Colin Powell – The reluctant warrior

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

General Colin Powell died Monday, October 18 of complications caused by Covid 19, at the Walter Reed Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. He was undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma, a terminal cancer of the white blood cells, and early stages of Parkinson’s disease. His treatment prevented him from getting a third booster vaccination, which he was scheduled to take the previous week. Powell is survived by his wife of almost six decades, Alma.

Powell was born in Harlem and raised in the ethnically diverse section of the South Bronx in New York. His parents, both of Scottish/African lineage, were immigrants from Jamaica. His father, Luther Powell was a shipping clerk, his mother, Maud a seamstress. Their son, Colin, embodied the spirit of the American Dream, that once beckoned all immigrants, “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free”.

The American Dream is becoming increasingly illusory in modern times. National racism against immigrants of different hues, and the cruelty of the scenes at the borders of the Shining City on the Hill, seem to indicate that the flame in the lamp of Lady Liberty may be flickering, the golden door beside it a tad tarnished.

Powell, a self-admitted average scholar, left high school with no career plans. He got his degree in geology from the City College of New York. He also participated in the ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) at CCNY, and received a commission as a second lieutenant in the army upon graduation in 1958. Powell described the ROTC program as one of the happiest experiences in his life. “I not only liked it”, he said, “but I was pretty good at it”.

Powell served two active tours in Vietnam. During his second tour in 1968, he survived a helicopter crash, in which he rescued three other soldiers from the burning wreckage. His experience in Vietnam helped define his future military and political strategies. A professional soldier throughout his life, Powell rose to the rank of four-star general, and was Commander of the United States Armed Forces in 1989.

Powell was the first black National Security Adviser to Reagan (1987 to 1989), the first black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Bush Senior (1989 to 1993) and the first black Secretary of State in the cabinet of Bush Junior (2001 to 2005). He won numerous US and foreign military and civil awards and decorations, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom (twice) and the Congressional Gold Medal.

Powell was the consummate American soldier, whose military record and his national reputation prompted him to consider a run for the presidency in 1995. The Republicans saw him as their only hope of defeating Clinton, the national polls were extremely favourable. He finally decided not to run, on the grounds of a “lack of passion for politics and campaigning”. The real reason, of course, was that his wife, Alma, whom he married in 1962, was against his candidacy, and ordered him not to run. He may have been the celebrated Commander of the US Army, but it was clear who was the general at home.

Powell was always concerned about America’s involvements in military battles, especially in the Middle East. He oversaw Bush Senior’s Operation Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf war against Iraq in 1990-1991. But he also formulated the “Powell Doctrine”, which “limits American military action unless it satisfies criteria regarding American national security interests, overwhelming force and widespread public support”.

A doctrine which he himself spectacularly violated in 2003, during the Bush reign of error.

In his capacity as the US Secretary of State, Powell gave a speech at the United Nations in February 2003, replete with fabrications about the urgent necessity for military action against Iraq. He made the Bush/Cheney/Military Industrial Complex case for military action against Saddam Hussein, on the basis that there was incontrovertible evidence that the Iraqi dictator possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), which he intended to use against his neighbours and his own people. An assertion later proved to be a bald-faced lie, sadly one that Powell himself knew to be so during his address to the United Nations.

Completely out of character, a man who had won international respect, he deceived the world with a pack of lies. He was not just horribly misled or mistaken. He knowingly used fabricated evidence and ignored repeated warnings that what he was going to say was false.

His speech of deception swayed the world, and his lies got the congressional support Bush needed to declare war against Iraq. His words sent thousands of Americans and her allies to kill and die in Iraq. Powell – and Bush/Cheney – have never been held accountable for what were basically war crimes. And they never will be so indicted, for they are Americans.

A lifetime of honour tainted by one act of dishonesty. He voiced public regret for his speech, calling it a “blot on his record” and was fired by Bush in 2005 for expressing such regret. A moderate Republican, he endorsed Barack Obama for the presidency in 2009, despite his decade-long friendship with Republican candidate, John McCain. He condemned the Republican Party for moving unrecognizably to the right under Trump. And he enjoyed the ultimate honour of being denounced by Trump.

None of these may remove the stain from his record of that one mistake he made in 2003. But we mourn his death because he lived and ended his life as a decent and honourable man, and all the good he has done will live after him.

Speaking after Powell’s death, Trump spewed the regular and churlish comments he reserves for the passing of anyone who has dared to criticize him. Making Powell’s death, like everything that happens in the world, all about himself, he called Powell a classic RINO (Republican In Name Only), saying “it was wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media. Hope that happens to me someday”.

Please don’t hold your breath, Mr. Trump. General Powell made just one mistake, out of misguided loyalty to the greed of another Republican villain. A grave mistake he immediately and publicly regretted, showing genuine remorse for which he has received universal forgiveness. He did not continue to commit, like you, crimes against the state and humanity as you have your entire life.

You will suffer the death of a Julius Caesar for all the crimes you have committed. Like Caesar, you will be stabbed by 40 Senators “amid fears that you planned to claim the title of king, overthrow the Senate and rule as a tyrant”.

There will be no lack of Brutuses for you to echo Caesar’s famous last words, “et tu, Brute”. There will be no Marc Antony come to praise you, just Foxes, Cruzes and Hawleys come to bury you. The evil that you have done will live after you. There is no good to be interred with your bones.

These men may have loved you once, for evil cause. When you ceased to be of any use to them in the pursuit of the cause you initiated, the death of democracy, they began to hate you. They are all ambitious white men and you finally got in the way.

There will be no heart in the coffin with you, no beautiful treatment in death by the Fake News Media, when that joyous day finally dawns. Your memory will forever live in hatred and misery.

To err is human, to forgive divine. The one error General Powell made during an honourable and decent life has been forgiven, by man and God. His memory will forever live in honour.