csua.org/u/8e5 -> www.insightmag.com/news/2004/05/16/Politics/Kerrys.Disloyal.Nicaraguan.Journey-681125.shtml
By J Michael Waller A trademark of the Kerry school of statecraft: making common cause with enemies of the United States - and allowing himself to be used by them - in order to win political battles at home. A trademark of the Kerry school of statecraft: making common cause with enemies of the United States - and allowing himself to be used by them - in order to win political battles at home. In his first major foreign-policy action as a US senator nearly 20 years ago, John Kerry accused the United States of "funding terrorism." Barely three months after being sworn as a senator, Kerry made his mark, and he made it big, as one of the leading opponents of President Ronald Reagan's effort to defeat Soviet-sponsored revolutionaries in the American hemisphere. The junior senator stopped at nothing: working with the nation's sworn ideological enemies, making damaging, distorted and often baseless allegations about US covert operations, accusing his own government of sponsoring terrorism, and even damaging an FBI operation against a Colombian cocaine cartel. That April 1985 journey to Nicaragua would become a trademark of the Kerry school of statecraft: making common cause with enemies of the United States - and allowing himself to be used by them - in order to win political battles at home. The enemy of the 1980s was not Osama bin Laden and his allies, but the Soviet Union and its proxy regimes and guerrilla forces around the world. SR at the time was also the world's primary sponsor of international terrorism. It was not without concern, then, that Reagan, with the help of a bipartisan majority in Congress, financed an anticommunist guerrilla army in Nicaragua, made up mainly of peasants disenfranchised by the Soviet-backed Marxist-Leninist junta that had taken power shortly before Reagan was elected to office. That junta had by now sponsored communist guerrilla and terrorist groups from neighboring countries and presented a threat to the entire region. But Kerry, ever the defender of the communist left, didn't buy it. To prevent the junta, known as the Sandinista National Liberation Front, from consolidating power, Reagan strongly backed the resistance fighters, whom the Sandinistas dubbed "contras," to pressure the regime either to hold free and fair elections or be overthrown. US involvement in resisting the Soviet-backed revolutionary movements in Central America was a politically emotional issue at the time, and the highly charged atmosphere forced Reagan to tread carefully on Capitol Hill. Seeking the release of a $14 million appropriation from the previous year for the Nicaraguan resistance, and faced with public opposition, Reagan offered to limit US aid to the "contras" to humanitarian assistance only, provided the Sandinistas agreed to national reconciliation and free elections that would have broken their total grip on power. The president told Congress that if the Sandinistas failed to comply by the deadline, he would use part of the $14 million to arm and militarily equip the growing insurgent army. Reagan's compromise with Congress wasn't good enough for Kerry, the only freshman senator on the then-prestigious Foreign Relations Committee. For the new lawmaker, Central America was a cause - and he was on the other side. The new senator already had placed himself among the intractable opposition to Reagan's national-security strategy. "How can you teach liberty and justice and support death squads?" he demanded, falsely accusing the administration of backing the most thuggish and undemocratic elements in Central America. Vietnam in Nicaragua: Once in office in 1985, Kerry acted on his words. He held a news conference accusing the US government of financing terrorism. "Foreign policy should represent the democratic values that have made our country great, not subvert those values by funding terrorism to overthrow the governments of other countries," Kerry said in a statement. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) would go to Managua, the Nicaraguan capital. The pair of Vietnam-era radicals held two days of secret talks with Sandinista junta leader Daniel Ortega, timing the visit just before a scheduled vote on release of the $14 million to the freedom fighters. They arrived in the Nicaraguan capital late on April 18 for two days of scheduled talks with Marxist officials.
with enough information to sway congressional votes on the issue of aid to antigovernment rebels." In an interview with the Globe, Harkin said that as Vietnam veterans he and Kerry "bring perspective to the situation here in Central America that perhaps others not involved in the Vietnam War might not have." According to the New York Times, Harkin and Kerry said "that they were seeking commitments that could help defeat President Reagan's request." The Globe reported from Managua, "After marathon meetings with the senators that spilled into the early-morning hours, Ortega reasserted Nicaragua's commitment to Central America as a zone free of nuclear weapons and foreign military bases, including those of the Soviet Union and Cuba." Kerry foreign-policy aide Richard McCall and Sandinista officials hammered out a working paper that Kerry said he would present to President Reagan. Ortega reportedly was at their side for the last three hours of the meeting. The final three-page product, which Kerry called a "peace proposal," included Sandinista promises of a cease-fire, as long as the United States cut off all assistance, including humanitarian aid, to the anticommunist forces and their families. Back in Washington, Harkin claimed that the Sandinistas "desire peace and not only normal but friendly relations with the United States. "This is a wonderful opening" for peace, Kerry added of the Ortega plan, "without having to militarize the region." It was nothing more than a "restatement of old positions," a State Department official said at the time. "There is no mention of any dialogue with the unified democratic opposition, which we consider essential to internal reconciliation. Without such a dialogue, a cease-fire proposal is meaningless, essentially a call for the opposition to surrender." A White House spokesman dismissed the Kerry-Harkin-Ortega plan as nothing more than "propaganda." Even the Sandinistas' own Washington lawyer, Paul S Reichler, said the plan offered nothing new. "There is no offer of any kind from the government of Nicaragua today that is any different from what they've been saying all along," Reichler told the New York Times. The newspaper also noted that in the plan the Sandinistas made no commitment to national reconciliation. Nevertheless, on the floor of the Senate in an emotional April 23 speech, Kerry presented the document as something new. "I share with this body the aide-mmoire which was presented to us by President Ortega," he told his colleagues - without mentioning his own role and that of his aide McCall in its drafting. "Here," he pronounced to the Senate, "is a guarantee of the security interest of the United States." Kerry continued: "My generation, a lot of us grew up with the phrase 'give peace a chance' as part of a song that captured a lot of people's imagination. I hope that the president of the United States will give peace a chance." and now they're trying to force the president of the United States to negotiate with the president of Nicaragua.
code when they undertake to negotiate" and are "usurping a section of the Constitution" giving only the president the right to negotiate with foreign leaders, Goldwater said. "To transgress against the Constitution is wrong, wrong, wrong." Kerry shot back that he was "a veteran of Vietnam who fought and was wounded in that conflict." Rebuked by the Secretary of State: But collaboration with the Sandinistas wasn't what Shultz had in mind. Speaking before several thousand State Department employees two days after the above exchange on the Senate floor, Shultz took an indirect swipe at Kerry and Harkin. He zeroed in on policy critics who previously had pooh-poohed what would happen to Southeast Asia as they demanded and achieved an end to US support for those embattled peoples.
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