Jimmy Carter 2.0

Barack Obama has been compared unfavorably to the man widely regarded as America’s worst president, Jimmy Carter. That comparison could become even more obvious if, as seems likely, the Carter administration’s most notorious hallmark is even more disastrously repeated.

After President Carter helped bring to power in Iran a jihadist named Ayatollah Khomeini, the U.S. embassy in Tehran was seized and hostages made of 52 of its personnel.

President Obama has helped create conditions that have given rise to the jihadist Islamic State in Iraq. Its forces are now threatening the exit routes for some 1,000 diplomats and military personnel at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

At this rate, the next embassy crisis will make Carter’s pale by comparison — and the need for a new, Reaganesque commander-in-chief all the more palpable.