Hawky Jimmy

Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: Carter The Hawk: "A reader writes:

Carter was a hawk, but he wasn't a traditional one because realists and other practitioners of realpolitick don’t sufficiently appreciate the importance of political legitimacy. Playing the 'freedom' card, if you will, undermined the raison d'etre of the Soviet Union by stating the simple truth – that a system that can only survive through massive applications of violence against its own people is a system destined for the dustbin of history. Human rights was a way to highlight the fear and moral cowardice of the communist dictatorships and so destroy the implicit public support that underpinned and propped up communism in a way that no gun, bomb, or army could ever defend against. The Soviet Union and its empire collapsed not because we pushed it over, but because no one wanted to keep it propped up..."