whither peace?

This past weekend some friends and I visited the Carter Library and Museum. I haven’t decided where it ranks yet (certainly not in the top 3, I can say that), but it was worth the trip. Lisa and Leanne are more than welcome on any of my future library trips — especially libraries of presidents that they lived through.

So … we talked about the Camp David Accords, when Jimmy Carter convinced Sadat and Begin to stop all of this fighting — oh, yeah, and he convinced Sadat to have Egypt be the first Arab nation to recognize Israel as a state (they had been an independent country for thirty years by then). Apparently a lot of Egyptians didn’t agree with this, and neither did other Arab countries. For his trouble, Sadat was assisinated a few years later, and Egypt was ousted from the Arab League for ten years. Egypt was removed from the seat of power in the Arab league, creating a hole for other (less stable) nations to fill. There is no evidence for this, really, but L, L, and I hypothesized that maybe the taking of American hostages by Iran was a result of Iranians getting upset at American intervention in their/Arab affaris. And it was likely this hostage situation that led to Carter losing his bid for re-election.

I’m not saying that striving for peace is a bad idea, oh no. But creating this peace did cause its own share of problems. Politics does not exist in a vacuum, and people who think that there is one solution to a problem without considering the backstory and the consequences are deluded. This is one of the reasons why I leave politics to the politicians — and admire all of them. Mostly.

Posted by Marie on May 21st, 2007 under Uncategorized

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