You missed a couple of details about President Carter, but I doubt it would change your mind if I explained it. Even so, President Carter was an engineer with a peanut butter inheritance. Engineers put articles of interest in black and white. Firstly, as President he had to view all people as equal, and as a Christian, he was likely going by several scriptures--first, he may have believed that God is the judge of mankind, and he was subject to allowing God to be the judge of others, and not he himself. That is in the scriptures. The scriptures also teach at the same time that Christians are to live according to the scriptures as best they can, and if they err, to ask Jesus to straighten them out, forgive and to forsake that and other sins. He likely had a belief in the goodness that men can achieve when they live in the light of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and together with triune expectations. It isn't important that I disagreed with some of his rulings as President, but as a person who was reared among good folks, when he handed over the Panama Canal, he was not aware of the corruption that would cause the Panamanians in charge would sell us out, even though American men put themselves in harm's way (malaria) to build the canal yard by yard, and mile by long muddy mile, in heat and soggy stuff. 25,000 workers died working on the Panama Canal, and many bore lifelong fighting off the aftermath of exotic diseases, and had to take strong medicines for the duration of their pain-filled lives after the canal was done, and many came home on stretchers due to the hardships of building that geological benefit to trades industries to have a way to go from America to China without having to go around the Mariner's Graveyard Southwest of South America's Cape Horn, where hundreds of ships were lost due to the rocky shoals and a killer current between oceans. My husband's grandfather had to drink quinine every day of his life with his longsuffering life after he completed his tour of working on the Panama Canal for several years in his youth. Fortunate for him, he was strong and determined when he was young to fight off his case of malaria. they didn't have Off insect repellent back then to avoid mosquito bites, as mosquitos were the main vectors of the disease. All that for nothing.
Today, Panama sold the Canal operations to China, and more recently, Russia. We lost our rights to our laborers' gift to the continent when Jimmy Carter, in good faith, gave back the Canal we built to the Panamanians. We've had considerable trouble with canal passages when Panamanian leaders used the Canal to enrich themselves with deals with countries hostile to the United States of America. But in Carter's mind, all leaders were as honest as he, and it seemed to him it was the right thing to do. Unbeknownst to him, he gave it back before the all the workers who built it were in their senior years. I can't imagine the torment they felt after having lost their youthful health due to the prevalence of malaria in the Panama region where mosquitoes carry poisons in their bites and stings. And that's not all. Many men from America lost their limbs and were disabled for life thereafter:
Why the Construction of the Panama Canal Was So Difficult—and Deadly | HISTORY