Josh Marshall.....Kerry aides admit policy will be like that of Scowcroft.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/07/marshall.htm

SNIP..."In early February I sat in a Starbucks in downtown Washington with Dan Feldman, who is helping to organize Senator John Kerry's foreign-policy team. We discussed Kerry's vision of America's role in the world, and the people who might play important roles in his Administration if he is elected President, touching on everything from the crucial issue of Iraq and the simmering crises in North Korea and Iran to NATO and the proper balance between international alliances and the brute force necessary to secure American interests abroad—collectively, the foreign-policy questions that are central to the next election, and to the next four years.

SNIP..."Wondering how he would take it, I said to Feldman, "What you're describing to me sounds a lot like what I'd expect from Brent Scowcroft."

"Yes," he said. "I think a lot of what you'd see from a Kerry Administration might be like that. I think there'd be a lot of similarities." When I later made the same suggestion to Kerry's chief foreign-policy adviser, Rand Beers, he agreed...."

SNIP..."This marriage of power and values is the essence of the foreign-policy vision espoused by leading Democratic thinkers. Out of political caution Kerry's campaign advisers still tend to seek the safety of a Scowcroftian middle ground, but the foreign-policy advisers who would serve President Kerry have quite a different vision—much more ambitious and expansive than anything pursued by the first Bush Administration. In my interviews with the people around Kerry, it became clear how this Democratic world view would apply to some of the major problem areas in the world. For example, Kerry Democrats do not believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the cause of Middle East instability and extremism. But they do believe that almost nothing the United States does to liberalize and pacify the region can have much chance of success so long as the standoff on the West Bank remains unresolved."

A proactive, but constructive foreign policy.

I am starting to like Kerry more and more.

!

As long as we admitted our colonies as states, I don't mind!

you know, to "spread democracy"? Should we be supporting the war? I will support the war if Iraq is admitted as the 51st state of the union, gets two senators and representation in the House. Otherwise I can't support it. You know, the Constitution and all.

Rifle or a Nuke, maybe? :shrug:

And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!

feel is just getting vented here, and no one cares, but solacing in poetry to vent is much more healthy. Thanks for reminding me of another "plane" to express my despair...

Or are all our leaders going to be corrupted, one after another?

I could trust that ticket.

:shrug:

SNIP..."but the foreign-policy advisers who would serve President Kerry have quite a different vision—much more ambitious and expansive than anything pursued by the first Bush Administration"

I disagree...this bothers me.

Thats not the answer this poster was looking for!


But I agree with you 100%

I am glad you liked the first Bush administration policies, as I had some doubts.

Your words not mine.

And since you accuse me of liking the first Bush Administration. Who's doing the assuming here?

They admit they are going to use the policies of that administration. Since you approved, it was not a far out assumption on my part. You said you agreed.

praise and glory be!
:nuke: :crazy:

conflict is the root cause of the instability in the Middle East but the situation is certainly aggravated by it because it makes security issues in the area a lot more difficult.

Looks like we will keep remapping.

I do not believe if today this country fully supported the Palestinians and told Israel to go screw itself that it would change anything in the Arab world. These conflicts go much deeper and much further back in history. Sadly, everything on this side of things and the Arab world side of things is 10000% based on education. And just like the Arab world so washes the minds of their youth in the education of "fundamentalism", we just plain don't spend money on education. So the conflict is really just "the fucking ignorant vs. the fucking ignorant". Too bad the wealth of nations isn't spent on education.

and 90% of both Al Qaeda and Palestinian terrorism would go away if Bush or Kerry would make the Israelis go back to the green line.

folks on the Left/Left can get our act together and regroup to create a NEW PROGRESSIVE LEFT of the Dem Party.

Kerry could turn himself into a frog at this point and I would vote for him...but I wouldn't expect much...just a Dyke against the BFEE to give us a "breather."

At 59 I'm not politically stupid. I picked him for the specific reason of needing a person who served in Nam to take on Bush or otherwise his AWOL was a walk over anyone who did not serve. When his campaign hit dirt and Clark came along, I supported Clark for the very same reasons. Did I expect a goddamn Kennedy from either one (the people I really admire)--NO. I expect a Clinton. A person who feeds us a little poison with the sugar on top to make it go down better. But any poison rids us of the "end of democracy" as we know it under these Nazis.

We are an empire in decline. The sooner the nation reaches that sobering realization, the sooner we will address the ailments that brought about the diseased state.

John Kerry will field dress some wounds, but the job calls for a surgeon.

This is a democracy. You cannot achieve dramatic change except in dramatic crisis.

Want some more of those?

What exactly did you have in mind when you used the word "democracy" to describe "this?"

I believe dramatic change will continue to occur, whether we "want" it or not. We either rise to the occassion to meet the forces at play, or succumb to its power. Fending it off for another day is not going to get the job done. It never does...

then I see how this forum has changed. I remember when most here were appalled. Oh, well.

:shrug:

They aren't talking about global domination. They're talking about countries that are taken over by terrorists, because of underlying problems within the countries themselves, due to our policies and theirs. Like Saudi Arabia and oil, as Kerry has already addressed. We either deal with it or get killed by them, pretty simple.

Maybe.

:shrug:

Fuck 'em and their AIDS and malaria and their disease infected water and their mud huts and their lack of food and doctors. Fuck 'em all, what do we care. :eyes:

Kerry will no doubt do empire building more gently and kindly than Bush.

I don't think what we are doing is for humanitarian purposes. Do you?

A foreign policy that addresses humanitarian issues and lifts people out of poverty before terrorists have a chance to hijack their countries.

And targeting the actual terrorists themselves through a variety of means.

You just cannot have one without the other.

And you know, some of those policy advisers mentioned in the article were Howard Dean's policy advisers. In case you missed it.

What you just said was not the total gist of the article. Not by a long shot.

But Ivo backed away from Dean when the retribution started toward his supporters. Many of the congressional folks stayed, but Ivo backed away.

I listen to the actual man and his words. I look at his history and record. So I know what they're talking about when they talk about nation building and hijacked nations and the like.

And I also don't have ulterior political agendas which make me inclined to pick out anything I can to bash Kerry with.

I firmly believe we don't have a right to invade other countries for whatever reason.

You will never agree with what I say, even if you do agree. That is very sad.

You? Bash Kerry? Oh never. :eyes:

And where did anybody in that article say we had the right to invade other countries?

I think what Kerry is talking about is a return to the US working in partnership....I was reading this in light of that speech of his on the Newshour tonight, and I see the approach as alot different than the pseudoisolationist unilateralist approach of PNAC.

I gather that is what it means. I guess I keep thinking who gave us that right to make over a region.

In theory The US does stand for some things (such as civil liberties, democracy, etc) and we should encourage these values in foreign policy.


In terms of the Middle East, we could take the current approach and back-off the I/P conflict, with tacit uncritical support of Israel.

Or we could make an attempt to facilitate a solution in terms of certain principles...such as self determination, an end to retaliatiory violence, etc....this is not really as simple as it sounds, but the alternative would be a downward spiral that we are seeing in Israel , Gaza, and the West Bank.

We of course should support Israel in the sense this is a functioning parliamentary democracy but we should be clear there are apparent Israeli policy objects, or results, we don't support.

Democrats understand the true dangers facing this country and the world, Republicans clearly don't. Still.

"A key assumption shared by almost all Democratic foreign-policy hands is that by themselves the violent overthrow of a government and the initiation of radical change from above almost never foster democracy, an expanded civil society, or greater openness. "If you have too much change too quickly," Winer says, "you have violence and repression. We don't want to see violence and repression in . We want to see a greater zone for civilization—a greater zone for personal and private-sector activity and for governmental activity that is not an enactment of violence."

"Biden told Rice he believed that the United States was on the verge of squandering its military victory by allowing the country to slip back into the corruption, tyranny, and chaos that had originally paved the way for Taliban rule. Rice was uncomprehending. "What do you mean?" he remembers her asking. Biden pointed to the re-emergence in western Afghanistan of Ismail Khan, the pre-Taliban warlord in Herat who quickly reclaimed power after the American victory. He told me: "She said, 'Look, al-Qaeda's not there. The Taliban's not there. There's security there.' I said, 'You mean turning it over to the warlords?' She said, 'Yeah, it's always been that way.'"

"Biden was seeking to illustrate the blind spot that Democratic foreign-policy types see in Bush officials like Rice, who believe that if a rogue state has been rid of its hostile government (in this case the Taliban), its threat has therefore been neutralized. Democrats see Afghanistan as an affirmation of their own view of modern terrorism. As Fareed Zakaria noted recently in Newsweek, the Taliban regime was not so much a state sponsoring and directing a terrorist organization (the Republican view) as a terrorist organization sponsoring, guiding, and even hijacking a state (the Democratic view)."

The more I hear from him the more I like him....

One thing I have to say, is that given this war, this is going to be one of the rare "foreign policy elections", so Im really interested in what Kerry is thinking and how he can articulate it.

I don't expect him to take a leftish semi-pacifist position on FP, becuase thats really not how you win elections, nor do I completely agree with that policy, but I am expecting him to articulate something better than that bull in the china shop "hoo-rah" approach that we are seeing from the Bush crowd.

maybe deputy sec of state.

also. But, both are torn between do we "remake the ME since we are there? Or, do we bow out gracefully, and if so, how do we make it so we don't leave Iraq in ruins.

For those of us who wouldn't have gone there in the first place, we are perhaps more "hard line" about "cleaning out the PNAC/Empire builders" and seeing them behind bars, than either Zakaria or Daalder, but OUR VOICES don't seem to have a "dog in this hunt." :-( And, that's just plain wrong...

this does NOT make me very happy.

:puke:'d. I will re-read it when I'm not so angry.

Hello!!! Hello....Out there....I had to choke down alot to warm up to Kerry, even though in my gut, I knew he would be the nominee, but this article is pushing it...really hard. I think about saying to Kerry:

Do you even SEE US? Do we have to take to the streets and get killed before you HEAR US?

This is Kerry's PLAN? WOWEEE! Didn't I hear the Dems had a PLAN since the "Selection?" AND WHAT THE HELL HAS THEIR PLAN DONE?

NOW KERRY has the PLAN to be a "KINDER, GENTLER CONSERVATIVE on our "Foreign Policy?" Sorry...two :puke:'s here. I'm too angry to think straight.

I wonder how our folks will explain this one away....:-( Kerry wasn't saying what I read...I didn't finish the article...I'm a wackadoo Leftie...I have a "grudge" against Kerry because I was a Dean/Kucinich supporter....the Dem Party has moved Right because Bush is so powerful..we couldn't do anything else?

Pick one of the above...although no one will even bother...because explaining this stuff away would take a "Master."

It feels good to see Dean working so hard for the party. Then I realize no matter what they say or do that it won't matter.

We are invisible. They still have the power. We just thought we did. I think that is why we have been so upset this week. Our local news is all about how the Democrats hated Gore's speech, that he is maniacal like Dean......and people are falling for it.

It would be a simple thing for the Democratic leaders to embrace Gore's speech instead of distancing themselves. But....there I go again...wishing things that won't be.

"preeners" like Joe Biden, who gave us Clarence Thomas and started the whole damned "road to hell!"

Why doesn't he just announce Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman as his Secretary of State and Department of Commerce Heads? Maybe he could appoint Lieberman to CIA and DODD to head the FBI... And while he's at it there might defintely be a place for Zell Miller at Justice.

If there any more abominable Dems I'm sure he can find places in his cabinet to stick them. :nuke:

And if Kerry announced his intention to do that we would see some posters applauding him for a brilliant move to defeat Bush and steal the right-wing thunder of Republicans!

It's like the response we saw to the suggestion that Kerry select some reactionary right-wing union busting Republican to be his vice-presidential running mate .... John McCain!

Yes, that would be another Kerry master stroke. Than people would have a real choice. They could vote for one of two Republican candidates for Vice-President. Decisions, decisions .... which Republican should I support for Vice-President?

Where do people get such nonsense from?

http://news.globalfreepress.com/mp3/airAmericaRadio.com/gore/gore_nyu_05-28-04.mp3

peace

I'm sorry if you were thinking that any of our candidates would give you everything you ever wanted.

That's NEVER going to happen.

But my great grandfather was a political prisoner in Russia and my grandmother worked in American sweatshops. She was the first member of her shop to walk out on strike, and the youngest. And she never in her life got everything she wanted, especially she never got to see her family in Europe again, because the Nazis killed them, but her son came back alive from the war and she had four grandchildren at the holidays and her union gave her a pension.....

So maybe you want to look at what we have achieved, and must keep, and stop whining.

The rich will always be with us.

You totally misunderstand my concerns. It is amazing. Just what HAVE we achieved? Medicare and Social Security and all types of social programs are in grave danger from the cost of Iraq and tax cuts.

Iraq is disaster. Soldier are dying. Afghanistan is a disaster, soldiers are dying. Thousands of innocent civilians in both places have died.

What have we accomplished?

others here. It's his Principles.

I knew I wa going to have to take November 2nd off and get lit three sheets to the wind in order to actually vote for this man.

Vote Kerry, he's not quite as evil as Bush and he'll paint prettier pictures of the carnage!

I have been a leftist progressive all my life. My father was a union president, My sister is a union organizer. I have organized and marched and written and spoken against war, the draft, the KKK, polluters, and sundry corporate criminals, and for peace, tolerance, environmental responsibility and justice since I was in high school in the early 1970s.
I remember when soldiers (including my brother-in law) returned from Vietnam sick and disturbed. Many of them, including John Kerry, spoke out against the war.
Kerry has often since been very measured in his positions, but if anyone who writes or reads here REALLY believes that he will act in even a remotely similar way to Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Feith, Gingrich, et al when dealing with global affairs, they are either too caught up in absolutism, or have badly misread both John Kerry, and the value of what is at stake in this election.
I originally was considering Dean and Kucinich in the primaries, and I was attracted to Edwards' populist themes. I am however, wholeheartedly and actively supporting Kerry now. I am not selling out or settling for the lesser of two evils. Senator Kerry is a much smarter, more courageous, humane, and civilized person than his Republican opponent.
Bush's occupancy of the White House is so at odds with the very principles of self- government (in every sense of the phrase) that to allow him to remain would be unmitigatedly insane. The rhetoric coming from the undiciplined and immature (yes I'm old:) ) risks derailing the opportunity to rescue America from the clutches of the not-so-crypto fascists who are running it now.

GET A GRIP ON REALITY- PEOPLE ARE REALLY SUFFERING, BLEEDING AND DYING HERE IN AMERICA AND ALL OVER THE WORLD BECAUSE OF THIS ADMINISTRATION (I won't call them a government). This is not just a mental exercise. Just because you can type something and see it pop up on a page doesn't mean it is worth saying. What NEEDS saying is the words that will DRIVE BUSH OUT of the White House.

I'm sorry if you are upset because your candidate or one left enough to suit you didn't get nominated. But we have no time to be so sectarian and irresponsible in the face of such absolute evil. It is time for critical thinking, not for venting. We have real work to do. Get out there and do it people. You won't be sorry when Bush is gone from the White House, and someone who actually has to listen to progressives who helped elect him is there instead.

Things we can be thankful for:
Joe Lieberman has no charisma.
You can always tell when Condaleezza Rice is Lying, because she is talking.
Al Franken
Thom Hartmann
This website
It rains every time Bush has a major outdoor event in DC.
Greg Palast
The Spanish electorate
The TV hasn't melted your brain . . . yet.
Bill Moyers
President Gore's new spine.
Enron's excellent voice mail recording system
How obvious it is that John Ashcroft is a racist provincial boob.

Things I'd LIKE to be thankful for:
America's fabulous passenger rail system
Mexico's dramatically increased minimum wage and environmental standards.
Italy's electorate
Our amazing turnaround in academic achievement
The recent repeal of Taft-Hartley
The removal of the c. $88,000/year limit on FICA (payroll tax) taxable income.
The end of sales taxes on basic necessities.
The elimination of faith-based voting machines.
Public financing of all elections to federal offices
universal medical and dental coverage
The establishment of non-partisan reapportionment procedures nationwide
(especially in Ohio where I live, and where Republicans hold 67% of state offices even though they only get about 50 % of the votes.)

The guy who said the rich will always be with us is right, but the rich will always be against us too, because their pursuit of money is based on fear of shortages and derivatives thereof. The irony is that they spend most of their time contriving to create and simulate shortages.

"Why not now?" -Alan Watts

a Clarkie of course I would have added him to your list of "things we can be thankful for."

And welcome to the DU!

If Kerry continues to piuss me off enough, I won't vote for him.

the only reason he has my vote now is because he's the Not-Bush. He's a kindler and gentler version of Bush who will continue the PNAC agenda.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

How dare he!

I certainly understand why you need to get "lit three sheets to the wind" in order to support someone who has a foreign policy reminiscent of Carter.

Why, it seems that Kerry might do things like prevent genocide like in Rwanda or Kosovo, or do something about failed states like Afghanistan! Horror of horrors, using the power of the United States for good rather than sticking our fingers in our ears and ignoring the trouble of other nations.

:eyes:

All I see is the continuation of the PNAC agenda.

Is that really too much to ask for? (sigh)

:party:

Isn't it?

Big mistake here. Kinder, gentler Republican foreign policy ...

Can't wait (sarcasm).

Kinder, gentler war.
Kinder, gentler corporate restrictions.
Kinder, gentler judges.
Kinder, gentler wealth disparity.
Kinder, gentler Rand Beers.
Kinder, gentler Richard Morningstar.
Kinder, gentler Holbrooke.
Kinder, gentler Perry.
Kinder, gentler tax cuts.

A kinder, gentler Homeland.

that Bush promised. However, recycling Poppy's boys does lead to suspicions of the "unending Project for the New American Century" in kinder and gentler terms. "A Benevolent Empire," where as I said on a post in this thread "Darth Vader dresses in white and uses a stun gun, instead of assault weapons." :crazy:

A kinder, gentler Albright.
A kinder, gentler Richardson.
A kinder, gentler Gephardt.
A kinder, gentler Vilsack.

A kinder, gentler Homeland.

"Democratic foreign-policy hands tend to be less ideologically driven than Republican ones. Their strengths lean toward technocratic expertise and procedural competence rather than theories and grand visions. This lack of partisan edge is best illustrated by the fact that two of Kerry's top advisers served on Bush's National Security Council staff as recently as last year (Beers as senior director for counterterrorism, and Flynt Leverett as senior director for Middle East initiatives). The team that advised candidate Bush in 1999 and 2000—the so-called "Vulcans"—was practically the mirror opposite of the Kerry team."

Folks, I am simply not worried about Kerry's foreign policy tendencies. As much as some Chicken Littles wish to squawk about Kerry being some kind of PNAC-lite, everything I read and hear sounds far more reasonable and far less destructive than what the current Administration has done.

Didn't Beers leave the Bush administration precisely because he WASN'T a Vulcan?

Please, stop panicking folks.

Even for the most altruistic reasons. America is not and should not even entertain the notion of being an empire. It is a republic. Empires simply do not last. And ENFORCING US global domination via militaristic or economic means is what got us in this situation in the first place....at war with individual people so consumed with hatred, that they would strap bombs onto their own bodies and blow themselves up.

GET IT????? It is the inequalities in the world, the hypocricy of the US foreign policy - whereas foreign nations are encouraged to foster independance and democracy just as long as the US corporates are entitled to full access to their markets or exploitable resources....once that exploitation gets shut down (and we have seen this time and time and time again) in goes the military with standard excuses.

The US must get off the notion of interferance with other nations affairs. Blowback is coming....and if there is no leader in the US with the balls to lead the nation back to a sane course, then the tragedy of 911 will be just the appetizer to the main course.

Am I missing something? Where do you read that Kerry is going to force-feed American hegemony by military conquest over the the entire world? Are you projecting your fears?

Read this quote. Are you coming to a different conclusion than I am?!?!

"The Kerry team's plan for handling the looming crises in North Korea and Iran is similarly distinct from the Bush Administration's, principally in its willingness to seek a negotiated settlement in each case. Whether such settlements can be achieved is debatable. But the approach is a marked departure from that of the Bush Administration, which has been unwilling to negotiate with the North Koreans but equally unwilling to risk using force—the only serious alternative to some sort of agreement."

Yeah. Sounds to me like Kerry is nothing more than a war-mongering belligerent chickenhawk. :eyes:

Please, please, please stop this madness. You're unnecessarily weakening a good candidate for no good reason.

And as far as economic hegemony is concerned, I've got bad news for you; we're already there, and we have been for decades.

Regardless of anything candidate Kerry does or says, we are the premier economic power in the world. We can either use that power responsibly (push for human rights, workers' rights, assist third world development), or we can abuse it (massive deregulation of multinational corporations, rape of natural resources, suppression of paradigm-challenging innovation).

I entrust Kerry to use the powers of the Presidency with care. Would you be happier if a President Kerry didn't have these powers at all, so that we'd be completely unable to make other people hate us?

-MR

Bush the elder and Clinton are the only clear examples of basically untarnished Presidential foreign policy success since, well, JFK? Eisenhower??? (Skipping Ford)