Colin Powell knew that the UN speech he gave to lay out the case for war against Iraq on the sketchy basis of their weapons program would haunt him to the end. He was an intelligent man capable of great insight and scrupulous honesty. That's what makes his fault a bit worse: how does an adult, experienced leader go and peddle half truths (and unsubstantiated nonsense) to set the stage for a ground war that he knew would be brutal, that he warned the Bush Administration about (albeit in terms like "the Pottery Barn" rule, which seems awfully flip in the aftermath, doesn't it?) , as if guilelessly led by "a bad crowd"?
It's impossible. And yet, he was not the worst of the Bush Administration lot, at all; just at the time, so exceptionally disappointing. And also, I believe in his own way he understood the extent to which his reputation was used to promote a war of choice that was not legitimately reasoned, and I note his later support of Obama and his rejection of Trump--but they were low key.
Could he have served his country better were he more vocal? See, I don't have responsibility to not be vocal, so I say what I want. His position was as a soldier with a respect for civilian leadership who ceded his reputation to the service of his CINC. Maybe he felt that he served best by offering his opinion, but leaving it to the person selected by 5 members of the Supreme Court elected by the people. Maybe he understood, at least since the time he whitewashed the My Lai massacre, He had a vantage to to a political window of how war history got made.
I don't believe in hero worship. We're all fragile skin sacks barely containing the drama caused by mutant brains that perceive and personify and signify a lot--a blessing and a curse. Colin Powell was better than a lot of our kind are, and not better than he could have been. He was a trailblazer and the people who know him well liked him a lot, but I have noted how one can smile and be a villain, I've noted how intelligent people can be persuaded to get it all wrong and defend getting it wrong long past when it made sense.
Our better angels sounded in him, and our greater devils also had their way. This man died at the age of 84, with Parkinson's and multiple myeloma, a cancer that sadly, specifically has implications for the immune system, and he died of "Covid-19 complications", which is more like, "COVID-19 was fatal to Powell because of his immunocompromised state". Which, because he was also fully vaccinated, means anti-vaxxers are using his example to wage their war on science.
This is sadly typical, and not what he or we deserve, It is only too sadly what our greater devils do with themselves, finding a figure to make their mischief with. Once again, his profile is lent to a bullshit right-wing narrative.
But my sympathies and condolences to those who loved him. One could not regret his fault so much, were there not also so much to redeem. And for those whose care for him predated his Iraq/Bush era error, perhaps redemption was never even in question. But I could not post an elegy without a reckoning--this is just my way.
(Adding: Notwithstanding, read about something like birth defects in Iraq, and see how you feel about anything at all about the US as a country.)
5 comments:
You're kind and generous, and this is a good and humane thing to be. You write that "One could not regret his fault so much, were there not also so much to redeem", but I don't see it. He covered-up massacre in My Lai, and then covered for a murderous war that killed hundreds of thousands of innocents in Iraq. Only after his star had fallen and he knew he'd never hold higher office, did he speak even a modicum of truth.
I don't see where there's anything admirable in any of that. A grasping and servile man, who never did what was needful, nor even what was demanded by his oaths, until after it was no longer useful.
I'm sorry for those who loved him. For him: Nothing.
If Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson hadn't stuffed 'Nam so firmly up our asses, maybe things would be different. As it stands, he is of a few that it seems everyday we lose a few more of. Good bad or indifferent, when we're gone, we'll be forgotten. History only repeats to those paying attention, but it's also rewritten by those in a position to get away with it. Gaslighting works best when all the witnesses are dead. One less witness.
EYeah, I posted "he was a good man ... who got caught up in the wrong crowd"
We all did ...
Robert Farley at LGM probably put it better than me--he was genuinely complicated, and still viewed his role as that of a soldier while as SoS. He was carrying out a mission as directed by his president, and maybe he felt like not doing it was a form of insubordination. Old habits, I guess?
That culture his My Lai report came from was a part of the fuckery of that war--people who spoke out were "commies", war criminals got a slap on the wrist. His mistakes were like trying to thread a needle between his identity, and doing what he thought he was in whatever his role at the time was to do, as best he could. A lot of people with ambition say to themselves, who knows what bullshit would be happening if someone worse than me was in this position? I think maybe more people need that "better angel" idea of what would someone better than me do? And then damn well do it.
"he was genuinely complicated, and still viewed his role as that of a soldier while as SoS."
Then he should never have signed-up for the SoS gig. B/c his oath there was to the Constitution, and he abrogated that oath, connived in a criminal war. But also, it's a convenient thing, to have the "out" of "I was just a soldier", when the events are equally-well explained by "I was ambitious, and if I wanted to stay in with this powerful crowd, I'd have to do things, y'know, some questionable things".
It's always nice to have some misplaced virtue to fall back on, when what's really going on is naked, inept ambition.
Farley also wrote about how Powell was "the first Black NSA, the first Black CJCS, and the first Black Secretary of State". How that made him a complex case. But it doesn't: does anybody think that if he were a serial killer, that all his accomplishments would stand in any sort of balance against those crimes?
The only reason anybody thinks they do, is that his crimes were in conniving with others to murder hundreds of thousands, instead of a few tens.
Or let us suppose that Union Carbide's CEO were the first Black hundred-billionaire, back around the time of the Bhopal tragedy, and he had given the orders that resulted in those deaths. Does anybody think that his being the first Black $100B-aire would somehow stand in balance against those murders?
Powell's case isn't complex. It might be tragic, but it's not complex.
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