Can John Kerry get the U.S. out of Afghanistan?
Published: July 15, 2011
WASHINGTON — The growing murmur in Washington about just how much influence Sen. John Kerry, Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, could have in the Afghanistan War drawdown just grew a little louder.
A new profile coming in this weekend’s New York Times Sunday Magazine reveals Kerry is more personally involved in the Afghanistan War, and more frequently called upon to help by war commanders and Obama Cabinet officials, than previously was known.
James Traub, the first journalist Kerry has permitted to travel with him into Afghanistan and Pakistan, writes that officials from Gen. David Petraeus to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon frequently have sought Kerry’s counsel or asked him to intervene with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Kerry, meanwhile, has befriended Afghanistan’s warlords-turned-governors and built a reputation as one of the most influential and patient men in the country, even outlasting the interviewer.
“Kerry knew Karzai’s failings as well as anyone, but he was not prepared to abandon Afghanistan’s president, because he was not prepared to abandon Afghanistan. But why not?” Traub writes.
Kerry, Traub says, is positioning himself in the middle of everyone purposefully. The former Democratic presidential candidate quietly has become one of the war’s most important mediators, far from the media spotlight.
And it’s worked. By now, everyone seems to trusts him in a way that few other senators are talked about, at least in war circles.
"It’s still not all that easy to say where Kerry stands on Afghanistan. At times in our conversation he seemed to agree with Biden, and at times with Gen. David Petraeus, the architect of the counterinsurgency policy," said Traub.
The big elephant in the room is that *everyone* knows that Kerry wanted to be President Barack Obama’s secretary of state. He endorsed Obama over Clinton in the 2008 primary. But Obama passed him over for Clinton. Does he still want that job?
Clinton already has announced she does not want to stay on past the first Obama administration. If there is a second term, nobody else but Kerry seems lined up to replace her, not publicly, at this point. Though privately, and Traub addresses this, some skeptics have questioned if Kerry’s old Middle East ties have helped or hurt Obama during the Arab Spring.
Since Obama’s 2008 campaign, however, Kerry has found something else. His “solitary rambles abroad” have allowed him to build a new reputation that has resulted in, well, a New York Times Magazine profile on his work on Af-Pak.
If you’re looking for answers to how the Afghanistan War ends, of course, pay attention to new Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and watch for what veteran Middle East ambassador Ryan Crocker’s suitcase full of credibility brings to the table.
But don’t forget to watch the gavel in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
As Kerry told Traub: “Countries and people and leaders of countries act out of self-interest,” he said. “Foreign policy is the art of finding those interests and seeing what serves your nation, and trying to marry them.”
Sounds diplomatic, doesn’t it?
