8 Critical Jimmy Carter Quotes You Won’t See in Most Mainstream Media Obits

The late ex-president slammed US foreign policy, backed Bernie Sanders, and condemned Israeli ‘apartheid.'

US President Jimmy Carter at the White House giving a speech on the economy/inflation, Washington, DC, March 14, 1980. (Chuck Fishman/Getty Images)

How should we remember the late Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States? Pundits will argue over his domestic policy, especially his economic record, which wasn’t great – inflation, interest rates, and unemployment all shot up on his watch between 1977 and 1981.

Others will debate his foreign policy record – which featured major wins for him like the Camp David and the Panama Canal peace treaties, but also major losses like the Iranian hostage crisis.

But it’s what Carter said after he left office that will stick with me, because not only was he perhaps the most beloved ex-president, but he also wasn’t afraid to speak some blunt truths to the American people.

Here are the most surprising Jimmy Carter quotes you may not have heard before – and probably won’t get mentioned in most of his obituaries.

1. Let's start with 2015. When the now-late president said, “I think the American superpower goal should be to be the champion of peace,” only to later follow it with the assertion that “we are the most warlike country on earth.” Carter also pointed out that the US had been at peace for only 16 of its then 242 years as a nation, four of which were on his watch.

2. Regarding the invasion of Iraq, already in 2004, Carter told The Independent newspaper in the UK “there was no reason for us to become involved in Iraq recently. That was a war based on lies and misinterpretations from London and from Washington.”

3. In 2006, he doubled down on that statement, calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to step down, and saying that he and Vice President Dick Cheney quote, “deliberately misled the American people about the danger in Iraq."

4. In fact, the Nobel committee said his early criticisms of George W. Bush administration’s foreign policy – which Carter would later call the “worst in history” – was one of the reasons why the former president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

5. In 2012, writing in The New York Times about Barack Obama's drone war, Carter declared “the United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights. Our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.”

6. He went on to quote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adding “our government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.’” - Those were the words of a former Democratic president loudly denouncing the bombing campaigns of a sitting Democratic president. Yes, Carter wasn’t afraid to buck his own party. In fact, in 2017, not only praised Bernie Sanders, but he admitted that he cast his vote for Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primaries, not Hillary Clinton. No one could really imagine someone like Obama or Biden going against mainstream Democrats like that.

7. It’s no wonder then that three years before that, Carter revealed that he would consider pardoning NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, having also told CNN a year earlier “I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial.”

8. Carter wasn’t just critical of the US, he also called out US allies. In a 2006 interview on Canadian television about his controversial book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Carter said “when Israel does occupy this territory deep within the West Bank, and connects the 200-or-so settlements with each other, with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, in many cases even crossing the road, this perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa."

Yes, he used the A-word.

You don’t hear many presidents or former presidents speaking in such a critical way about Israel's occupation, about the invasion of Iraq, or the treatment of Edward Snowden.

You don’t hear many US presidents or former presidents openly challenging the United States’ hawkish foreign policy consensus, or many Democratic presidents supporting the left-wing of their party.

You don’t hear many presidents or former presidents making the phrase “waging peace” their motto.

Jimmy Carter’s bluntness will, truly, be missed.