Boston Herald: John Kerry’s in position to do world of good
By Wayne Woodlief
Sen. John F. Kerry has emerged as one of the Big Four in U.S. foreign policy, a worthy partner with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – all of whom Kerry, now chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, worked with closely in the Senate.
Yet although Kerry is already coordinating with the administration – including on his trip to the Middle East last week and a meeting with Syrian strongman Bashar Assad – he said in an interview Tuesday that he won’t sacrifice his legislative independence.
That’s a smart stance. Obama doesn’t need yes-men or yes-women, especially on thorny foreign affairs.
“We are working toward a partnership now. But I would never be hesitant to state my point of view,” he said. “I think the president welcomes that kind of give and take.”
The senator also said, “There will be times when I’m doing my own things,” pursuing issues close to his heart, such as climate change. He already has held a committee hearing, starring Al Gore, on the international steps needed to avert global warming. Should anyone go lax on the stringent carbon emission standards the senator seeks, he said, “I will push back.”
But it’s all cooperation now. Kerry talked with Clinton before he began his Mideast trip, making sure they were on the same page before his delicate meeting with Assad. He planned to call Obama today (“I didn’t want to bother him while he was working on his State of the Union”) and will brief the administration on “possibilities of real cooperation” with Syria – often an obstacle – in pushing for Middle East peace.
“This trip convinced me of the utter urgency of moving toward peace” and ending the violence both in Israel and in Hamas-dominated Gaza, Kerry said. He visited the ruins of the American International School in Gaza, where several Palestinian children were killed in an Israeli air attack after, Israel said, Hamas had been firing from the school at Israeli troops. And he witnessed the remains of Palestinian rockets fired regularly into the Israeli city of Sderot.
“It was just devastating,” he said of the destruction at the school. In Sderot, “I met children who have spent their lives with 15 seconds to take cover when the alerts are sounded for a Hamas rocket attack. Any country having rockets come in for years has a right to defend itself.”
Kerry said he spoke candidly with Assad about U.S. concerns: Syria’s backing of Hamas, some foreign fighters using Syria as a base for terrorism, Syria’s clandestine nuclear activities and other issues. But he came away hopeful of a new direction for U.S.-Syrian relations.
A conference on Gaza among Middle East Arab nations next Tuesday in Egypt and a follow-up meeting of the Arab League may reveal “certain things which wlll enable us to have different communications” with Syria, Kerry said, a positive if not specific clue of his meeting with Assad, who, with influence over Iran, could become a peace broker.
So Kerry now is indisputably part of the Big Four. And among them, he’s closest to Biden, who advised his 2004 presidential campaign.
Biden, whose ascendancy to the vice presidency enabled Kerry to succeed him, told TV host Charlie Rose that Kerry is “a straight shooter,” high praise from one of the straightest shooters there is. Look for straight talk give-and-take between them. The nation will be better for it, and probably so will the world.
