Question about Kerry book

[FreedomAngel82]

What's Kerry's book "The New War"?

[_dynamicdems]

1. It's about terrorism and crime on a global scale.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0001FZGN0/qid=1138687208/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-4953341-5974525?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

From Booklist
Fresh from a hard-fought win over Governor William Weld in the 1996 Massachusetts senatorial race, Kerry pulls together information he gathered as chairman and ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations (1987^-97). "Crime still seems only a local phenomenon to most of us," Kerry notes, but crime has globalized, with international groupings--"the Italian Mafia, the Russian mobs, the Japanese yakuza, the Chinese triads, and the Colombian cartels"--working with smaller, specialized groups in "Nigeria, Poland, Jamaica, and Panama," and banks and businesses that enable such criminal enterprises to handle the vast wealth they generate. Kerry describes this network's key players, spotlighting the drug trade, terrorism, "human contraband," and money laundering, and suggesting globalized law enforcement that would seize global criminals' assets and share them (and criminal intelligence) with nations willing to cooperate. Civil libertarians will resist, but Kerry makes a disturbing case for his position. Mary Carroll --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Here's a reader review:
Reviewer: Peter Shulman (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
Hindsight, we all know is 20-20, but John Kerry does a pretty credible job showing foresight in this book. The central thesis is that failed stated threaten the international order and thus threaten the security of the United States. Kerry did not indeed connect all of the dots to AL Qaeda in this book, but that's not his specific target. Essentially, he argues that there must be far more international cooperation in stopping crime, as criminals often operate outside the nation which they are devestating. Anyone who has read about the impact of international criminal syndicates on state authority (in Burma, Kosovo, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Thailand, Nigeria, N. Ireland, Yugoslavia, and Russia, for a short list) knows that Kerry's call was common sense; not brilliant, but common sense that wasn't very common in the isolationist 90s. When GWB came to office, he worked against international conventions on money laundering and diamond smuggling right up to the time that the WTC was bombed. This book, on the other hand, shows clear evidence that Kerry was attuned to the international tenacles of terrorism and its links to organized crime. Given that he had earlier unraveled the BCCI banking scandal and the secret Iran-Contra network as a Senator, one can see a clear theme: Kerry has a prosecutor's nose for the behind-the-scenes networks that the US must go after to be successful in the war on terrorism. The prose isn't particularly compelling, but the ideas, on the other hand, showed a man asking the right questions. Indeed, a president who not only reads, but writes and asks questions; it's a far cry from the president who took a month's vacation in August, 2001, with what little work being done focused on killing stem cell research in the US. Don't take my word for it; read it for yourself. It is common-sensical, and indeed, has become something of standard thinking in the post-9/11 era.

[blm]

3. Al Qaeda wasn't even operating when Kerry was writing his book.

Al Qaeda was being formed AS Kerry was writing his book.

[FreedomAngel82]

4. Right

They didn't exist until 2001. Didn't they have a different name too? I found the book on Amazon at a good price and the next book I'm going to get will be this one. It would be great to be in my collection. :D

[blm]

7. I think the first time I heard Al Qaeda was in 98 or 99.

.

[TayTay]

5. In boston, he mentioned his next book

I think he said that it would be about something, but I was so stunned and gob-smacked at being on stage with Kerry that I don't remember what he said it would be on. (But I can guess that it was more intelligent analysis of foreign policy and such.)

He said it might come out in the spring, if he finished it soon.

[jenndar]

6. Was it the environment?

I really, really hope it is.

[globalvillage]

11. I'm pretty sure it is.

[FreedomAngel82]

8. Nice!

:bounce: I can't wait!

[_dynamicdems]

9. Did he say? I don't remember what he said....either.

Didn't he mention it in his speech?

[karynnj]

10. It is weird that so many people take pains to point out that he

missed Al Qaeda - even though I doubt their name had even appeared in print by then. I remember some of teh sarcastic RW people noting that he didn't mention Bin Laden and Al Qaeda - ignoring that Kerry recommendations from that book are almost exactly the types of thing recommended after 911. It really is annoying that he gets so little credit on this.

[blm]

12. That one sticks with me, too.

What I don't get is that Clinton knew damn well what Kerry contributed, but never spoke to it, and none of the DNC and Dem pundits even seemed aware of it at all.

[karynnj]

13. What's more mysterious to me is why Kerry was as low key on it as well

That he didn't talk much about this has come up on DU-P where I defend with the first paragraph - unless you're there with far more info - but it does seem there was a reluctance to use it.

I remember it only from the speech at the university in Philadelphia on terrorism a few weeks after the NYU speech and in the NYT article, where are brilliant media ignored the substance of the whole article and tried to make an issue of Kerry's comment that terrorism should be reduced to "nuisance" rather than being the constant black cloud the Bush folks think it is.

That Kerry's prescriptions could have led to the roll up of Al Qaeda before they attacked if people would have listened in the 90s or at least after 911 everything would have been in place for a much more efficient response to get AL Qaeda was never discussed. The likelihood here is that it blames Clinton more than Bush.

It almost seems like they were starting to explain Kerry's BCCI stuff in mid September to late September (when they were pretty far behind) but then after Kerry blew Bush out of the first debate and the polls began to narrow, they opted not to push it any further. It's weird because it could have given Kerry a faint private eye/detective/investigator type appeal. (Adding even more to the alpha male identification )

[blm]

14. Honestly, I believe Clinton's people discouraged bringing it up and

claimed it was too "confusing" for people. I also believe that DNC and Dem pundits didn't know much about it to speak to it.

Those people had just spent the last 12 years defending Clinton and his record and didn't know SQUAT about any other Democrat.

[karynnj]

15. You wonder if it will come out if it's a Clinton/Kerry

match in the primaries. Hillary will be running as having been a key person in her husband's administrtion. Bill Clinton already surfaced once the view that Kerry didn't come out as strong enough and implied he and Hillary were. In reality, he was weaker than Kerry on so many levels - he didn't get along with the military and he was insufficintly interested with terrorism (although he WAS more interested than the Crawford Brush clearer.)

[jenndar]

2. I'm reading it right now!

It's actually really interesting. It's about the globalization of crime.