Some of Kerry's foreign policy advisers: "Not quite a dream team"

[G_j]

Not Quite A Dream Team
by Laura Flanders

     Some of John Kerry's foreign policy advisers should give pause to progressives.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9966

[denverbill]

1. Yeah. Nothing like supporting oil pipelines and GM food.

Morningstar, Perry and Beers, oh my.

[G_j]

4. for anyone who has

followed US policy in Columbia, the name Beers sends up flags.

we better pay attention and let Kerry know we care about these issues.

[denverbill]

6. How the hell can Kerry possibly support that Columbia drug war?

Who the hell is it in the United States that wants to continue this failed policy?

[G_j]

11. more on Beers

just do a search with "Rand Beers" & "fumigation" or "Plan Columbia" or "Dynacorp"


here's just one article:

http://www.counterpunch.org/donahue01262004.html

The Toxic Career of Rand Beers


Kerry's Drug War Zealot
By SEAN DONAHUE

When Rand Beers quit his job as counter-terrorism advisor to President Bush, and signed up with John Kerry's presidential campaign, he quickly became a hero to Democratic Party loyalists and the "Anybody but Bush" crowd. But Beers, who has become Kerry's top national security advisor and would likely serve as National Security Advisor or Secretary of State in a Kerry administration, has a dark history. Under Presidents Clinton and Bush, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, and was one of the chief architects of and apologists for the United States' cruel policies in Colombia.

Beers was most closely associated with the disastrous aerial crop fumigation program the U.S. introduced in southern Colombia. The State Department hired DynCorp, a private military contractor, to fly crop dusters at high altitudes over the rainforests of southern Colombia, spraying a chemical cocktail that includes a stronger version of Monsanto's popular and controversial herbicide, Round-Up, over suspected coca fields. Beers was the public face of the fumigation program, defending and advocating for it in Congressional hearings and in the media.

Touted as a way of stopping cocaine from entering the U.S., the fumigation program targets the poorest people with the least involvement in international drug trafficking--the coca growers--while leaving the cocaine processors and exporters, who make the real profits in the drug trade, completely untouched. In a good year, a farmer planting 5 acres of coca can bring in $4,000. Once that coca is processed into cocaine and brought to the U.S. it has a street value of close to $800,000. During a visit to Putumayo, the main coca growing area in southern Colombia in 2001, a parish priest told me "We look on in great pain when we see how the farmers are trampled on like cockroaches while the big traffickers walk the streets of New York and L.A."

The processing and export of cocaine are largely controlled by wealthy landowners and the right-wing paramilitaries that support them, while coca growers are "taxed" by the Marxist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC.) The paramilitaries are technically considered terrorists by the U.S., but play a significant role in protecting U.S. economic interests by using massacres to clear off land for oil development, logging, hydro-electric dams, and cattle ranching, and by assassinating union organizers, indigenous leaders, and other critics of the political and economic order in Colombia, while the FARC keeps attacking oil pipelines and kidnapping wealthy people--and so the FARC is defined as a "narco-terrorist group," and U.S. policy is focused on weakening the FARC. Fumigating coca crops indirectly cuts into FARC revenues, and so the program is sold to the public as part of both the war on drugs and the war on terrorism. Beers played a central role in creating the myth of the "narco-terrorist" which has been used to justify both the fumigations and continued U.S. military aid to Colombia.

...more..

[lostnfound]

15. kick.

[IndianaGreen]

22. Kerry actually voted for Plan Colombia

and we all know what that means...

[BL_Zebub]

2. Can't say you weren't warned......

Even on the outside chance that Kerry wins, little or nothing will change. In case you don't get it from the article, this Caspian Sea pipeline mentioned..... this is the same one that the Taliban promised to build years ago and didn't. This is the stalled project which caused the Bush Assministration to create the illusion of Osama Bin Laden hiding out in Afghanistan so they had an excuse to bomb the shit out of the country to punish the Taliban who wouldn't play ball.

This is what you want?? More corporatist fascist bullshit??

Well, you got it.

[denverbill]

3. No, that's a different pipeline.

Same oil, different pipeline. The one was supposed to route through Afghanistan to Pakistan, this one goes through Turkey (and Georgia, which recently saw a new US-friendly govt installed).

Truly, little or nothing is going to change in the realm of international business under a Kerry administration, IMO.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

5. Flanders raises some good points, however

A careful reading of the link she supplies indicates that there are multiple parties vying for the pipeline. I don't think Morningstar's presence on his team is indicative of what his policy will be for negotiating the negative consequences.

Insofar as Beers is concerned, he joined Kerry's team NOT for his plan Columbia work, but left Bush's team and went to work for Kerry out of protest for Bush.

Kerry's support of Plan Columbia in the past does bother me but I would suspect it was more out of policy papers he had written on matters of terrorism and Kerry's positions on the glabal arms race are pretty clear and separate and distinct from Clinton's and Bush's.

Perry is a Clinton holdover but a careful assessment of all the top candidates indicates they had Clinton holdovers as well.

I'm not saying there isn't cause for concern, I am simply saying that to then state these advisors EQUAL Kerry's positions on the matters is a bit of extrapolation.

[denverbill]

7. Perhaps.

But Perle and Wolfowitz certainly are responsible for Bush's Middle East policy. Bush never articulated support for regime change and nation-building in his presidential run in 2000, but he sure is doing a lot of it since then. I see no reason to hire an advisor who believes in a policy contrary to what you hope to achieve.

And that support of GM food is a typical corporatist policy. Monsanto couldn't be happier.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

8. But confidence was PLACED in Bush based on his advisors

Not so with Kerry.
Monsanto aslready has a monopoly on the world's seeds, certainly that lies more at Clinton's feet than at Kerry's.

[G_j]

13. to me the key issue here

is that we stay vigilant and not become complacent. If we put Kerry (or anyone)in office we MUST continue to take an ACTIVIST stance and stay constantly informed.

..from someone who remembers Chicago '68

[BeFree]

14. It's all we can do...

We have to get -- and stay on the ball -- to effect change. Why did Dean have such a huge following at one time? People want Change. We can effect change best with a democrat, and it looks like we're gonna have one as prez a year from now.

Information such as that in this thread, is important for us to know. Good going.

[G_j]

16. I will be joyfully celebrating the departure of Perle, Rumsfeld, Cheney

Wolfkowitz, Rove and of course the spoiled brat. It will be a joyous day in American history. But I haven't forgotten it wasn't a Democratic or Republican president who really brought our troops home from Vietnam it was "we the people".
we are just beginning to find our voices again, that is where I find my real hope.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

19. No argument from you on that point GJ, none at all

As one who remained active politically through the Clinton years while only a handful of these issues were known in the mainstream or followed, I wholeheartedly concur.

[G_j]

20. since Kerry appears to be

heading for the presidency, I will be lobbying him to dump some of these people. There is not a mandate IMO, for business as usual.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

21. If you read up on some of Kerry's past investigations on drug money

combined with the fact that Beers ran to Kerry straight FROM his intelligence job after leaving the Bush admin in protest, I would suggest Beers is NOT there DUE to his support of Plan Columbia which AGAIN was CLinton's plan and try telling Democrats about it back then.

Hell, Narco news believes the reason Gore didn't choose Kerry as a running mate was because he KNEW TOO MUCH!

[G_j]

23. Clinton's suspension of human rights requirements as

a prerequisite to Columbian aid was highly disturbing to put it mildly!

on a side note, I had some correspondence with Kerry in the 80s concerning Native American rights and found him pretty responsive and open. I hope he is still capable of this, although from what I gather he didn't listen to Scott Ritter very closely (who made an effort to communicate to him what he knew about WMD)

[waldenx]

9. if Kerry becomes president

remember we told you so, when he doesn't change shit.

[LoneStarLiberal]

10. Hmmm...I'm Familiar with Perry, Beers and the BTC Project

Well, I certainly don't have any love for Beers and Plan Colombia. Ditto for Perry.

BTC however I have supported for quite some time. Yes, it has drawbacks and yes it will territorially disenfranchise some people. From everything I had read and heard regarding the BTC project, however, steps have been taken to try to compensate as many people as possible for their relocation and land.

Though with these countries involved, individual property rights are not as strong as they are here.

Are there problems with it? Yes. My support for BTC comes from the idea that we need a stopgap between where we are now (whores of the Arabian Peninsula) and where we need to be in 20-30 years' time (at least 50% independent of oil reserves).

[democracy eh]

12. hopefully Kerry can borrow Jamie Ruben

from Clark

[G_j]

17. kick

[Donna Zen]

18. Clark and Rubin

I don't know where I heard this so it may be all buzz, but somehow I doubt it. Anyway, Clark will be one of the Foreign Policy advisors on the team. Please remember that when Clark was a mere 31 years old, he was considered by many to be among a handfull of the best in the world. At 31...

Shelton is advising Edwards.

'nuff said.

bush team has decided to adopt the Kosovo model to exit Iraq