Ask any historian to name a president who was below average and many will bring up the name Jimmy Carter.. While Carter was a nice man who in most ways had good character, his presidency was marked by one disaster after another including: the 1979 energy crisis, inflation, and unemployment. Of course, Carter did have some positive accomplishments such as the Panama Canal Treaties, the Camp David Accords , and the creation of the departments of energy and education.
These achievements are also overlooked for two other important tragedies: the Iran hostage crises and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Popular opinion for the reason for these events is that they occurred because the Russians and the Iranians were not afraid of Carter because he was pushover.
When one looks at the facts this assumption is dubious for couple of reasons. One reason the claim of Carter's passivity is suspect is the fact that there was a an attempt to rescue the hostages form Iran by force. This attempt failed because the pilots got caught in a sandstorm and crashed the helicopters that were part of the rescue team. The failure of Carter to be able to get the hostages released was a big embarrassment to the U.S., however the fact that Carter attempted to extract them by a Special Forces mission may come as shock to some who had him pegged as a passive milquetoast.
In the case of Afghanistan, it was Carter who began to funnel money and arms to the Afghans to repel the Russian invaders. We now know the unintended consequences of this policy, but there is no question that it helped lead to the break up of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. There was also no way Jimmy Carter could have foreseen the blow back from his actions.
Its seems these bits of information go unnoticed when the subject of Carter's alleged wimpiness comes up.
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