Tag Archives: John Kerry

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Iraq crisis produces huge scramble

It’s becoming harder to keep up with all the competing interests in the burgeoning crisis in Iraq.

Consider the complexity of it:

* The Sunnis want to take the government back from the Shiites. Saddam Hussein was a Sunni Muslim. The current Iraqi prime minister is a Shiite.

* The insurgents fighting the government, led by ISIS, are deemed to be more violent than al-Qaeda, which has disavowed any association with ISIS.

* Iran is an Islamic republic governed next door to Iraq by Shiites also, but the Iranians detest the United States, which is involved up to its eyeballs in trying to broker a political solution.

* U.S. officials now are considering asking Iran for help in negotiating a deal.

* ISIS also is involved in the Syrian civil war, with rebels seeking to overthrow the dictatorship run by Bashar al-Assad.

* President Obama has ruled out “ground troops” returning to Iraq, but is sending in about 300 “advisers” to assist the Iraqi military in its fight against ISIS.

* The Kurds in northern Iraq also want a say in a “unity government,” which could include Sunnis and Shiites.

I need to keep sitting down. My head is spinning.

How in the world does a regular human being navigate his or her way through this mess?

http://time.com/2916436/kerry-back-in-iraq-meets-kurdish-leader/

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'Incomprehensible' to leave soldier behind

Secretary of State John Kerry couldn’t be more correct in validating the decision to bring Bowe Bergdahl home from his Taliban captivity.

“What I know today is what the president of the United States knows, that it would have been offensive and incomprehensible to consciously leave an American behind, no matter what, to leave an American behind in the hands of people who would torture him, cut of his head, do any number of things,” he said in an interview with CNN. “And we would consciously choose to do that? That’s the other side of this equation. I don’t think anybody would think that’s an appropriate thing to do.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/208598-kerry-released-gitmo-detainees-could-return-to-fight

The debate over Sgt. Bergdahl’s release is raging. I, too, have questions about it. I want to know if he deserted his post. I want to understand the circumstances surrounding his captivity.

We’ll get those answers in due course.

However, the notion that Americans might consciously leave someone behind as we wind down our war effort in Afghanistan chills me to the bone. Yet some of Bergdahl’s harshest critics have pronounced him guilty of treason — without due process — and said that a traitor should be left to rot.

It’s clear the Obama administration mishandled many aspects of this matter. It’s been a public relations nightmare.

The bottom line, though, is that an American soldier is safe.

If he did something wrong, then let the military adjudicate it.

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Let the man practice law

Byron York, a conservative columnist and commentator for Fox News, thinks it’s somehow the public’s business that John Edwards has returned to his first passion: personal-injury law.

Big deal.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/john-edwards-chasing-ambulances-again/article/2548894

Edwards once was a U.S. senator from North Carolina. He ran for vice president on a Democratic ticket led by John Kerry. They lost in 2004 by a narrow margin; a swing of some 70,000 votes in Ohio (out of more than 5 million cast in that state) would have elected the Kerry-Edwards ticket over the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney ticket.

Then came another run for the presidency four years later, the adultery scandal, the birth of Edwards’s daughter to a woman other than his wife, his separation from Elizabeth, who then died of cancer.

Edwards’s political career is finished. That, I submit, is a very good thing.

I personally don’t care what he does with his private life or his private law practice.

In fact, I would prefer he’d disappear from public view.

If only his notable right-wing critics would just allow it.

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Speak carefully … always

Secretary of State John Kerry is the latest victim of the urge to record everything everyone says every time they say it.

That does not for a moment excuse what he said the other day in what was supposed to be a closed-door meeting, which is that Israel may be turning into an “apartheid state” if it doesn’t hammer out a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/04/john-kerrys-private-remarks-taped-by-reporter-187578.html?hp=l8

The term “apartheid” is poison in polite international policy company. South Africa implemented that disgraceful policy for many decades in which it denied the black majority living there the rights of citizenship. Whites and blacks couldn’t interact with each other. The policy ended with the release from prison in the early 1990s of the late Nelson Mandela. The rest is history.

Kerry’s use of the term at the very least was careless. It well may have damaged U.S.-Israel relations beyond repair.

Why wasn’t he smarter than to make his point another way? Didn’t he learn from recent history, such as the time Mitt Romney was caught on an audio recording at a fundraising dinner making his infamous “47 percent” remarks about how nearly half of Americans are going to vote Democratic because they depend on government subsidies and handouts? Didn’t he learn from the video recording of Congressman Vance McAllister making out with his staffer? There are countless other instances of people in high places being caught saying and doing things they regret because someone had a recording device hidden somewhere.

A Daily Beast reporter recorded Kerry’s statements the other day, getting past detection and apparently not heeding ground rules stipulating the meeting wasn’t open to the public.

In this world of instant communication where everyone has a set of electronic eyes and ears, the only response simply is: Too bad.

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Make peace or deal with Hamas?

Put yourself in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s shoes.

You govern a country of some 8,000 square miles surrounded by nations that at one time or another vowed to exterminate you and your constituents. Yes, you’ve made peace with a couple of those nations — Jordan and Egypt. The rest of the region remains iffy.

You’re in the middle of peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and then you learn that the leader of that government has brokered a deal with one of the world’s most ferocious terrorist organizations, Hamas. That organization has orchestrated terrorist attacks on your country from the Gaza Strip, which the Palestinian Authority governs.

The PA now wants to form a “unity government” that includes Hamas.

Do they want peace with Israel or not? Netanyahu has called off peace talks because the PA has formed that arrangement with Hamas, which still vows to exterminate Israel.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-calls-peace-talks-after-palestinian-deal-n88726

Can you really blame the Israeli prime minister? I cannot.

Netanyahu is furious with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for agreeing to the Hamas deal.

Having seen some of the damage that Hamas has inflicted on southern Israel myself, I understand fully why Netanyahu has called off the peace talks. I was part of a group that toured Israel in the spring of 2009 and we saw damage done by rocket fire in Sderot and Ashkelon, near the border with Gaza, which had erupted in violence prior to our arrival in Israel.

It’s a blow to Secretary of State John Kerry, who persuaded the sides to talk to each other after they didn’t speak for five years. Kerry still believes a path to peace is still open, but it’s now been littered by the presence of Hamas in this arrangement with one of the principals in the talks.

“He can’t have it both ways,” Netanyahu said of Abbas. “He has to choose: Peace with Israel or a pact with Hamas.”

Netanyahu is right to be angry.

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Deal struck in Ukraine?

Winston Churchill once said it was better to “jaw, jaw than to war, war.”

The great British statesman was right then, and he would be right now. Ukraine and Russian diplomats today announced a potential breakthrough in the standoff between the countries that well could have led to open warfare in eastern Europe.

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/203788-kerry-says-deal-reached-on-ukraine-violence

The Hill reports, “Secretary of State John Kerry said the framework hashed out by foreign ministers meeting in Geneva would disarm separatist militants in eastern Ukraine and have them vacate the government buildings, streets and squares they have occupied. In return, the Ukrainian government has offered amnesty to all pro-Russian militants who lay down their arms, with the exception of those who committed capital crimes.”

The agreement comes after diplomats from the European Union, NATO, the United States, Russia and Ukraine haggled over a way out of the standoff that seemed to bring Russia and Ukraine to the brink of war.

Will it be implemented? Will the deal hold? Will both sides back off? Will there be an end to what’s been called the worst crisis since the end of the Cold War?

This is a potentially huge deal that strikes a blow for the power of diplomacy.

It remains to be determined what impact the economic sanctions may have played in bringing the Russians to the bargaining table.

The United States doesn’t want war. The Russians don’t want it. All that’s left is to talk to each other … and to keep talking until you get a deal done.

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Vlad calls Barack to talk diplomacy

Why do you suppose Vladimir Putin called Barack Obama today to talk about diplomacy?

As in finding a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis, the one instigated when Russia sent troops to Crimea and massed tens of thousands of troops on its border with Ukraine — after Ukraine ousted its pro-Russian president?

http://news.yahoo.com/russias-putin-calls-obama-discuss-u-proposal-ukraine-212358384.html

What do you suppose is going on here?

It might be that those economic sanctions, the ones that President Obama’s critics said were mere pin pricks in the hide of the old Russian bear are beginning to take their toll. It also might be that the European Union’s threat of political isolation and NATO’s insistence that any further military action will not be tolerated by the Western European alliance.

Tough guy Vladimir Putin, the former KGB spook in chief turned Russian president, called the president of the United States today to talk about a diplomatic solution to this crisis. The two leaders agreed to have their countries’ chief foreign emissaries — Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov — meet soon to begin hammering out a solution.

The targeted sanctions have begun taking a serious bite out of some key Russian backsides. President Obama has vowed deeper, more sweeping measures if the Russians escalated their encroachment even more. To date, the sanctions have involved freezing access to cash for some of Russia’s key money men and political insiders.

Obama has made the point repeatedly in recent days that Russia has acted against Ukraine out of weakness, not strength. He’s insulted Putin by referring to Russia as a “regional power” not worthy of consideration by this country as a major geopolitical foe. Russia has been kicked out of the G-8 conference of industrialized nations and has seen the next economic summit pulled from Sochi, Russia and relocated to Brussels, Belgium.

He’s now willing to talk about a diplomatic solution.

Methinks those “toothless sanctions” have grown some fangs.

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Russians might pull their envoy to the U.S.?

So, let me see if I have this correct.

Ukrainian insurgents have driven that country’s president out; he’s holed up in Moscow; Russia is threatening to intervene in another sovereign country’s affairs; Russia is mobilizing its armed forces; President Obama has warned Russia that any outside interference in Ukrainian affairs will have “costs.”

And the Russians are threatening to pull their ambassador to the United States?

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/03/01/russia-moves-to-bring-back-ambassador-from-us-amid-ukraine-crisis/

Shouldn’t the United States pull its ambassador to Moscow?

Secretary of State John Kerry has said U.S.-Russia relations are at stake. It’s not entirely clear what precisely he means by the stakes involved.

There cannot be a severing of diplomatic relations between the nations. This gamesmanship over who pulls their ambassador first, though, cannot continue.

The best solution from the U.S. and European standpoint would be for the Russians to butt out, to let Ukraine decide who will govern the country without outside interference.

If the Russians are intent on honoring international law, then they’ll back off and let their neighbors in Ukraine settle this dispute on their own.

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‘This isn’t Rocky IV’

The last time Secretary of State John Kerry used a “Rocky IV” reference in public was at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.

Then, he was poking fun at Republican presidential nominee’s assertion that Russia was this nation’s most dangerous “geopolitical foe.” Kerry, then a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, declared that Romney’s view of Russia was more like the “Rocky IV” film that became a silly metaphor for the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

It drew huge applause and laughter at the DNC’s final night in September 2012.

It’s not a laugh line in today’s context.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/kerry-russia-must-be-very-careful-judgments-ukraine-n39236

Kerry has warned Russian President Vladimir Putin about rekindling the Cold War by threatening Ukraine, a neighboring country — and former Soviet state — with military exercises.

Ukraine has just ousted its Russia-friendly president amid terrible street violence in cities throughout that country. Putin’s decision to activate the military has forced Kerry to issue some stern warnings on behalf of the United States.

He told NBC News: “I think Russia needs to be very careful in the judgments that it makes going forward here. We are not looking for confrontation. But we are making it clear that every country should respect the territorial integrity here, the sovereignty of Ukraine. Russia has said it would do that and we think it’s important that Russia keeps its word.”

According to NBC.com, Kerry also said that “Russian President Vladimir Putin should ‘listen carefully to Ukrainians who have voiced their desire for change,’ repeating that the United States does not view its relationship with Russia as a ‘sort of continuation of the Cold War.’”

Are we going to war with Russia if the Russians intervene militarily? Of course not. However, memories of the long-simmering rivalry between the nations ought to be as long in Russia as they are in this country.

We won the Cold War. Putin ought to think carefully about how it turned out for his side if he intends to start a new one.

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Kerry cannot possibly be an anti-Semite

An interesting development has emerged in Secretary of State John Kerry’s difficult struggle to find peace in the Middle East.

It turns out that the angry charges leveled at him by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet members — that Kerry’s promoting “anti-Semitic” notions — cannot possibly be true. Kerry’s family name originally was Kohn and that Kerry’s family has Jewish origins.

Grandpa Kerry/Kohn changed his name and his religion, from Jewish to Catholic, which John Kerry learned shortly before announcing his presidential candidacy in 2003.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/kerrys-brother-johns-not-anti-semitic-were-jewish-n30576

In fact, Cameron Kerry — the secretary of state’s brother — is a practicing Jew to this day, having married a Jewish woman.

Israeli foreign ministry officials, of course, are quite sensitive to any comments they construe to be against their interests. John Kerry said recently that “The risks are very high for Israel” after meeting with Iranian officials about plans to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program. Israeli officials took that to mean Israel needed to watch its step if it continued to threaten Iran with military action.

Naftali Bennett, an industry minister, said, “We expect of our friends in the world to stand by our side against the attempts to impose an anti-Semitic boycott on Israel, and not to be their mouthpiece.”

I understand fully the Israelis’ angst over negotiating with a country that has declared its intention to wipe Israel off the face of the planet. Let us take care, though, to avoid throwing around pejorative terms like “anti-Semitic” where it regards someone whose family roots run deep in the Holy Land.