Kerry expected to get top foreign affairs panel post

[Mass]

A snark free article in the Boston Globe. Miracles happen.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/11/kerry_expected.html

More than three decades after he first appeared before the panel as a 27-year-old Vietnam veteran-turned-antiwar protester, Senator John F. Kerry is widely expected to be named the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a position that will give him enormous influence over international relations.

The pending announcement by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, which congressional aides said could come as early as today, would elevate Kerry to the top of the foreign policy establishment and give him a major role in shaping President-elect Barack Obama's foreign policy priorities.

Kerry, 64, who was elected to a fifth term in the US Senate from Massachusetts earlier this month, will be officially handed the gavel when the new congressional session convenes in January, according to multiple Capitol Hill sources. He will replace the outgoing chairman, Vice President-elect Joe Biden.
...
Kerry's path to the chairmanship would mark the end of a particularly unique journey. It began when he testified for nearly two hours before the committee on April 22, 1971, the first Vietnam veteran to do so. Speaking on behalf of other Vietnam veterans, he spoke of the "absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do" in Southeast Asia and appealed for an end to US military involvement.

[MonteLukast]

1. That would be wonderful.

Somebody a while ago implied that as SFRC chairman, he'd have MORE clout than he would as SoS? (I think it was Karynnj, looking at how Colin Powell was humiliated.) The more foreign policy clout for JK, the better!

[karynnj]

3. Not me - though I think it possible

I think that in any case it depends on who the President is and who the people involved are. Powell's responsibility was less than it culd have been because Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld were stronger. The person who will decide the policy is Obama. He will get input from Biden, the SoS, Kerry and many people we will never know all the names of. Do you think that Powell or Rice have had much say on foreign policy with Bush? Then again, did Dick Lugar or Joe Biden? In that case neither position could do much - but Lugar kept his integrity, Powell didn't.

How influential each will be on Obama is unknown - and we may never know any ideas that came from any of them that Obama uses. Once he takes them, for better or worse, they are his ideas - he will be praised or blamed. I would guess that with Obama the quality of the idea is likely going to be more important than the position of the person backing it.

[MarjorieG]

4. Kerry has so much more on his plate, as well as sharing foreign policy DNA with Obama.

Methinks he has already affected the direction, and is certainly trusted on media shows to explain Obama's positions, perfectly.

The Senate gives him climate change advocacy, which I think he'd also have as SoS. With Biden as VP, I think we have teamwork.

[ProSense]

2. This is a great piece. Also

posted here.

[beachmom]

5. Front page post on Kos with a question mark.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/19/131321/22/481/663614

I'm reading through comments now.

[beachmom]

6. Actually, John Kerry wrote a comment in the thread:

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2008/11/19/131321/22/151#c151

Everyone give him some MOJO!

[beachmom]

7. And a swiftboater showed up, fooling everyone.

Maybe I am a jerk, but when the guy lies about Kerry and calls him a POS, I am not going to thank him for his service like the other commenters did. I troll rated him.

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2008/11/19/131321/22/67#c67

And debunked his lie.

[JI7]

8. is this a regular poster there ?

that line is typical swift boat right wing crap. he probably isn't even a vet. i'm always suspicious of people who come on and put out right wing crap and then talk about how they are a Dem or liberal.

[beachmom]

10. I forgot to check his history. DEFINITELY a troll:

This time he is an engineer. What happened to being a Vietnam vet?

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2008/11/19/142910/70/54#c54

Methinks Markos knows he is a troll, too.

Oh, and he went into Lieberman threads and said he would never contribute to Dems now. CONCERN TROLL.

Oh, and here he plays lefty, suddenly concerned about the Gulf of Tonkin Res. and Iran/Contra. Split personality?

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2008/11/13/103451/23/76#c76

[Noisy Democrat]

9. I tr'ed him too

Just got that ability a few hours ago, putting it to good use. :)

[Mass]

11. More here, with indication on the role of SFRC

I like when the Globe states his accomplishments.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/11/20/kerry_poised_to_cap_long_journey/

Now Kerry is set to take over the committee with an impressive set of credentials. He is the third-ranking Democrat on the committee, behind Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who will remain chairman of the Banking Committee. Kerry has served on the committee for 23 years - including stints as chairman of the Asia and Middle East subcommittees - and has overseen legislation on a wide range of issues, such as human rights and Russia's invasion of Georgia last summer.


He also negotiated the creation of a war crimes tribunal to try the perpetrators of genocide in Cambodia, was instrumental in normalizing US relations with Vietnam in 1994, and attended global climate change negotiations in Indonesia last year.

He has been a leading voice in recent years on several of the foremost foreign policy questions. Kerry, who voted in 2002 to authorize the Iraq war that Obama opposed, introduced the first Senate amendment in 2006 to withdraw US combat forces from Iraq. While backed by only 13 senators at the time, his position was later adopted by nearly all his Democratic colleagues, and by some Republicans.
...
Other issues on Kerry's agenda are advancing nuclear nonproliferation goals, which Kerry believes enjoy more solid support than ever in both parties. Kerry also plans to use the committee to lay out a blueprint for the new administration on how to deal with global climate change, while addressing the Middle East peace process, Iran, Russia, and other pressing challenges, the aides said.

But that won't be enough to make Kerry a truly effective chairman, Carter said.

"There is a history of using the committee's hearings as a platform for investigating new ideas," Carter said. "The moment is right for two reasons. We still haven't fully adjusted to a post-Cold War, much less a post-9/11 world. That world is different, and a lot of our government and its bureaucracy and its apparatus are still basically a Cold War model."

Secondly, Carter said, there is a need to "have hearings where we explicitly investigate why is it our actions provoked many resentments from both our friends and our foes, and what is it we could do to minimize it."

Interesting and provoking questions here. (I skipped Bacevich on purpose. Even if he is opposed to the Iraq War, his philosophy on foreign policy is totally different from Kerry, which explains the criticisms. I thought Carter's remark were interesting though.

[TayTay]

12. This is Bacevich's list of grievances

Ah, I fail to see where these can be set aside as not worthy of being seen. Mr. Bacevich penned this list of foreign policy problems in a http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/07/01/what_bush_hath_wrought/">Boston Globe OpEd last July:

Yet in crucial respects, the Bush era will not end Jan. 20, 2009. The administration's many failures, especially those related to Iraq, mask a considerable legacy. Among other things, the Bush team has accomplished the following:

• Defined the contemporary era as an "age of terror" with an open-ended "global war" as the necessary, indeed the only logical, response;
  
  
• Promulgated and implemented a doctrine of preventive war, thereby creating a far more permissive rationale for employing armed force;
  
  
• Affirmed - despite the catastrophe of Sept. 11, 2001 - that the primary role of the Department of Defense is not defense, but power projection;
  
  
• Removed constraints on military spending so that once more, as Ronald Reagan used to declare, "defense is not a budget item";
  
  
• Enhanced the prerogatives of the imperial presidency on all matters pertaining to national security, effectively eviscerating the system of checks and balances;
  
  
• Preserved and even expanded the national security state, despite the manifest shortcomings of institutions such as the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff;
  
  
• Preempted any inclination to question the wisdom of the post-Cold War foreign policy consensus, founded on expectations of a sole superpower exercising "global leadership";
  
  
• Completed the shift of US strategic priorities away from Europe and toward the Greater Middle East, the defense of Israel having now supplanted the defense of Berlin as the cause to which presidents and would-be presidents ritually declare their fealty.
  
  By almost any measure, this constitutes a record of substantial, if almost entirely malignant, achievement.

More from Andrew Bacevich: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/18/AR2008011802873.html">Washington Post, Jan. 2008

Live chat on http://firedoglake.com/2008/11/16/fdl-book-salon-welcomes-andrew-j-bacevich-the-limits-of-power/">Firedoglake about his book on the Limits of American Power

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/20/the_limits_of_power_andrew_bacevich|transcript> of an appearance on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman

This is "a" voice (not "the" voice) that should be listened to in fp circles. I think the problem of the last few years is that those in power tended only to listen to those who agreed with them. That is a recipe for failure. I do not want to see that happen again. We need sane critics and we need to make sure that someone is listening rationally to what these critics have to say.

[Mass]

14. Thanks for reposting Bacevich's positions. I never said they should be silenced or they did not

matter. I just said I found them irrelevant in an article that was talking about the role of a foreign relation chair and what it would take for Kerry to become a great chair.

As it seems that some Kerry supporters think that being SFRC chair is not a big deal, I was trying to address this issue, not what the different foreign policy philosophies are, but this is a topic that fascinates me, so you will never hear me want to silence somebody.

[TayTay]

15. Not silence, but disregarded

This is the essence of why it will be fascinating to have Sen. Kerry as Chair of SFRC. He is not someone who turns his back on critics.

I read Paul Rieckhoff's book. He was critical of JK staff in 04 for not reaching out to Veterans of the Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts. Sen. Kerry did not take that personally, and actually quoted an article Rieckhoff wrote for the NYTimes back when the Senate was debating the habeas corpus issue. (Sept of '06.)

Did anyone here read the http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/magazine/09power-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine">NYTimes Sunday Magazine article on the Imperial Presidency and where the US Senate failed in the past few years. Very interesting reading.

[YvonneCa]

19. Thanks for this article. I've printed it...

...out to read tomorrow. :)

[YvonneCa]

20. I just finished reading this...

...article. It is a good 'inside baseball' type article. Two things struck me:

1. I kept thinking back to Al Gore's MLK Day speech in 2005 (?) to the American Constitution Society. He talked a lot about the way the balance of power was distorted, how it used to be, and how it threatened democracy that the executive branch had over-reached.(Great speech, if you haven't seen it.)

2. I think the author asked very good questions at the end. He said, "During my conversations with the senators, I sometimes had the impression that their irritation with the White House's arrogance toward Congress had overshadowed their concerns about the administration's policies themselves. I wondered if along the way they had lost sight of their duty to represent the interests of their constituents." His questions (paraphrased):

What will it mean for Congress to 'reassert itself"? Will Congress insist on it's blessing before empowering the president to do whatever he sees fit? What will it take for democracy's capacity for self-correction to kick in?

I'm pretty sure Al Gore, John Kerry and Barack Obama have not lost sight of concerns about the legacy of Bush's policies. I don't know about the rest of our legislative leaders.

[MBS]

16. Bacevich will be speaking in Cambridge Dec 5

I can post more details if people are interested. . .

[Mass]

17. He is worth listening to. My husband and I went there earlier this year.

In Cambridge, not sure if it is the same place, and, while I disagree with him on many points (my peace nick side, I imagine), he is a great speaker and very knowledgeable.

[MBS]

18. in case Boston-area people are interested, here's the info

Andrew Bacevich
title of talk: "What does the Next President Need to Know? Crafting a Sensible National Security Policy"
(apparently the talk is at least in part about his recent book, "The Limits of Power: the end of American Exceptionalism"

date: Friday, Dec 5
time: 7:30-9:30; reception to follow
place: St. Paul's Catholic Church (or in adjacent buildings)
29 Mt. Auburn St.
Cambridge

This is sponsored by St. Paul's committee on Contemporary Spiritual and Public Concerns.
see www.Saint-Paul-CSPC.org

[ProSense]

13. Fascinating stuff. Thanks n/t