Carter quite right– On Olympics, Hamas, and Nepali elections

I just watched this clip of George Stephanopoulos’s interview with Nobel Peace Laureate and former US president Jimmy Carter this morning. (Complete transcript here.) Carter is such a wise, inspirational figure. He was calm and reasoned as he discussed three issues:

— the “transformational” importance of the elections in Nepal, which hold a real hope of a better future for the country’s 29 million citizens;
— his argument that countries should not boycott the upcoming Olympics in Beijing– including why the situation around those Olympics is very different from that around the 1980 Games in Moscow, which the US did boycott, when he was president; and
— his still-probable plan to hold talks with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal (among many others) during his upcoming visit to the Middle East.

One of the qualities of Jimmy Carter that I particularly admire is the stress he has always put on peacemaking and peacebuilding as vital to the attainment of full human rights. That has been evident in the Carter Center’s involvement in dozens of conflict-wracked situations around the world, including the role it has played in monitoring elections in, among many other places, Palestine in 1996 and 2006, and Nepal right now.
Another of his admirable qualities is the calmness with which he states a position that, once articulated, seems clear, straightforward, and (to me) evidently true, but which flies counter to much of the chatter generated by the US mainstream commentatoriat.
On Hamas, he said,

it’s likely that I will be meeting with the Hamas leaders. We’ll be meeting with the Israelis. We’ll be meeting with Fatah.
We’ll be meeting with the Syrians, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Saudi Arabians, and with the whole gamut of people who might have to play a crucial role in any future peace agreement that involves the Middle East.
As a matter of fact, I’ve been meeting with Hamas leaders for years. As a matter of fact, 10 years ago, after Arafat was first elected president of the PLO and the Palestinians, we were monitoring that election, and I met with Hamas afterwards.
And then, in January of 2006, we were the monitors there for the Palestinian election, and Hamas won the election. We met with them after the election was over.
And so, I think that it’s very important that at least someone meet with the Hamas leaders to express their views, to ascertain what flexibility they have, to try to induce them to stop all attacks against innocent civilians in Israel and to cooperate with the Fatah as a group that unites the Palestinians, maybe to get them to agree to a ceasefire — things of this kind.
But I might add very quickly, that I’m not going as a mediator or a negotiator. This is a mission that we take as part of an overall Carter Center project, to promote peace in the region.

With respect to the Hamas question, Rami Khouri also has an excellent column in the Beirut Daily Star today. (Hat-tip Judy for that.)
Rami uses an argument there that I have articulated on a number of occasions:

he key to progress toward true peace may pass through judging and engaging Hamas on the same basis that was used with other militant or terrorist groups, including the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, the Viet Cong in Vietnam, SWAPO in Namibia, the ANC in South Africa, and, more recently, the “insurgents” in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This approach typically comprises four components: talk to the group in question rather than boycott it; make clear their objectionable actions that must stop; identify their legitimate national or political demands that can be met; and, negotiate in a context of equality to achieve a win-win situation that stops the terror, removes underlying reasons for it, satisfies all sides’ minimum demands and rights, and achieves peace and security.
The key to achieving a peaceful win-win situation is to analyze and deal with Hamas in the total framework of its actions, and not only through the narrow lens of terror acts. This means understanding and addressing the six R’s that Hamas represents: resistance, respect, reciprocity, reconstruction, rights and refugees.

On Nepal, Carter noted that the Carter Center has been involved there for five years now, helping to provide ideas and serve as a sounding board for multiple parties as the country’s extremely debilitating and lengthy civil war wound down.
He told Stephanopoulos the election there,

will totally transform the structure of a society and the political situation and military situation in Nepal.
It will be the end, for instance, of 12 years of conflict, both military and political — a war that lasted for 10 years and cost about 13,000 lives — and this will bring peace.
Secondly, it would transform completely the nature of the government. For 240 years, Nepal has had a Hindu kingdom — the only one on earth. And now, it will have a democratic republic.
And the third thing I think is significant is that, for the first time, large numbers of marginalized people — more than 50 percent of their total population — will be guaranteed a place in the political process.
The Madhesis, who live down on the Indian border, Dalits, who are Untouchables, ethnic groups — and particularly women. As a matter of fact, in the constituent assembly that will assemble as a result of these elections, that’ll write a new constitution for Nepal, will have at least 30 percent of the seats in the constituent assembly filled by women…

Finally, regarding the Beijing Olympics, I know I haven’t written about them here on JWN yet. I have to say, as a US citizen, one of my main concerns in the present controversy over Beijing’s human rights record and its hosting of the upcoming Olympics is the amount of seemingly mean-spirited and accusatory finger-pointing that has been going on in this country, against the Chinese government.
Yes, the Chinese government has a problematic human-rights record. (Though it also has many human rights achievements, especially in the field of economic and social rights. But China’s present western accusers give it no credit for those whatsoever. Indeed, you get the impression that many of them have no idea what it’s like to lack basic social and economic rights, in the way that hundreds of millions of Chinese people routinely did during the warlord regimes, civil war, and internal upheavals that preceded the Deng Xiaoping era.)
But guess what? Our very own country here in the US has an extremely disturbing human rights record, too! Guantanamo, anyone? Abu Ghraib? Launching a completely unjustified war of aggression against Iraq then running an extremely damaging occupation there for more than five years? Encouraging Ethiopia to invade Somalia, and Israel to assault Lebanon?
All those actions by our government caused or actually constituted very grave human rights abuses. So maybe if “rights-tainted” countries should be boycotted we should be arguing for our country to be boycotted? Certainly, the US activists who have mounted such a campaign against China should be people who take real responsibility, first and foremost, for the actions of their (our) own government…
I do think that most of the US media has played a bad role in the whole Olympic torch tour fiasco, easily buying into and propagating the meme of “bad China” and “admirable and daring anti-China demonstrators” without examining the issue any more deeply at all. (The same big media in this country, that is, that have almost always completely buried the anti-war demonstrations carried out within this country, while filling their space with all kinds of pro-administration propaganda.)
Talking of the role of the media, do look at the way Stephanopoulos asked Carter his question about the Olympics:

You led the boycott of the Moscow Olympics to protest what the Soviet Union was doing in Afghanistan.
Should the U.S. boycott the Olympics this year to protest China’s crackdown on Tibet and its complicity with the genocide in Darfur?

Okay, Steph is taking for granted there that China is “complicit” in the very complex inter-group conflict in Darfur, which he labels simply as “genocide.” There might or might not be a genocide in Darfur. But there is certainly a lot else going on as well, including war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed by many parties, including the anti-government as well as pro-government side. But where do we get the idea that China is somehow uniquely “complicit” in the actions of the pro-government side there?
China has 315 peacekeepers in Darfur, as part of the AU/UN force there.
How many does the US have? None.
The US government has many under-the-table deals with the Khartoum government, especially in the realm of sharing intelligence about Al Qaeda.
Again, all the anti-China finger-pointing being undertaken by the more ardent “Save Darfur” people in this country seems misplaced…
Actually, many of the “pro-Tibet” people in the US– and their hangers-on in the media– seem to be trying to be much more hardline in their anti-China stance than most Tibetans themselves… especially His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who has never called for a boycott of the Olympics, or for Tibet’s secession from China, or for many of the other things that the anti-China crowd in this country wants to call for.
Anyway, it’s good to see that Jimmy Carter is a real force for wisdom, sensible engagement, and respect for other people, on both the China and the Hamas issues. I think perhaps where he got his wisdom from– in contrast to the shallow positions expressed by Stephanopoulos– is from his commitment to traveling to numerous countries around the world to see the situation in them for himself, and to listening carefully and respectfully to what he gets told by the people in those countries.
If Stephanopouls and his confreres in the big US media would get out of their US-bound echo-chamber a little more, and if they tried to listen carefully to people from a wide range of different backgrounds and with a wide range of different viewpoints, they might actually end up being a lot wiser and understanding how the world works a lot better? Two things that people in the US big media really need to understand a lot better than they currently do are (1) the absolutely inescapable link between war and atrocities, and (2) the fact that one-sided finger-pointing is never a helpful way to get problems resolved (but it can easily raise tensions and help set the stage for otherwise quite avoidable confrontations, even war.)