Posted on 04/17/2004 10:11:06 AM PDT by nwrep
In this fawning review of "The New War" by John Kerry, Mark Feldstein has unwittingly documented Kerry's obsession with global crime syndicates as the next big enemy of the US. Kerry does not mention terrorism at all, as evidenced by this review.
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By Sen. John Kerry Simon & Schuster, $23
FOR YEARS, JOHN KERRY HAS been known as the "other" senator, overshadowed by his more famous Massachusetts colleague Edward Kennedy, or confused with Nebraska's senatorial war hero Bob Kerrey. Even now, as he prepares for a possible presidential bid, John Kerry is perhaps less known for his genuine accomplishments than for his recent marriage to millionaire heiress Theresa Heinz, widow of the ketchup magnate.
Now, Kerry has written a book connecting the dots of these and other seemingly unrelated international scandals, in a call-to-arms titled The New War. His thesis is simple: In the aftermath of the cold war, the new enemy has become global crime--from Colombia's Cali cartel to the Russian mafia, from Chinese triads to Japanese yakuza, from respectable banks that launder dirty money to the politicians on the take world-wide that make it all possible. For just as technology and the economy have gone global, so, too, has crime.
But it would be as wrong to dismiss Kerry now as it was to challenge his warnings about Manuel Noriega before 1989. Kerry is onto something important and serious in his frightening tale about the growing sophistication and ruthlessness of international criminal cartels, which threaten our national security in ways previously never dreamed of. "Today's transnational criminal cartels use high-speed modems and encrypted faxes," Kerry points out:
They buy jet airplanes three or four at a time and even have stealth-like submersibles in their armadas. They hire the finest minds to devise encryption systems and provide the complex accounting procedures any multi-billion dollar empire requires. They engage the ablest lawyers...the craftiest spin doctors...the most persistent--and generous--lobbyists.
Not only is much of the violence on America's streets a direct outgrowth of global gangsters, Kerry writes, crack-cocaine was itself created and disseminated as a deliberate marketing decision by the Colombian cartel seeking to penetrate a new, less affluent American market. Kerry is careful not to minimize U.S. culpability for creating the demand for drugs in the first place; but "crime today is not simply random or local; more often it is purposeful and global."
The metaphor of war permeates Kerry's writing. "Having exhausted our rhetoric on everything from wars on poverty to wars on drugs, we may not think it's an all-out war, but they do," he writes "They know exactly what it is: War of a new kind, the whole globe its theater of operations." Kerry's prescription: "America must lead an international crusade...just as we led the world in the fight against" communism and "rogue" states like Iraq.
Kerry offers a number of solutions: beefing up U.S. law enforcement abroad, expanding laws for extradition and asset forfeiture, cracking down on money laundering centers like the Cayman Islands, establishing transnational courts to try global gangsters, and creating sorely needed minimum standards in international law.
At the heart of all this is the fundamental fact that we must redefine what threatens our "national security." It is no longer communism or a single antagonistic superpower like the Soviet Union, but numerous threats of lesser but equally lethal enemies: terrorists with access to conventional and nuclear weapons, ozone depletion or other environmental destruction that endangers the entire planet, food and water shortages that create refugees and destabilize governments, and, of course, the criminal cartels on which Kerry focuses.
Kerry is a better senator than author; his prose can be overly earnest and wooden, filled with accurate but sometimes grating self-promotion for his leadership on these issues. And for all of his soaring war rhetoric, he ducks the really hard question of whether the U.S. should use military force to tackle these global gangs.
Still, Kerry deserves credit for thinking big, and once again getting ahead of the curve, particularly since these issues have largely been cornered by conservatives. That's unfortunate, because as Kerry realizes the dangers posed by global gangs should not be a matter of ideology but simply of common sense. Yet the left has largely ignored this issue, focusing instead on the rise of another new international actor, the multinational corporation.
Perhaps what we really need is another trustbuster like Teddy Roosevelt to take on both the criminal and the corporate cartels. John Kerry--war hero, millionaire Yankee liberal, self-promoting iconoclastic thinker--would seem the logical heir of Tit's swashbuckling legacy, the man who would like to lead the charge up the next century's San Juan Hill.
Kerry must be counting on no one picking the book up to read it. I took the time to read it. It has nothing to do with Islamic extremists, and very little to do with the terrorism we know so well.
The book is lame, indeed.
And as this book review indicates, Kerry's "call to arms" calls for everything but using arms.
And does anyone on this board have any proof whatsoever that in 1997, George W. Bush ever said or wrote one single statement that indicates that he ever thought or brought up terrorism as a national priority? If anyone does, please post the proof. This book was from 1997, and unfortunately, Kerry's opinions are colored by his numerous activities during his early years in the Senate investigating these sorts of criminal activities. While he may not have been prescient in terms of the terrorist threat, it does not mean that his current thinking on this threat is still the same as what he published in this book.
BTW, unlike GWB, Kerry has published a number of different books. I challenge anyone to come up with a book that Bush has written on his own.
Kerry has two books published under his name. "The New Soldier", and "The New War". Anyone who thinks that he actually WROTE THEM HIMSELF is slightly naive!
Bush has not found it necessary to hire a ghost writer to produce a publication nominally authored by him. And your point is???
Why am I not surprised?
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