Perhaps it is in light of the Logan Act that White House Press Secretary Dana Perino emphasized, “The president believes that if president Carter wants to go, that he is doing so in his own private capacity, as a private citizen, he is not representing the United States.” It is all well and good for the White House to distance itself from the behavior of Jimmy Carter, but there is a limit to how far any American government can go in condemning the actions of a former president.

The station of ex-president carries a diplomatic heft, and no one has used it with more inelegance and opportunism than Jimmy Carter, whose sabotage of American foreign policy has not been limited to Republican presidents (see Bill Clinton and North Korea). By calling on the United States to include Hamas in peace talks, and by meeting with the leader of said terrorist group in the capital of a country with which the United States does not even maintain diplomatic relations, Carter undermines a crucial plank in America’s Middle East policy.

We should have no doubt that the vast majority of the people who have crossed the border are in search of basic human needs such as food, fuel, and resellable merchandise. But over the last two years, Israel and Egypt have worked together to prevent the passage of what Hamas, Fatah, and the Islamic
Jihad crave most: Weapons. Hundreds of underground tunnels have been exposed, through which small arms, missiles, and rockets have been smuggled for use principally against Israeli civilians. With the collapse of the border, it seems, all that tough digging has been rendered moot.