Carter laid the groundwork for arming the Afgan Rebels that led to our winning the Cold War. I really hate to compare Presidents from different decades. For instance we were dependent on ME oil as we had not come across fracking. Bush probably would not have went to war with Iraq had he known about fracking.
Originally Posted by WTF
I didn't know that. So Carter's the one who's responsible for our war in Afghanistan, as the Taliban probably wouldn't have ever come to power if we hadn't help push the Russians out and armed the militias? And also for the Iraq war? If the Taliban hadn't been in power, Afghanistan wouldn't have provided refuge to Osama bin Laden. And George W. Bush would never have had an excuse to invade.
As to energy, he decimated the U.S. natural gas industry with bizarre price controls that both increased the price of gas and discouraged development of the resource. If this had been allowed to stay in place, we wouldn't have made the great progress that we have in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Well, besides the Camp David accords, which were arguably the most important Middle East peace agreements since the establishment of the Israeli state, there was the Carter Doctrine, which was put in place afterward to explicitly protect the Arab states. And they did just that for almost 40 years, until...
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/12/15...oil-big-think/
So, yeah. Pretty sure the Middle East (with the noted exception of Iran and the PLO) was just fine with Carter.
Originally Posted by intldjgig
I forgot about that. We were saddled with around $5 billion a year in foreign aid (probably much more than that years ago in inflation adjusted terms) to pay off the Israelis and the Egyptians, so they wouldn't kill each other.