From coming home from Vietnam and making the decision to speak the truth about what was happening - after earning two very prestigious medals for his courage and intelligent actions - to nearly the last thing he did as Secretary of State to speak the truth about what was needed to actually get a two state solution in Israel, knowing that that would set off as many attacks as his speaking the truth in 1971 did.
This after a remarkable tenure as Secretary of State where he accomplished two (of the many) near impossible things he pursued with incredible persistence, creativity, and diplomatic skill. In a recent Al Gore/John Kerry discussion at Yale ( https://news.yale.edu/2017/10/09/watch-livestream-vice-president-al-gore-kerry-conversation ), Al Gore became one more person to point out that without Kerry, it is very unlikely there would have been a Paris Accord with nearly 200 nations signing on. In addition, his peers in the P5+1 all pointed to Kerry as the person who always pushed them on when they thought a deal unreachable. Philip Hammond, his UK peer, called his process "airplane diplomacy" - not because the miles flown - but as he explained, as each negotiation was coming to an end, Kerry made sure that there was "homework" for all - things they needed to look into AND a next meeting planned. Why an airplane - and airplane must move in some direction or it would start to sink. With diplomacy, he said, you have to always continue to look for a solution.
Trump is doing his best to end both, but they are both surprisingly robust. Impressive as getting anything for either seemed unlikely when he took them on. Especially the Paris Climate Accord seems to moving forward - even as Trump as said we will leave it - even though that can not finally happen until 2020. The US being the only nation out is not good for the accord or the US, but the impressive thing is that no country has followed. Instead Nicaragua, which wanted something tougher, and Syria, which is in a civil war, joined.
I will not try to list everything he accomplished in the Senate - especially as whenever I tried to do so, I would learn more important things where he was a key person - even if he did not get a lot of credit. What I will add is that he as a Freshman Senator, finally in a job he loved, he risked losing it by heading a SFRC subcommittee to investigate whether there was gun running to support the Contras - his investigators and Kerry, often as the sole committee member asking questions, ended up accumulating the evidence that not only were they illegally doing this, with the CIA protecting them from US discovery, but they were drug running to support it. During part of that time, the lives of Kerry and some of his investigators were threatened. When Iran/Contra exploded, he was not given a seat on the House/Senate panel that investigated it, but for some like Eliot Abrahms and Oliver North, it was lying to Kerry that was the basis for their indictments.
As a consolation when not put on that panel, his committee was allowed to investigate money laundering and drug running in Central America - that led to the his investigating BCCI, later turning his information over to NY's AG Morgenthau who was able to close the bank that was used for money laundering by international criminals, drug rings and terrorists - including OBL. Someone posted this link to a hearing of the committee AFTER Morgenthau closed the bank. Even watching the first 10 minutes, hearing echoes of so many international speeches he made as SoS against corruption, is incredible.
It is sad knowing that soon afterward - with most of the things he wanted to investigate still not done, the Senate ended the sub committee. He turned to write legislation that could provide the tools needed to "follow the money", but Senators allied to the banks in both party opposed him. Only after 911, did some of that become law.
There was no one I was more excited to have become President -- including President Obama. Strange as in early 2003, I was undecided between Dean and Kerry. One thing that made me certain that he was as principled and as capable as he seemed, was that I decided to do a weird experiment as we visited tons of colleges, spending a large amount of time as my daughter checked out if she approved of the libraries and book stores. I decided that just like the fable of the large number of blind people trying to figure out what an elephant was, I would look in all the books in the history and politics sections on
other people, looking in the index for John Kerry. The idea - any book
on John Kerry would be biased by the person's opinion of him. In the stories that I found through my strange (hey, it filled out a LOT of time) search, what I found was an essentially consistent picture of someone that was consistent with the descriptions of the people who had worked for him. He really was the real deal.
It is good to see that he seems to be as engaged with his students at Yale and his work on climate change and diplomacy. It has to be tough for him seeing Trump and Tillerson's mess, but it is nice to see that when he speaks he still has the ability he has had for decades to put things in perspective and to be an optimist. I wonder whether if the media had actually helped people actually know who Kerry was if the results would have been different.
[/img]
[/img]
= new reply since forum marked as read
Or, it is closer to the truth to say that sometimes a hug is nothing more than a reinforcement of comradery. I'll be very sad to lose that.
