of Defense Casper W. Weinberger. [21] >Albert Hakim is a wealthy arms merchant, an Iranian exile, and CIA informant, who had a "sensitive intelligence" role in 1980 hostage rescue. He worked for the CIA near the Turkish boarder, handling the logistics of the rescue mission in Tehran. Hakim purchased trucks and vans, and rented a warehouse on the edge of Tehran to hide them in until they were needed for the operation. Unexpectedly however, he skipped town the day before the rescue mission. [2] [13] [25] Later on, in July, 1981, Hakim approached the CIA, with a plan to gain favor with the Iranian government by selling it arms. [22] >Oliver North led a secret detachment to eastern Turkey. He was in the mother ship on the Turkish border awaiting the cue from Secord to fly into Teheran and rescue the hostages. [2] [25] After the first aborted rescue mission, he worked with Secord on a second rescue plan. >According to the October Surprise theory, Secord, North and Hakim did not intend Desert One to carry through. The miserable failure of Carter's Desert One rescue attempt may have been deliberate.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    >V. The 1980 Presidential Election [...] >The Reagan-Bush campaign was afraid Carter would rescue the hostages and win the election. Before the election, there were many rumors and security leaks about an "October Surprise" hostage rescue attempt. Richard Werthlin, Reagan-Bush 1980 presidential campaign pollster, determined that an "October Surprise" would end their chances of winning the election. [25] >On April 20, 1980, days before the actual mission, Mike Copeland ran a hypothetical hostage rescue story in the Washington Star that almost exactly predicted the real thing. >Members of the Reagan-Bush campaign formed the October Surprise Working Group, to keep Carter from bringing hostages successfully home. [25] Richard Allen, Reagan's foreign policy advisor, was the head of the group. The group included William Casey, Reagan's 1980 campaign manager, who was later appointed CIA director. Casey was at the heart of the Iran-Contra Scandal, and died before he could testify. The group also included Vice Presidential candidate George Bush, who was eventually elected President of the United States in 1988. [...] >[25] "The October Surprise"; Jane Perry; Executive producer, Eric Schwartz; The Other America's Radio, 1987; Santa Barbara, CA; https://web.archive.org/web/20010720230735/http://www.sumeria.net/politics/oct-sur.html https://web.archive.org/web/20010720230735/http://www.sumeri... >[26] "The Bloody Border"; James Oberg; https://web.archive.org/web/20010420102123/http://www.jamesoberg.com/articles/border.html https://web.archive.org/web/20010420102123/http://www.jameso...

UncleOxidant 5y ago

> the '79 energy crisis Which was a continuation of the energy crisis (and rise in oil prices) that began with the '73 Arab oil embargo.

robonerd 5y ago
What matters is how the public perceives the issue at the time of the election. Ditto the Iranian hostage crisis. Those hostages were not yet free by the time of the 1980 election. You can argue their eventually release in 1981 as a result of Carter's actions and that Reagan doesn't deserve credit for it, but that doesn't change the way the public perceived the situation in 1980.
- lupire 5y ago
  That's what mattered for the election. Not what matters for understanding history and trying to stop repeating the same terrible mistakes.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  What matters now is that disingenuous Republicans like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are still pushing the bald faced lie that Reagan instead of Carter deserves credit for the release of the hostages. https://www.vox.com/2016/1/25/10826056/reagan-iran-hostage-negotiation https://www.vox.com/2016/1/25/10826056/reagan-iran-hostage-n... >The Republican myth of Ronald Reagan and the Iran hostages, debunked [...] >"When I become president," Rubio claimed, "it will be like Ronald Reagan, where as soon as he took office, the hostages were released from Iran," because "our adversaries around the world will know that America is no longer under the command of someone weak like Barack Obama." >Ted Cruz gave a remarkably similar statement the same day on Fox News, saying that the temporary seizure of the US sailors by Iran was "the direct result of the weakness of this presidency," and that "it’s worth remembering, this same nation, Iran, in 1981 released our hostages the day Ronald Reagan was sworn into office." >The problem with this story: Iran released the embassy hostages because of Carter's negotiations, not in spite of them. [...] >But Carter and his negotiators kept working through the very end of his presidency, and eventually, at the last possible moment, they succeeded. On January 19, 1981, the US and Iran signed the Algiers Accords, an agreement brokered by the Algerian government that secured the hostages' release in exchange for concessions by the US, including sanctions relief, the release of frozen Iranian assets, and the creation of the Iran–United States Claims Tribunal that would remove cases against Iran from US courts. >The hostages were released the following day, January 20, 1981 — the day Reagan was inaugurated. >In other words, Rubio and Cruz's version of events is straight-up false. The hostages were released in exchange for sizable concessions from the United States — exactly the sort of process they deride as weak — and not because Ronald Reagan was a tough and scary gentleman whose mere presence in the Oval Office panicked Khomeini into capitulating. [...]