Dear Progressive Reader,

Last Sunday, former President Jimmy Carter died at the age of 100 at his home in Plains, Georgia. Six days of national commemorations begin today. Carter was perhaps much better known for all of his activities after leaving the White House. In fact, he spent ten times as many years of his life in his post-presidency as he did as President. Carter’s years in office were marked by a mixed record of both championing human rights around the globe and cozying up to authoritarian leaders including the brutal Shah of Iran and, as Glenn Sacks wrote for our webpage in 2023, the cost of Carter’s policy toward Afghanistan “has been enormous: the rise of Al-Qaeda, America’s twenty-year war against the Taliban, and decades of civil war.” During his presidency, Carter did make policy changes in relation to human rights violators—in 1979, he withdrew support for Nicaragua’s Anastasio Somoza, allowing the Sandinistas to ultimately triumph in the dictator’s overthrow on July 19, but only after countless unnecessary deaths. Similarly, in El Salvador, Archbishop Óscar Romero personally wrote to Carter in 1980, asking him, “as a Christian,” to cease U.S. military aid to the repressive government. Carter declined to act and Romero was assassinated a month later. In December of that year, when four churchwomen were killed, Carter did stop aid, only to reinstate a portion of it a few weeks later, paving the way for the incoming Reagan Administration’s cruel policies toward Central America.

Much of Carter’s legacy as a “one-term President” hangs on the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. A failed rescue attempt in the spring of 1980, followed by the so-called October Surprise—where the release of the hostages was delayed until after Ronald Reagan’s Inauguration in January 1981—assured Carter’s loss in the 1980 election. A new book by Craig Unger, Den of Spies, looks at the secret history of those years unveiled through more than thirty years of investigative reporting by Unger and the late Robert Parry. Unger says, “this act of treason has played an enormous role in shaping the world we live in, from our domestic politics to our current global crises.”

The Progressive has covered Jimmy Carter’s long career numerous times. Most recently, Stephen Zunes writes this week about Carter’s 2006 book that warned of the dangers of Israel’s apartheid-like policies in the West Bank. Another piece, by Colman McCarthy, written in 2002 when Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize, critically assesses the former President’s legacy. In 2008, Amitabh Pal interviewed Carter for the magazine, and in 2014, reviewed one of Carter’s many books, A Call to Action. Pal also reviewed Carter’s autobiography, A Full Life, written ten years ago at age ninety, and Pal is currently writing another piece for us to coincide with Carter’s funeral next week. But perhaps the most interesting connection between our magazine and the late world leader, is his small initial “J” on a 1979 memo from then-U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell, notifying him of the government’s determination to block publication. Carter personally gave authorization for government to seek an injunction to prevent The Progressive from publishing an article on nuclear secrecy. In that case, we won.

Elsewhere on our website this week, Suhanee Mitragotri writes on the importance of making Narcan, the overdose reversing drug, available to all who might need it; Carol Burris looks at the falsehoods behind the language of “school choice” used by the incoming Trump Administration; Ángel Escamilla García pens an op-ed on the ways Mexico’s immigration policies are following a lead from the rightwing in the United States; and emergency room physician Dr. Alexis Cordone opines on the importance of “red flag laws” in potentially preventing mass shootings in the wake of the most recent school shooting in Madison, Wisconsin.

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

 Sincerely,

Norman Stockwell
Publisher

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