Some progressive supporters of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry have argued that, despite his support for the invasion of Iraq and other neoconservative-driven foreign policies of the Bush Administration, at least a President Kerry – unlike the incumbent president – would be more willing to listen to the views of those with more moderate perspectives than himself.

A President Kerry, so goes this argument, while likely to take a number of foreign policy positions more hawkish than most Democrats could support, would at least be more open to hearing a number of competing assessments and policy options before choosing military solutions to foreign policy problems.

Unfortunately, while a President Kerry would almost certainly be less ideological and impulsive than President George W. Bush in formulating his foreign policy, there are a number of areas in which the Massachusetts senator appears to be just as unwilling to listen to alternative viewpoints regarding foreign affairs as the incumbent president.

Take Senator Kerry’s position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for example:

Kerry shares the Bush administration’s support for the policies of the rightist Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. He has defended the Israeli re-occupation of much of the West Bank; Israel’s ongoing violation of a series of UN Security Council resolutions; Sharon’s refusal to even negotiate for a permanent peace agreement with the Palestinian leadership; Israel’s policy of assassinating suspected terrorists and other Palestinian leaders; Sharon’s proposed annexation of vast stretches of occupied Palestinian territory in order to incorporate illegal Jewish settlements into Israel; and, the Israeli government’s construction of an illegal separation wall deep inside occupied territory (in defiance of a recent near-unanimous ruling by the International Court of Justice, which led Kerry to strongly criticize the UN’s judicial body.)

As a result, the Kerry campaign has opened its door wide to right-wing Zionist groups that share his and Bush’s support for the illegal and repressive occupation policies of the current rightist Israeli government, with Kerry and his top foreign policy advisors meeting regularly with their representatives. By contrast, despite numerous efforts by moderate and liberal pro-Israel groups such as the Tikkun Community, Churches for Middle East Peace, Jewish Voice for Peace, and others to meet with the candidate or his leading staffers, the Kerry campaign has completely shut them out.

The sad reality appears to be that Kerry is not interested in even hearing the perspectives of the large and growing numbers of Israel’s American supporters – both Jewish and non-Jewish – who recognize that not only are Sharon’s policies toward the Palestinians illegal and immoral, they threaten Israel’s long-term security interests as well.

Even leading progressive Zionists like Rabbi Michael Lerner – one of America’s foremost intellectuals – have been systematically denied any access to Kerry or the leadership of the campaign.

By contrast, even the hawkish Bill Clinton was appreciative enough of Lerner’s counsel to have invited him personally to the White House on a number of occasions. The Clintons’ respect for Lerner’s 1996 book The Politics of Meaning and other writings was significant enough to lead the press to refer to the rabbi as President Clinton’s “spiritual advisor.”

(For more than six months, I have personally attempted, through both established channels and back channels, to secure a meeting between a group of anti-Sharon but pro-Israel intellectuals – including myself, Rabbi Lerner, Cornell West (the noted African-American studies professor at Princeton University), and Susannah Herschel (director of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College), among others – with either Senator Kerry or any influential Kerry staffer knowledgeable of foreign affairs. As with similar efforts by progressive Zionists and others, however, my appeals have been consistently ignored.)

In other words, Kerry and his foreign policy team apparently have no desire to even listen to those who may have an alternative perspective to the Democratic nominee’s strident support for the right-wing pro-Likud agenda.

And taking such neoconservative views does not help Kerry’s election chances: Public opinion polls show that the views of the majority of American Jews are far closer to Lerner’s than they are to Sharon’s.

Kerry, unfortunately, appears to be just as unwilling to consider alternative perspectives on Iraq as he does Israel-Palestine.

The Democratic presidential nominee refused to challenge, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Bush Administration’s claims in 2002 and early 2003 that Iraq was such a serious and growing threat to American national security that it required a pre-emptive U.S. invasion to overthrow the Iraqi government and replace it with one more to our liking.

In the lead-up to the October 2002 Congressional vote authorizing the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Kerry steadfastly refused to listen to numerous appeals by independent strategic analysts, former UN inspectors, independent arms control experts, former State Department officials, retired military officers, and others who insisted that Iraq was not a threat to the United States and that it was a bad idea to grant President Bush the authority to invade Iraq at whatever time and under whatever conditions he chose.

Kerry was also given documentation from the International Atomic Energy Agency, as well as articles from well-respected arms control journals and other sources, demonstrating that Iraq’s nuclear program had been totally eliminated some years earlier and that – as a result of the strict sanctions regime then in place for the previous twelve years – it would have been virtually impossible for Iraq to reconstitute its program any time in the foreseeable future.

(I understand that a number of my analyses on Iraq published by the Foreign Policy in Focus Project in the spring and summer of 2002 were passed on to the senator and his foreign policy staff. In these non-technical briefs, I raised serious questions as to whether Iraq actually still had any remaining functional weapons of mass destruction, ongoing WMD programs, or workable delivery systems that could threaten its neighbors, let alone the United States.)

Despite this, Kerry stood on the floor of the U.S. Senate that October to defend President Bush’s wild assertions of an imminent Iraqi threat, not only claiming categorically that “Iraq has chemical and biological weapons” and that most of their programs were “larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War,” but that “all U.S. intelligence experts agree” that Iraq was “attempting to develop nuclear weapons.”

During that summer, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on Iraq’s alleged military threat for which only witnesses who would claim that Iraq was somehow a danger to U.S. national security were invited. Kerry – one of the senior Democrats on the committee – ignored thousands of phone calls and emails encouraging him to use his influence to invite experts who would challenge the neocons’ claims that Iraq had a dangerous and growing stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and sophisticated delivery systems.

It appears, then, that Senator Kerry, no less than President Bush, simply did not want dissenting views to be heard.

Similarly, scores of copies of my September 30 cover story in The Nation magazine “The Case against War with Iraq” were sent to Kerry’s office. A number of copies were personally placed in the hands of his foreign policy staff and even the senator himself. In that article, I predicted that “a US invasion could leave American forces effectively alone attempting to enforce a peace amid the chaos of a post-Saddam Iraq,” and that the United States could find itself stuck in a “bloody counterinsurgency war” against “ongoing guerrilla action by Saddam Hussein’s supporters” as well as by various Sunni and Shiite factions.

Still, just two weeks later, Kerry voted in favor of a resolution granting unprecedented war-making authority to a fraudulently-elected, right-wing, semi-literate, religious fundamentalist president in order for him to lead a U.S. takeover of that oil-rich country.

Despite the denials of his supporters, Kerry either knew or refused ample opportunity to learn that Iraq no longer had any weapons of mass destruction, ongoing WMD programs, or delivery systems that seriously threatened other countries.

Similarly, Kerry either knew or refused ample opportunity to learn that a U.S. invasion of Iraq – particularly under the leadership of the Bush Administration – would likely lead U.S. forces into the heart of just the kind of violent chaotic mess they are now in.

Kerry appears to have not learned from his mistakes. One would think that after people like me, former chief UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter, and so many others tried to warn the senator and his staff that the Bush Administration’s case for war was incredibly misleading and the results of a U.S. invasion of Iraq would be disastrous we might now be welcomed by Kerry’s team to advise them on how to avoid making such tragic mistakes in the future.

We continue to be completely shut out, however.

Similarly, one would think that Senator Kerry – after noting the total absence of the WMDs, WMD programs and delivery systems that he and the White House insisted Iraq possessed in the months leading up to the U.S. invasion – might be more skeptical of claims by these same neoconservatives within the Bush Administration of alleged strategic threats by Middle Eastern adversaries.

Such an assumption would, unfortunately, be wrong as well:

For example, this past fall, Kerry was one of the Senate co-sponsors of the neoconservative-backed Syria Accountability Act. Among the formal findings in Kerry’s bill justifying its imposition of sanctions and implicit military threats against Syria were alarmist and grossly exaggerated estimates of Syria’s alleged military prowess made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton. These two leading Bush Administration officials made similarly alarmist and inaccurate estimates about Iraq’s alleged military threat in the lead-up to the war, which had been shown to have been inaccurate well before the final version of Kerry’s anti-Syria bill was introduced. Yet, by deciding to leave these claims in the text of the legislation, Kerry appears to continue to trust the analyses of these neo-conservative ideologues more than he does those of independent non-partisan strategic analysts.

As a result, his pledge during his nomination acceptance speech in Boston this July that he would “ask hard questions and demand hard evidence” on alleged security threats should probably not be trusted.

Similarly, as these examples illustrate, one must be skeptical of claims that Kerry will be more likely to listen to those with more moderate to progressive foreign policy views or even those who just raise skeptical questions about alleged outside threats.

In short, not only does the Democratic presidential nominee share President Bush’s penchant for unilateralism, the undermining of international legal institutions, the support of occupation armies, and the imposition of military solutions to complex political problems, Kerry appears to be decidedly reluctant to even consider reasoned and credible analyses that might challenge militaristic ideological assumptions that the way to defend America’s security interests is through the support of invasion, occupation and repression.

The way to respond to this rather pessimistic analysis, however, is rather straightforward:

We must force John Kerry to listen to other perspectives.

One way to do this would be for millions of Democrats who oppose Kerry’s refusal to hear challenges to right-wing wing foreign policy views to threaten to vote for independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader, Libertarian Party nominee Michael Badnarik, or the nominee of some small leftist party. The risks of losing enough such voters to give Bush a plurality and therefore all the electors in some key states might force Kerry to widen the base of foreign policy advisors and soften his hardline views.

The dangers of such a strategy, however, are obvious.

A second and perhaps more appropriate way would be to support Kerry’s election, but should he be elected in November immediately demand that he appoint to his foreign policy transition team, as well as to key positions in the State Department and the National Security Council, a more diverse group than just those who share his militaristic views regarding the Middle East, human rights, international law, and America’s role in the world. He must also know that any failure to do so will not only result in protests at least as large as those which have challenged the current administration, but an awareness that people of conscience throughout the county will not support his re-election in 2008 unless and until he changes these policies.

Those of us who support human rights and international law and who oppose reckless unilateral military intervention overseas cannot reasonably expect that Kerry will always take positions with which we agree. However, we do have a right to demand that he at least provide people like us the opportunity to share our perspectives and take them into consideration.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0915-13.htm

The only people who could possibly be swayed by the unfair and misleading attacks on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry put forward by speakers at the Republican National Convention (particularly Vice-President Dick Cheney and Georgia Senator Zell Miller) would be those with little understanding of contemporary strategic issues and modern diplomatic history.

Unfortunately, that probably includes the majority of eligible American voters.

Whether or not such disingenuous criticism will ultimately cost John Kerry and his running mate John Edwards the election remains to be seen. More immediately, however, it is indicative of the flawed assumption of the Democratic Party that nominating two hawks (whose support for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq put them at odds with 95% of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention) would somehow make them immune from Republican charges of weakness on defense.

Instead, by nominating two supporters of the Bush Doctrine and the neo-conservative agenda, the Democrats have ended up alienating their base without sparing themselves one iota from Republican attacks.

Let’s begin by a critical examination of charges that Senator Kerry is not adequately concerned about the national security of the United States or capable of defending the nation.

The Republican Accusations

Cheney: “Senator Kerry began his political career by saying he would like to see our troops deployed ‘only at the directive of the United Nations.'”

Miller: “Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations.”

During Kerry’s unsuccessful bid for a seat in the House of Representatives in 1972, he made the quite reasonable proposal that (since the UN Charter provides for collective security and allows for unilateral actions only in the event of self-defense against armed attack) any foreign military intervention should be authorized by the UN Security Council. Contrary to the vice-president’s allegations, he did not object to the forward deployment of American forces as a deterrent, such as U.S. forces in Western Europe as part of NATO, nor of the use of military force for legitimate defense.

Kerry has since swung well to the right, however, effectively renouncing the UN Charter through his support of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and for Israel’s colonization and creeping annexation of the occupied West Bank. Indeed, Kerry voted to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq without approval by the UN Security Council.

Miller: “As a war protestor, Kerry blamed our military.”

In his days as an anti-war veteran during the Vietnam War, Kerry never blamed the military for that tragedy, but focused his opposition on the civilian politicians who sent American troops to fight there.

Unfortunately, during his presidential campaign, Kerry has emphasized his participation in that unnecessary, criminal and misguided counter-insurgency war rather than his subsequent moral and pragmatic opposition. More saliently, he is an outspoken supporter of the current unnecessary, criminal and misguided counter-insurgency war and, as president, is likely to continue prosecuting that war years to come.

Cheney: “He talks about leading a ‘more sensitive war on terror,’ as though Al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side.

What Kerry actually said was that the United States needs to be more sensitive regarding the concerns of our Middle Eastern allies and the international community. President Bush had made a similar statement just a few months earlier.

Unfortunately, Kerry’s support for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and Israel’s occupation policies in the West Bank has placed him in opposition to virtually every U.S. ally in the region, not to mention in Europe and the rest of the world as well.

Cheney: “During the 1980s, Senator Kerry opposed Ronald Reagan’s major defense initiatives that brought victory in the Cold War.”

Kerry, along with dozens of other senators from both parties, opposed some expensive weapons systems which most objective strategic analysts saw as unnecessary for America’s defense needs. The U.S. military buildup had nothing to do with the end of the Cold War, which resulted from the collapse of the unsustainable Communist systems of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies goaded on by nonviolent grassroots pro-democracy movements within these countries.

Kerry has since moved well to the right on this issue as well, becoming an outspoken supporter (despite record deficits and pressing domestic needs) of increased military spending, backing expensive and redundant weapons systems that have nothing to do with the struggle against Al-Qaeda.

Cheney: “In 1991, when Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait and stood poised to dominate the Persian Gulf, Senator Kerry voted against Operation Desert Storm.”

This statement assumes that the only choices were either acquiescing to Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait or launching a devastating war, which was hardly the case. Kerry joined scores of senators from both parties in voting against the authorization of force, recognizing correctly that then-President George Bush was not serious about pursuing a non-military resolution to the crisis.

The Gulf War and ongoing U.S. military presence in the region that resulted was the major factor in the formation of Al-Qaeda, turning Osama bin Laden from a U.S. ally to its most notorious adversary. Had there not been a Gulf War, there would not have been a 9/11.

Unfortunately, rather than trumpet his wisdom in recognizing the importance of voting against an avoidable war which resulted in such disastrous consequences, Kerry now says he regrets his vote against the war and that President Bush was right all along.

Cheney: “Senator Kerry denounces American action when other countries don’t approve as if the whole object of our foreign policy were to please a few persistent critics. In fact, in the global war on terror, . . . President Bush has brought many allies to our side. But as the President has made very clear, there is a difference between leading a coalition of many, and submitting to the objections of a few. George W. Bush will never seek a permission slip to defend the American people.”

Miller: “Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending.”

Kerry has never claimed nor given any indication that he believes that “the whole object of our foreign policy were to please a few persistent critics.” The invasion of Iraq was a direct violation of the United Nations Charter, which (as a ratified treaty, according to Article VI of the U.S. Constitution) is to be treated as supreme U.S. law. This act of aggression was opposed by the vast majority of the world’s nations, not just “a few persistent critics.”

Secondly, the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with “the global war on terror.” Iraq had no operational links with Al-Qaeda or any other terrorist group that had targeted the United States.

Thirdly, the government of France has never demonstrated any desire to prevent the United States from defending itself. France did threaten to veto a UN Security Council resolution which would have authorized a U.S. invasion of Iraq, but so did Russia and China, also permanent members of the Security Council. Non-permanent members Chile, Mexico, Guinea, Angola, Syria, Colombia, Pakistan, and Germany did not support the resolution either, thereby denying the United States a majority even without the vetoes.

Fourthly, the Democratic Party platform explicitly states, “With John Kerry as commander-in-chief, we will never wait for a green light from abroad when our safety is at stake.”

In any case, the fact that Kerry voted to authorize this illegal and unnecessary war and defends his vote to this day shows that he and the Democrats have as much contempt for international law and international opinion as does the Bush Administration and the Republicans.

Cheney: “Although he voted to authorize force against Saddam Hussein, he then decided he was opposed to the war, and voted against funding for our men and women in the field. He voted against body armor, ammunition, fuel, spare parts, armored vehicles, extra pay for hardship duty, and support for military families.”

Miller: “As a Senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for our troops in harms way, far-away.”

Unfortunately, not only did Kerry support the invasion of Iraq, he has continued to defend the war and occupation, he has supported using billions of our tax dollars to fund it, and he has repeatedly stated he will not withdraw U.S. forces if elected. Kerry did, on procedural grounds, vote against the administration’s bill allocating $87 billion to U.S. occupation forces. Kerry instead backed an amendment which would have sent just as much money to support the U.S. occupation and bloody counter-insurgency efforts (including protective armor), only the funds would be drawn from a reduction in tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans rather than by simply increasing the federal budget deficit, as did the administration’s version.

Accepting Republican Assumptions Leaves Kerry Vulnerable

Kerry has become vulnerable to Republican attacks because he agrees with the Republicans on their basic foreign policy assumptions. This is particularly evident regarding his opposition to certain Pentagon boondoggles and other excessive military spending.

Senator Miller, in his speech at the Republican convention, attacked Kerry for opposing funding for the B-1 and B-2 bombers because of their key role in the U.S. assault on Afghanistan in the fall of 2001. This would be a valid criticism only if you believe that massive high-altitude bombing of an impoverished central Asian nation is the most effective means of dealing with a decentralized Saudi-led international network of underground terrorist cells. Kerry, unfortunately, has refused to challenge this assumption.

Miller’s criticism of Kerry’s opposition to the F-14A Tomcat program because of the jet fighter’s role in attacking Libyan planes in the Gulf of Sidra during the 1980s assumes that the Reagan Administration’s reckless military engagements with that North African country were necessary and unavoidable. Kerry has also refused to question that assumption.

Miller’s criticism of Kerry’s opposition to the Patriot Missile “that shot down Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles over Israel” not only ignores the fact that subsequent investigations revealed the Patriot worked less than 10% of the time, but the Iraqi strikes against Israel took place only because the United States had launched a war against Iraq. Again, if Kerry had maintained his opposition to the Gulf War or bothered to point out the technical failures of the Patriot system, such criticisms could not be taken seriously.

Miller’s criticism of Kerry’s opposition of the Apache helicopter, “that . . . took out those Republican Guard tanks in Kuwait in the Gulf War” not only fails to note that Saddam Hussein withdraw virtually all of his Republican Guard units from Kuwait prior to Operation Desert Storm, it assumes that the Gulf War was necessary, something that Kerry now refuses to question.

In short, the most successful way for the Democrats to defend attacks questioning their nominees’ commitment to the national security of the United States is to challenge the Republicans’ distorted notions of what national security entails. Kerry and Edwards, however, have failed to do so.

Implications

Indeed, Kerry is arguably the Democrats’ most right-wing militaristic presidential nominee since James K. Polk. Kerry’s vote authorizing the illegal, unnecessary and disastrous invasion of Iraq (which he defends to this day), his calls for increased military spending (despite the end of the Cold War), his denunciation of the International Court of Justice (for its July decision reiterating the obligation of UN member states to enforce international humanitarian law), and his strident support for the rightist Israeli government’s illegal colonization and creeping annexation of the occupied West Bank (despite the opposition of such policies by most Israelis and American Jews) has alienated millions of liberal, progressive and moderate voters who, as a result, may vote for independent candidate Ralph Nader or stay at home on Election Day.

In other words, despite nominating a decorated combat veteran who takes positions on human rights, international law, and presidential war-making authority far to the right of the vast majority of Democrats and independents, the Republicans will still question the Democratic nominee’s willingness to defend the country.

There is an important lesson here: those who argue that the Democrats cannot take more moderate positions on foreign and military policy without being subjected to Republican attacks are simply wrong. For despite Kerry’s enthusiastic embrace of the Bush Doctrine and his militaristic world view, he is being attacked anyway.

If the Democrats are going to win, they will have to redefine national security by boldly challenging the assumptions (currently embraced by Kerry and Edwards) that effectively renouncing the United Nations Charter, authorizing the invasion and occupation of foreign countries, backing international outlaws like Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, supporting dictatorships from Egypt to Uzbekistan, and spending more on the military than the entire rest of the world combined somehow makes us more secure.

For if the Democrats’ surrender these key assumptions, it would appear that the Republicans are right and Bush and Cheney should indeed be re-elected. However, if the Democrats are willing to publicly recognize how dangerous these assumptions are, then the importance of preventing a Republican victory in November would become obvious to the vast majority of Americans who care about our nation’s defense.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry was one of a minority of Democratic members of Congress who voted to authorize President George W. Bush to invade Iraq. With the war becoming increasingly unpopular with the electorate, however, Senator Kerry has recently been sounding more critical. Still, his recent efforts to explain his evolving position raise some troubling questions.

For example when Tim Russert asked Senator Kerry on Meet the Press on April 17 if he believed the war in Iraq was a mistake, Senator Kerry could only say that “the way the president went to war is a mistake.” In other words, as president, Kerry would invade and occupy countries the right way.

He has properly accused the Bush Administration of having “misled America.” Yet Kerry, in an apparent effort to scare the American people into supporting a U.S. takeover of that oil-rich country, also falsely claimed that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, a nuclear weapons program, and advanced delivery systems that they had either gotten rid of years earlier or never had in the first place.

In his April 13 op-ed in the Washington Post, as American troops laid siege to the city of Falluja in attacks that have killed up to 600 civilians, he described the situation in Iraq as that of “extremists attacking our forces.” He called for the U.S. military to make “full use of the assets we have,” including (if commanders request it) the deployment of more troops. In his Meet the Press interview, he did not rule out there still being 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq a year from now.

He called on NATO “to create a new out-of-area operation for Iraq under the lead of a U.S. commander.” He apparently believes that the U.S. military (which has been accused by reputable human rights organizations of widespread violations of the international humanitarian law in Iraq which has served to alienate most of the Iraqi population) should remain in charge, but other countries should be willing to sacrifice their soldiers and financial resources in this U.S.-created quagmire.

When asked as to whether NATO countries would be willing to contribute troops in a country undergoing an increasingly violent insurrection, he replied “if it requires more troops in order to create the stability that eliminates the chaos that can provide the groundwork for other countries, that’s what you have to do.” In short, in order to lessen the burden for U.S. forces, we need to send in more U.S. forces.

Where Senator Kerry has sounded more reasonable is in his call for giving the United Nations a more prominent role. He correctly recognizes that “You cannot have America run the occupation, make all the reconstruction decisions, make the decision of the kind of government that will emerge, and pretend to bring other nations to the table.”

When the Massachusetts senator voted to authorize the invasion in October 2002, he stated from the floor of the Senate that he expected President Bush to “work with the United Nations Security Council . . . if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force,” promising that if President Bush failed to do so, “I will be the first to speak out.”

However, when President Bush abandoned his efforts at getting UN Security Council approval for an invasion that March, Kerry was silent. When President Bush actually launched the invasion soon afterwards, Senator Kerry praised him, co-sponsoring a Senate resolution in which he declared that the invasion was “lawful and fully authorized by the Congress” and that he “commends and supports the efforts and leadership of the President . . . in the conflict with Iraq.”

Once again, Senator Kerry is promising that he will demand a leading role for the United Nations. Given that he broke his promise before, however, it may be naive to believe that he would follow through this time.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0423-13.htm

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.

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.

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.

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