Lieutenant governor in charge of foreign policy

Part 5 of the Boston Globe profile of John Kerry reviews his reentry into politics as a candidate for lieutenant governor in 1982, the dissolution of his first marriage, and his campaign for the senate seat of Paul Tsongas: “Taking one prize, then a bigger one.” (As a senate candidate, Kerry’s campaign slogan had a hilariously immodest literary flavor — “War and Peace.”) This installment usefully details Kerry’s erroneous positions on several of the major foreign policy question of the 1980’s, including the invasion of Grenada.
It concludes on a surprisingly skeptical note, quoting Kerry on Grenada at the time and noting his current revisionism on the subject: “‘The invasion of Grenada represents the Reagan policy of substituting public relations for diplomatic relations . . . no substantial threat to US interests existed and American lives were not endangered . . . The invasion represented a bully’s show of force against a weak Third World nation. The invasion only served to heighten world tensions and further strain brittle US/Soviet and North/South relations.’
“Campaigning now for president, however, Kerry is rewriting that history. As he accuses President George W. Bush of hamhanded diplomacy before the invasion of Iraq, Kerry often lists Grenada among the US military incursions he says he has supported. ‘I was dismissive of the majesty of the invasion of Grenada,’ Kerry says now. ‘But I basically was supportive. I never publicly opposed it.'”