It is his position and not a new one. It is not even posing as a news article.
Not to mention, reading between the lines suggests that Kerry has had at least one major accomplishment. Beam, like many on DU for their own agendas, denies Kerry any credit for the accomplishment of getting rid of the Syrian chemical weapons. However, that he mentions it at all suggests that he knows Kerry at least deserves credit for the negotiations that he and Lavrov had both in Geneva and in NYC when both countries tried to shift the terms. If Kerry had no part in that, why mention it at all.
Having read the articles on Geneva and the UN, it is very clear that these two men worked out a very delicate agreement and had the ability to keep their own sides from blowing it up by adding things the other side could not accept. Not to mention, the time lines were called ambiguous and many thought the exercise unlikely to succeed in a country in civil war. The proof in the quality of the agreement is that it succeeded. Although it did not create peace in Syria, that was never the goal and with ISIS/ISIL becoming scarier by the moment, I assume that there are many - on each side - glad that those chemicals are gone from that unstable region. There is plenty of credit to go around - from the people who risked their lives to get it to the diplomats who worked for it -- especially Kerry and Lavrov -- and importantly to Obama and Putin who gave them the support to do it. (Hey, if Hillary can claim she told Obama to take the Russian offer and earlier had told Obama to go to the SFRC to get approval on the air strikes in her book, it suggests that credit is due some people in the US - and Obama and Kerry were the two who worked it.)
In general, I think most people know the world is in a very chaotic period. The roots of most of the big crises predated Kerry and many predated Obama. In addition, not everything is about the US. Even in failure, the question is whether things done were well thought out and created the best chance of working out. Most serious articles on Israel, praise many actions taken by Kerry and his team. They tried to leverage many things - like the US developing a security plan for Israel and working with other countries to create an economic incentive for the Palestinians. Not to mention, that he went further than any US official in speaking on the conditions in the West Bank. (Though nowhere near as far as any Palestinian advocate would want.) If nothing else, the process has defined for Israel the concessions they need to make to have a two state plan -- and a two state plan is fundamental to any outcome liberal Zionists would find acceptable. Israel really faces a choice of what type of country they want to be. In a sense, the 2 state solution was a "veil" that could cover the ugly reality of occupation - and the failure of the process this time (unless Israel moves to restart it) tears the veil away. It means the occupation is not temporary. It will be interesting to see if the liberal zionists will move to a pluralist one state solution.
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