First let me say that for all of President Jimmy Carter's failings, I always believed he was at least a very moral man who made a sincere effort to be a good president. However, regardless of what we once thought of President Jimmy Carter, he has now objectively lost his ability to think rationally.

In a recent interview with Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball, President Carter said that the Revolutionary War was "the most bloody war we've fought" and that it was also "an unnecessary war." The discussion was a bizarre attempt to draw a parallel between the current war in Iraq and the Revolutionary War about which President Carter wrote a book that came out a year ago, The Hornet's Next: A Novel of the Revolutionary War. Matthews and Carter made a fumbling attempt to compare the two wars and how bloody and unnecessary they both were. Unfortunately, all President Carter wound up doing was proving that he knows next to nothing about history--even history he's written about--and/or, worse in my opinion, that he is willing to attempt to revise history to further his current political goals.

First, the Revolutionary War is notable for the fact that it is one of our nation's least bloody wars, the exact opposite of what President Carter alleged. The numbers most cited include 4,435 killed and an additional 6,188 wounded. Compare this to World War II where 292,131 U.S. soldiers lost their lives and an additional 670,846 were wounded. In gross numbers, or even as a percentage of population, the Revolutionary War casualties don't even come close to the casualties suffered in other wars fought by Americans. The only reasonable conclusion is that President Carter is an outright liar or he's gone insane. I think it's giving him the benefit of the doubt to say that his mind is rotting, rather than his morals.

Second, while obviously much more subjective, I believe the assertion that the Revolutionary War was "unnecessary" is equally absurd. Carter compares the United States to Australia, Canada and India and states that if there had not been an unnecessary Revolutionary War we would still now be free, "having gotten our independence in a nonviolent way." It is very questionable whether any or all of those nations would have still gained their independence or gained their independence as soon if the American colonies had never broken off from Great Britain. Further, given India's independence in 1947, it would appear that Carter is willing to trade 171 years of freedom and independence for there not to have been a Revolutionary War. Even with modern day hindsight that independence would eventually come a century or two later, I'll join with our Founding Fathers and stand by the belief that the Revolutionary War was very much necessary.

Finally, the suggestion that the partitioning of India and Pakistan from the former "British India" was nonviolent ignores conservative estimates of the dead numbering a quarter million as Muslims fled India and Hindus and Sikhs fled Pakistan. Anyone who could characterize the establishment of these two independent nations as "nonviolent" has got to be ignorant, lying or insane. I've explained my choice, now you choose.

Here is a portion of the Hardball interview:

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you the question about-this is going to cause some trouble with people-but as an historian now and studying the Revolutionary War as it was fought out in the South in those last years of the War, insurgency against a powerful British force, do you see any parallels between the fighting that we did on our side and the fighting that is going on in Iraq today?

CARTER: Well, one parallel is that the Revolutionary War, more than any other war up until recently, has been the most bloody war we've fought. I think another parallel is that in some ways the Revolutionary War could have been avoided. It was an unnecessary war.

I think in many ways the British were very misled in going to war against America and in trying to enforce their will on people who were quite different from them at the time.