There are many reasons to not respect John Kerry. Whether it is because of his slander of fellow Vietnam veterans or his symbolic photo op of throwing his medals at the gate of the White House or his despicable treatment of other candidates as he ran for President in 2004 (you may remember his stunt of publicly outing Mary Cheney during a debate to slap at her father), John Kerry has consistently proven himself to be a man with a single focus on his own advancement and little else.
Maybe the treatment of veterans doesn't matter anymore, if the war is old news. This election cycle saw the first election with neither the Republican nor the Democratic candidate being a veteran of military service.
The 2012 election was the first since 1932 in which none of the candidates was a war veteran. In 1932, New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt had been an Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson, but he did not serve in the military. His cousin (and predecessor as president), Theodore Roosevelt, was famous for his charge up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War of 1898.The Winter Soldier hearings should be enough to disqualify Kerry but not for the current leadership in Washington. The old and fading ruling class of 1960's liberals have a few tricks remaining up their sleeves and are running out of time.
Senator Kerry has a nasty habit of siding with the bad guys.
Even if you don't think Kerry's use of the Vietnam war for his personal career enhancement is enough to criticize this nomination, his lousy record on foreign policy decisions should cause concern. In today's stories the continuing war in Syria is on the forefront. Who has been Assad's biggest cheerleader in recent years? Yes. John Kerry. Why, he and the Mrs. have enjoyed lovely dinners with Assad and his wife in Syria and Kerry vouches for Assad's character. Even Obama has had to reign in Kerry.
And in 2011, when Kerry again wanted to go to Syria, his visit was blocked--by the Obama administration. “The Obama administration and France reportedly nixed a visit by U.S. Sen. John Kerry to Syria. Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has cultivated a relationship with the Syrian regime otherwise treated as a pariah in the West in the hope of drawing it away from Iranian influence. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Kerry had planned a visit last month, but the governments of the United States and of French President Nicolas Sarkozy blocked the visit out of concern that it would signal ‘Western weakness’ as pro-Iranian and pro-Western forces jockeyed for influence in Syria's neighbor, Lebanon,” reported the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in March 2011.
Kerry praised Assad later in 2011 as being a "very generous" man. "Well, I personally believe that -- I mean, this is my belief, okay? But President Assad has been very generous with me in terms of the discussions we have had. And when I last went to -- the last several trips to Syria -- I asked President Assad to do certain things to build the relationship with the United States and sort of show the good faith that would help us to move the process forward," said Kerry at a think tank.
Not enough, you say? How about South America? Much closer geographically to home and of growing concern, our relationships with South American countries are dicey, at best.
A left-wing world view and an earnest conviction that it is his destiny to impose it on others may make him a perfect fit in the Obama cabinet. But it won't be good for poor countries or for U.S. interests.
Latin America knows all too well the dangerous combination of Mr. Kerry's arrogance and, to be polite, let's say, naiveté. In 1985, in the midst of the Cold War, he led a congressional delegation to Nicaragua, where he met with Sandinista comandanteDaniel Ortega. The Sandinista reputation as a human-rights violator was already well-established, and the Soviets were stalking Central America. Nevertheless, Mr. Kerry came back from Managua advocating an end to U.S. support for the resistance known as the "Contras." The House took his advice and voted down a $14 million aid package to them. The next day Mr. Ortega flew to Moscow to get $200 million in support from the Kremlin.
And, more recently, in 2009 in Honduras, complete with some history revision, to boot:
In June 2009, Mr. Kerry again went to bat for the dark side, this time in Honduras. President Manuel Zelaya, an ally of Hugo Chávez, had been unconstitutionally trying to extend his time in office. The Honduran Supreme Court ordered the military to arrest him. All the other branches of government, the Catholic Church, Honduras's human-rights ombudsman and Mr. Zelaya's own party backed the court's decision.
Mr. Chávez, Fidel Castro and the Obama administration became furious, called it a "coup d'état" and moved to isolate the tiny country. When Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) planned a fact-finding trip to Tegucigalpa, Mr. Kerry's office tried to stop him by blocking funding. When the Law Library of Congress concluded that the Honduran high court had acted legally, Mr. Kerry wrote to the head of the library demanding that the opinion be retracted and "corrected." In the spring of 2010, a Kerry staffer traveled to Honduras to pressure officials there to adopt the Obama administration's "coup" narrative.Kerry is a man blinded by ego and ambition. This nomination is the final spitting on Vietnam veterans, as well as placing a dangerously naive man onto the world stage on behalf of our foreign policy. I have no doubt that his fellow senators will vote him into place and that is the biggest tragedy. The club will prevail.
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