The unforgettable, humane statesman, President Carter

2025-01-09 10:09:00, Aktualitet Besnik Bakiu

Today, January 9, the state funeral takes place in Washington, DC, USA, for the 39th President Jimmy Carter, who passed away on December 29, 2024.

President Carter was born on October 1, 1924 in the small rural town of Plains, Georgia and grew up in the nearby community of Archery. His father, Jimmy Earl Carter, was a farmer and businessman, his mother, Lillian Gordy Carter, was a nurse.

He was educated in the Plains public schools, attended Georgia Southwest College and the Georgia Institute of Technology, and received a bachelor's degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946. He then served in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets attaining the rank of of the lieutenant.

Selected by Admiral Hyman Rickover for the nuclear submarine program, he was stationed in Schenectady, New York, where he pursued graduate studies at Union College in reactor technology and nuclear physics and served as senior crew officer prior to the decommissioning of Seawolf, the submarine of second nuclear.

In 1953, he resigned his naval commission and returned with his family to Georgia. He took over Carter Farms and ran Carter's Warehouse, a general purpose seed supply company for Plains farms.

He soon became a community leader, serving on county councils overseeing education, the hospital authority and the library. In 1962 he won election to the Georgia Senate. He lost his first gubernatorial campaign in 1966, but won the next election to become Georgia's 76th governor on January 12, 1971. He was the Democratic National Committee's campaign chairman for the congressional and gubernatorial elections of 1974. Carter won his races by appealing to black voters and culturally conservative whites. Once in office, he was more direct: "I tell you frankly that the time of racial discrimination is over," he declared in his 1971 inaugural address.

During the period 1977-1981, he served only one term in the White House, after being defeated by Ronald Reagan.

President Carter's career from a peanut farmer, with a humble life, in a house without electricity or indoor plumbing, managed to not only be President of the most powerful country in the world, but also to stand on the world stage for two centuries, shows that the USA remains a place of opportunity for every person.

He declared Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the slain civil rights leader's home state.

President Carter has had a strange career, from businessman, naval officer, evangelist, politician, negotiator, author, woodworker, citizen of the world, etc.

Contemporaries appreciate him as a personality with sharp intellect, deep religious faith and extraordinary work ethic, carrying out diplomatic missions and building houses for the poor until the 90s, etc., etc. "My faith requires - this is not optional - that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, as long as I can, with whatever I have to try to make a difference."

Although winning the presidential election was relatively easy, after President Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal and the US defeat in Southeast Asia, it must be admitted that the Carter Presidency was at a very difficult time, amid the pressures of the Cold War, the markets troubled oil and social unrest over racism, women's rights, and America's global role. As the newly elected American President, Donald Trump, rightly calls it, "The challenges Jim faced as president came at a crucial moment for our country, and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans." . That's why we owe him a thank you."

President Joe Biden said: "Today America and the world lost a great leader, statesman and humanist. Over six decades we had the honor of calling Jimmy Carter a dear friend. But what is remarkable about Jimmy Carter is that millions of people in the US and around the world, who never met him, also considered him a dear friend.

The major foreign policy achievements of his administration were the Panama Canal Treaties, the Camp David Accords, the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, which he brokered by keeping Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the negotiating table for 13 days in 1978, SALT II with the Soviet Union and the establishment of American diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. He signed the new strategic arms treaty with Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union, only to withdraw it, impose trade sanctions and order a US boycott of the Moscow Olympics after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

He defended human rights around the world. Domestically, the government's achievements included a comprehensive energy program.

Among President Carter's failures is the 444-day hostage crisis in Iran, when eight Americans died in a failed hostage rescue in April 1980. This crisis came after the US accepted the exiled Shah of Iran for medical treatment. The American Embassy in Tehran was occupied in 1979 by the followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

After the presidency, in 1982 he founded the Carter Center, as an international peacemaking center and champion of democracy, public health and human rights. He accomplished the easing of nuclear tensions in North and South Korea, helped avert a US invasion of Haiti, and negotiated cease-fires in Bosnia and Sudan. By 2022, the Carter Center had declared at least 113 elections in Latin America, Asia and Africa to be free or fraudulent.

President Carter was quoted as saying that he was "where others are not treading" when visiting troubled countries such as Ethiopia, Liberia and North Korea, where he secured the release of an American still across the border in 2010.

"I can say what I like. I can meet whoever I want. I can undertake projects that satisfy me and reject those that do not satisfy me" - he said.

His overall approach was to "peacefully protect the security and interests of our nation" and "advance human rights here and abroad," as well as in the field of charity, in sheltering people around the world, in war global against poverty etc.

Rightfully, President Carter was awarded the Nobel Committee's Peace Prize for 2002 with the motivation, "For his tireless efforts, for decades, to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, for the advancement of democracy and human rights , as well as for the promotion of economic and social developments"

His relations with Albania have not been so active during the presidential term, due to the fact that the United States did not have diplomatic relations with the communist regime of Enver Hoxha, but he has maintained very warm relations with representatives of Albanians residing in the USA. We Albanians are indebted to President Carter as he was the first President of America (although not in office) to visit Albania. In September 1993 Jimmy Carter visited Albania for a few days, where the main object of talks with the Albanian representatives was Kosovo and the then conflict in the former Yugoslavia. It was this President who paved the way for many other US Presidents to visit our country./ CNA