The truth about Kerry
 

As I've been arguing for years, putting up a Republican Lite candidate does not work, as eloquently explained here:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0305-03.htm

Published on Friday, March 5, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Kerry’s Foreign Policy Record Suggests Few Differences with Bush
by Stephen Zunes

Those who had hoped that a possible defeat of President George W. Bush in November would mean real changes in U.S. foreign policy have little to be hopeful about now that Massachusetts Senator John Kerry has effectively captured the Democratic presidential nomination.

That Senator Kerry supported the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq and lied about former dictator Saddam Hussein possessing a sizable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in order to justify it would be reason enough to not support him. (See my March 1, 2004 article “Kerry’s Support for the Invasion of Iraq and the Bush Doctrine Still Unexplained” )

However, a look at his record shows that Kerry’s overall foreign policy agenda has also been a lot closer to the Republicans than to the rank-and-file Democrats he claims to represent.

This is not too surprising, given that his top foreign policy advisors include: Rand Beers, the chief defender of the deadly airborne crop-fumigation program in Colombia who has justified U.S. support for that country’s repressive right-wing government by falsely claiming that Al-Qaeda was training Colombian rebels; Richard Morningstar, a supporter of the dictatorial regime in Azerbaijan and a major backer of the controversial Baku-Tbilisi oil pipeline, which placed the profits of Chevron, Halliburton and Unocal above human rights and environmental concerns; and, William Perry, former Secretary of Defense, member of the Carlisle Group, and advocate for major military contractors.

More importantly, however, are the positions that Kerry himself advocates:

For example, Senator Kerry has supported the transfer, at taxpayer expense, of tens of billions of dollars worth of armaments and weapons systems to governments which engage in a pattern of gross and systematic human rights violations. He has repeatedly ignored the Arms Control Export Act and other provisions in U.S. and international law promoting arms control and human rights.

Senator Kerry has also been a big supporter of the neo-liberal model of globalization. He supported NAFTA, despite its lack of adequate environmental safeguards or labor standards. He voted to ratify U.S. membership in the World Trade Organization, despite its ability to overrule national legislation that protects consumers and the environment, in order to maximize corporate profits. He even pushed for most-favored nation trading status for China, despite that government’s savage repression of independent unions and pro-democracy activists.

Were it not for 9/11 and its aftermath, globalization would have likely been the major foreign policy issue of the 2004 presidential campaign. Had this been the case, Kerry would have clearly been identified on the right wing of the Democratic contenders.

As Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts in the early 1980s, Kerry ignored widespread public opposition to encourage the Reagan Administration to base a large naval flotilla in Boston Harbor, which would include as its central weapons system the nuclear-armed Tomahawk cruise missile. Kerry’s advocacy for the deployment of this dangerous and destabilizing first-strike weapon not only raised serious environmental concerns for residents of the Boston area, but was widely interpreted as an effort to undermine the proposed nuclear weapons freeze.

The end of the Cold War did not have much impact on Senator Kerry’s penchant for supporting the Pentagon. Despite the lack of the Soviet Union to justify wasteful military boondoggles, Senator Kerry has continued to vote in favor of record military budgets, even though only a minority of the spending increases he has supported in recent years has had any connection with the so-called “war on terrorism.”

Senator Kerry was a strong supporter of the Bush Administration’s bombing campaign of Afghanistan, which resulted in more civilian deaths than the 9/11 attacks against the United States that prompted them. He also defended the Clinton Administration’s bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan which had provided that impoverished African country with more than half of its antibiotics and vaccines by falsely claiming it was a chemical weapons factory controlled by Osama bin Laden.

In late 1998, he joined Republican Senators Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Alfonse D’Amato, and Rich Santorum in calling on the Clinton Administration to consider launching air and missile strikes against Iraq in order to “respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.” The fact that Iraq had already ended such programs some years earlier was apparently not a concern to Senator Kerry.

Nor was he at all bothered that a number of U.S. allies in the region actually did have such weapons. To this day, Senator Kerry has rejected calls by Jordan, Syria, and other Middle Eastern governments for a WMD-free zone for the entire region, insisting that the United States has the right to say which countries can possess such weapons and which cannot. He was a co-sponsor of the “Syrian Accountability Act,” passed in November, which demanded under threat of sanctions that Syria unilaterally eliminate its chemical weapons and missile systems, despite the fact that nearby U.S. allies like Israel and Egypt had far larger and more advanced stockpiles of WMDs and missiles, including in Israel’s case hundreds of nuclear weapons. (See my October 30 article, “The Syrian Accountability Act and the Triumph of Hegemony” )

Included in the bill’s “findings” were charges by top Bush Administration officials of Syrian support for international terrorism and development of dangerous WMD programs. Not only have these accusations not been independently confirmed, but they were made by the same Bush Administration officials who had made similar claims against Iraq that had been proven false. Yet Senator Kerry naively trusts their word over independent strategic analysts familiar with the region who have challenged many of these charges.

Kerry’s bill also calls for strict sanctions against Syria as well as Syria’s expulsion from its non-permanent seat Security Council for its failure to withdraw its forces from Lebanon according to UN Security Council resolution 520. This could hardly be considered a principled position, however, since Kerry defended Israel’s 22-year long occupation of southern Lebanon, that finally ended less than four years ago, and which was in defiance of this and nine other UN Security Council resolutions.

Indeed, perhaps the most telling examples of Kerry’s neo-conservative world view is his outspoken support of the government of right-wing Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, annually voting to send billions of dollars worth of taxpayer money to support Sharon’s occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands seized in the 1967 war. Even as the Israeli prime minister continues to reject calls by Palestinian leaders for a resumption of peace talks, Kerry insists that it is the Palestinian leadership which is responsible for the conflict while Sharon is “a leader who can take steps for peace.”

Despite the UN Charter forbidding countries from expanding their territory by force and the passage, with U.S. support, of a series of UN Security Council resolutions calling on Israel to rescind its unilateral annexation of occupied Arab East Jerusalem and surrounding areas, Kerry has long fought for U.S. recognition of the Israeli conquest. He even attacked the senior Bush Administration from the right when it raised concerns regarding the construction of illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, going on record, paradoxically, that “such concerns inhibit and complicate the search for a lasting peace in the region.” He was also critical of the senior Bush Administration’s refusal to veto UN Security Council resolutions upholding the Fourth Geneva Conventions and other international legal principles regarding Israeli colonization efforts in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Kerry’s extreme anti-Palestinian positions have bordered on pathological. In 1988, when the PLO which administered the health system in Palestinian refugee camps serving hundreds of thousands of people and already had observer status at the United Nations sought to join the UN’s World Health Organization, Kerry backed legislation that would have ceased all U.S. funding to the WHO or any other UN entity that allowed for full Palestinian membership. Given that the United States then provided for a full one-quarter of the WHO’s budget, such a cutoff would have had a disastrous impact on vaccination efforts, oral re-hydration programs, AIDS prevention, and other vital WHO work in developing countries.

The following year, just four days after Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir restated that Israel would never give up the West Bank and Gaza Strip and would continued to encourage the construction of new Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land, Kerry signed a statement that appeared in the Washington Post praising the right-wing prime minister for his “willingness to allow all options to be put on the table.” Kerry described Shamir’s proposal for Israeli-managed elections in certain Palestinian areas under Israeli military occupation as “sincere and far-reaching” and called on the Bush Administration to give Shamir’s plan its “strong endorsement.” This was widely interpreted as a challenge to Secretary of State James Baker’s call several weeks earlier for the Likud government to give up on the idea of a “greater Israel.”

In his effort to enhance Shamir’s re-election prospects in 1992, Senator Kerry again criticized the senior President Bush from the right, this time for its decision to withhold a proposed $10 billion loan guarantee in protest of the rightist prime minister’s expansion of illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

The administration’s decision to hold back on the loan guarantees until after the election made possible the defeat of Shamir by the more moderate Yitzhak Rabin. However, when the new Israeli prime minister went to Norway during the summer of 1993 to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization for a peace plan, Kerry joined the Israeli right in continuing to oppose any peace talks between Israel and the PLO.

Indeed, for most of his Senate career, Kerry was in opposition of the Palestinians’ very right to statehood. As recently as 1999, he went on record opposing Palestinian independence outside of what the Israeli occupation authorities were willing to allow.

Today, Kerry not only defends Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he has backed Sharon’s policies of utilizing death squads against suspected Palestinian militants. He claims that such tactics are a justifiable response to terrorist attacks by extremists from the Islamic groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, even though neither of them existed prior to Israel’s 1967 military conquests and both emerged as a direct outgrowth of the U.S.-backed occupation and repression that followed.

In summary, Kerry’s October 2002 vote to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq was no fluke. His contempt for human rights, international law, arms control, and the United Nations has actually been rather consistent.

When Howard Dean initially surged ahead in the polls in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, in large part due to his forceful opposition to the invasion of Iraq and some other aspects of Bush foreign policy, the Kerry campaign launched a series of vicious attacks against the former Vermont governor.

Dean was certainly no left-winger. His foreign policy advisors were largely from mainstream think tanks and he received the endorsements of former vice-president Al Gore and others in the Democratic Party establishment. Indeed, a number of Dean’s positions such as his refusal to call for a reduction in military spending, his support for the war in Afghanistan, his backing unconditional military and economic aid to Sharon’s government in Israel, and his call for continuing the U.S. occupation of Iraq were quite problematic in the eyes of many peace and human rights advocates.

That was not enough for Senator Kerry, however, who apparently believed that Dean was not sufficiently supportive of President George W. Bush’s imperial world view. Kerry and his supporters roundly criticized Dean for minimizing the impact of Saddam Hussein’s capture on Iraqi resistance to the U.S. occupation, for calling on the United States to play a more even-handed role in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and for challenging the Bush Doctrine of unilateral preemptive invasions of foreign countries. (See my September 14 article “Kerry, Lieberman, and the House Democratic Leadership Attack Dean” and my January 7 article “Democrats’ Attacks on Dean Enhance Bush’s Re-election Prospects” )

It was just such attacks that helped derailed Dean’s populist campaign and has made John Kerry the presumptive nominee.

The Democrats are wrong, however, if they think that nominating a Bush Lite will increase their party’s chances of capturing the White House. In all likelihood, it will do the opposite: for every hawk who might now consider voting for the Democratic ticket, there will be at least one dove who will now be more likely to vote for Ralph Nader.

Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.

Give me a break already. I've posted numerous articles in other forums about Kerry's liberal record.

So are you saying Prof. Zunes got it wrong?

Yes. It's a bitter Dean supporter hit piece obviously written by yet another Dean supporter who can't let go. Not enough people voted for him. He lost. Get over it. Let's move on to the task at hand. FIRE THE LIAR!

I cannot resist - the same could be said for W after all he won the electoral vote and the popular vote in FL.

:cool: :wavey: ;) :eek: :laugh:

He's wrong? You can dispute the facts in the column, then?

He didn't.:)

I've got a better idea. How about you supply evidence that they're true?:)

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

In any event, let's make sure that issue does not arise again in the upcoming election!!!!!! :laugh:

Well I'm doing my best here but it seems I'm not getting much help.:)

:laugh:

You know I've got your back. But remember, we can't educate those don't want to be educated. :laugh:

The two of us: far-left liberals until the end. Then we'll move to France. ;)

Hmmmmm, the state his brother "governs". Too f-ing fishy. I think we've been hoodwinked for the last four years.

And, we can get rid of the Electoral College crap, it is a body that is LONNNNNNNNNNNNG obsolete, yet still in use. It's like someone still using the first edition of Windows.

I think that's a horrid idea. If you get rid of the electoral college, only people in california, texas, new york, and florida will be heard because they have more people.

The people in states with smaller populations matter, too.

No, everyone will be heard evenly.

With the Electoral College, as is what happened in 2000, a candidate can win the election without having a majority of the popular vote. A majority of Americans voted for Al Gore, but due to the antiquated Electoral College, Bush won more electoral votes. I think the last 3-1/2 years have seen how that screwed the entire world.

The Electoral Collge will probably never be gotten rid of because the two parties know how to work that system. Is it fair? Sarah makes a good point. In any event, if Gore had won the electoral vote and W had won the popular vote, I do not think the D's oul be pissed. They would be claiming the same thing as the R' are now and vice versa. :laugh:

Now Now (Is that better than I cry foul :laugh: ). I am a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. I think that is the best way. AND - I support getting rid of W because he is a social conservative and, judging by his spending, a fiscal liberal :cool: Plus, although we had enough reasons to go to war with Iraq or at least to remove SH through some other perhaps clandestine or less overt way, W lied to get his way. So, I say the Mass liberal is the way to go even though I think repealing the tax cuts is wrong (do you know how much it hurts me to say that :laugh: ) because every credible economic theory says it is incorrect. :cool:

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

AN for the record - I am probably at least as far left socially as the two of you. Now Carne - well that's another matter :laugh: ;) :wavey:

See, the thing we need to be worried about are the touch screen voting machines that will be used in Florida and Georgia, among other places. They produce NO PAPER record of the votes cast. And the people in charge are doing nothing about it. They're going to try to pull this crap again.

Not only that, but th access codes wer published on the new as an auditor found out. I mean if they can print a lottery card every time a ticket is bought, they can giv the voter a receipt. Then, when the coter got home, they should be encouraged to check online maybe.

I assume you mean both tr R's and the D's because they are both no stranger to this type of stuff. I mean what was this, "well, it looks like they might have pushed the pin a litle into this selection so let's asume they did without calling them or double checking" :rolleyes: That whole pregnant or dimpled chad thing was a farce. It is possible that someone began to push it and then changed their mind for whatever reason. I say hanging chads and no chads. But that dimple thing - sorry no way AND they both played that game. In fact, they both argued for different standards in different counties, hence the USSC EP problem.

I did. None of what the article says is new. It just puts it in context. Remember, the man has a long record. And even though the Bushers will paint him as some hardcore liberal, he is anything but.

Sigh. Whatever.

We are so fortunate in this country to be able to shrug off inconvenient political arguments.

I get a good laugh at those people who blame Bush for everything that's gone wrong in the last three years. Funny how people fail to realize that most of the corporate malfeasance that came to a head during the Bush administration took place during the Clinton years. Or that the economy was already swirling down in 2000. Or that the FCC had already been bending over to the huge media conglomerates. Or that 20 percent of our children were already living below the poverty line despite the economic boom of the 1990s, thanks in part to Clinton's deplorable welfare act. Inconvenient facts, to be sure.

Not to excuse Bush's despicable acts. But he would have had a harder time getting away with a lot of this stuff if the Democrats weren't as enslaved to the same corporate and special interests. If they had stood up to him on No Child Left Behind, the Iraq war, the Patriot Act and the Medicare bill, the Democrats might actually be able to claim they have integrity.

Hardly. No one on this board has posted more info concerning Kerry's liberal stances and the ills of Bushco than me. If you choose to ignore them, be stubborn, ideological and an idealist about what's going on, then so be it.

Kerry is a liberal, plain and simple. He can try to shrug it off as a "label" and others can say that he's conservative because of his votes on the war, No Child Left Behind, and a few other Shrub proposals. But those few votes don't make him any more conservative than I am. He opposed the Medicare bill, the Defense of Marriage Act, the new constitutional amendment, he's been the most instrumental Senator in saving the environment, THE LIST GOES ON.

While his last few votes have left me cold, he's a good guy. More times than not, he votes the right way. So, if somebody wants to say that he's a conservative or all the other bogus **** that they love to say, I'd love to see them go down South and say it to a Southerner. They'd get laughed all the way back home.

Voting for anyone other than Kerry would be a mistake and there's no way to paint it differently. If someone believes int heir heart of hearts that having either Bush or Kerry in the WH would make no difference, they have my pity. It's easy to look at three or four votes and say something negative, but look at his whole track record and make your decision. I've made mine and he has my support.

If Kerry is a liberal, why does he refuse to acknowledge it? Why has he voted for just about everything Bush wants?

If Bush is as much of fascist as he obviously is, why would a true liberal vote with him?

There is a disconnect. Call me idealistic, stubborn, whatever, but I am true to my principles. I don't talk out of both sides of my mouth as most Democrats do.

I believe there will be a difference, to be sure. But I'm thinking Americans seem to need a huge kick in the ass so that they start demanding that the parties don't keep trying to outdo each other in terms of what they can give away to the corporate interests while screwing you and me.

The fact is, the best the Democrats who line up behind their last few nominees can say for their candidate is he's the lesser of two evils. You don't get greatness from that.

I love an idealogical debate :laugh:

I think there has been no huge difference between R and D's in a very long time when it comes to the way the majority of them vote, esp. on cultural ssues. Theway they vote is the most important thing. I mean most of them play as close to the middle in the way they vote and then spin that on the campaign trail depending on what audience they are addressing, etc. W is an exception because although I think he went in as what he would call a centrist, 9/11 gave him essentially unlimited power for two years and the far religious right wh put him in office has pounced on that power and forced mostly within the context of the USSC EP clause abortion and gay rights issues. I think the far religious right sees this perhaps as a last attempt eliminate both because they realize they are failing, esp. where marraige and abortion are concerned. I think the far religious right also realizes they are losing the battle to maintain control over the country via the thousands of pulpits from which they preach the wrath of God to all non-believers in what they, not necessesarily God, say every Sunday. History demonstrates that since the dawn of recorded history, people in power have used whatever god was convenient to control the masses, mostly with bad results in the end. So, I think that is what is going on now and I do not like it and want it to stop. The less control any govt. has over me the better as long as i am not hurting someone else. I think Kerry would be the most efective at stopping this. I think Nader is true to his word but would be too much too soon and his ego, which I think is huge, would get in the way of any meaningful legislation that could actually be effective in major issues like the economy, healthcare, etc. I mean you cannot go into office and on your first day say frm now on we have socialized medicine, no more corps. can ever donate to political candidate, and we are now an isolated economy and military. Those three alone would sink the economy into a huge hole. That is why I am voting forKerry.

Baby Steps it is, but is the leasser of evils for me.

Ah, good points. :nod:

But, I don't really view someone like Kerry as the lesser of two evils. Besides for his last few votes, I have agreed with everything he stood for most of the time. With a man like him in office, we'll have someone who truly cares about the environment and (hopefully) won't let it go even more down the ****hole and will roll back the sins the Bush admin. has done to it. He won't try to amend the Constitution, he won't privatize health care, he won't screw seniors, he won't flex his muscles with every small country, etc.

Yes, he f*cked up big time. But I'm at the point where there really is nothing that can be done right now about those f*ck-ups; we have to look to the future and make sure that just smallest bit of integrity is brought back into the White House and our country. At the moment, we have none. If Kerry gets in, we'll at least have some (how much remains to be seen).

We just can't survive with Shrub in for another four years.

Knowing that our president is pushing for a constitutional amendment that will make certain for all time that I'll never have the opportunity to marry, or to enjoy the same rights and benefits heterosexuals have, is more than enough of a kick in the ass for me.

Four more years of Bush will pretty much seal the fate of several million people.
So economic strategies and national security policies are of little consequence to me, as long as Bush is working to discriminate against the people who help make up the country he's supposed to be leading.

One millions gays and lesbians voted for him the first time... I hope they've seen his true colors by now.

Last time it was abortion. Remember? Vote for Bush, or vote for Nader, and Roe v. Wade will be overturned. Fear tactics, plain and simple.

Same here. There's no way in hell such an amendment would ever pass. And if it ever came close, I would join you on the streets to march against it.

Now THAT woud be a sight.

Carne, Johnny, Dissention, Goldie, Rob, and myself all marching with arms locked in unity and mouths a bitchin at each other on every other issue!!!!

;) :eek: :laugh: :laugh: :wavey:

:laugh: :laugh:

:laugh: :lol: :laugh: :lol: :laugh:

Just don't get Carne and me started on Lindsey & Stevie, and it should be a pretty peaceful rally! ;) :laugh:

It's being argued in state courts right now.

Not to mention the Fifth Cir., I think, has agreed to rehear it. I am unsure what that means though; I have never heard of that. I do remember Roe asked the court to rehear it. Does anyone know anything about this? Make no mistake, the far religious right does not see it as the right to make decisions about one's own body. They only see the killing of babies and want it to end. They will do anything, including killing, to stop it.

I would march...
 

along side y'all...But I am a somewhat lone-wolf.

Brian "Ozzy in 2004...The words outta his mouth make more sense than either Bush's/Kerry's" :laugh: j.

ps-Nader is supposed to be on Fox (Faux) News Channel tonite.

Re: I would march...
 

All are welcome. However, the only thing you and I would be arguing about is if Rush's Neil Peart is indeed the world's greatest drummer :laugh:

Re: Re: I would march...
 

I still say Peart is the man among the living (He no longer needs to prove himself), But Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater (Think Neil Peart on speed/acid/whatever...That's Portnoy) is very, very close behind.

Brian j.