‘Twas a famous ending

Those of us of a certain age recall that Jimmy Carter began his term in office as president declaring that we had overcome our inordinate fear of Communism. As William Buckley probably pointed out at the time, Carter never did explain what the “ordinate” fear of Commmunism was or would have been. Rather, he was, as a certain critical biography of Carter points out, declaring an end to the Cold War.

Unfortunately, however, the Soviet Union didn’t see it that way. They lacked Carter’s sense of an ending to the conflict. Moreover, Carter all but announced his abandonment of the Shah of Iran as the Ayatollah Khomeni engineered the Shah’s downfall. We live with the consequences to this day and now have an even worse president to deal with them.

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Carter awoke from his reveries. Indeed, Carter himself told Frank Reynolds of ABC News that “this action of the Soviets has made a more dramatic change in my own opinion of what the Soviets’ ultimate goals are than anything they’ve done in the previous time I’ve been in office,” which, as that critical biography observes, raised questions about what Carter had thought hitherto about the character of the Soviet Union.

Carter, however, not only confessed error. He even went so far as to announce a new doctrine, adapting our postwar policy of containment to the Persian Gulf in what came to be called the Carter Doctrine. He also acquiesced in the beginning of the defense buildup that Ronald Reagan ramped up after he defeated Carter.

The Washington Free Beacon’s David Rutz has compiled the devastating video below (posted here on YouTube). In it, Obama declares over and over again that he has “ended the war in Iraq,” as promised. Rich Lowry reviews the relevant history in “The war Obama didn’t end.”

This was Obama’s great boast. Only this past Sunday, however, as also displayed in the video, Obama denied that the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq was his doing. Speaking of “horse****,” to borrow Obama’s epithet of choice, this is it, all the way down.

Via InstaPundit.

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