Penalty Wars

One of the most idiotic utterances ever by a United States President, folks: It comes courtesy of Jimmy Carter in 1979. It seems, folks, that, during the Iranian hostage crisis of that same year, Carter was reminded that this particular action by the Iranians could in fact be pay-back for our overthrow of THEIR government in 1953 (coupled, of course, by our installation of the miserable Shah in its place). Carter's rather terse response to that hypothesis? "1953, that's ancient history."....................................Wow, huh, ancient history, 26 years? Only in America, folks. Only in America could 26 years be considered an eternity. Of course, now that we're 29 years removed from THAT traumatic event (one, in other words, that was devastating to us), we seem to have developed a slightly different perspective.....................................Not that we've learned anything from that experience, mind you. This, I'm saying, in that we're still trying to impose our will on the rest of the world, still ignoring the possibility that these actions may in fact come back to haunt us (as they did in Cuba, as they did in Iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc., etc.).....................................It all makes me think back to George Bush, the candidate, folks, his insistence that America put forth a far more humble foreign-policy, specifically. Oh well, at least we have Obama now. Here's to hoping that that fellow, if in fact HE gets elected, has at least some capacity to learn from the mistakes of his predecessors - and NOT, I'm saying, think that William McKinley (a starter of 2 unnecessary wars), for example, is something from the distant past, ancient history, etc..