Sympathy for Powell
Deep Blade is rarely in the business of saying a kind word about US Secretary of State Colin Powell. In fact the very next posting will excoriate him for about the sixth time over the nakedly spurious charges concerning Iraq’s unconventional weapons he delivered to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003.
But this article by Michael Steinberger in The American Prospect (for the April 1, 2004 issue) gave me a small moment of sympathy through its description of the difficult portfolio Powell has been dealt. And I’m not referring to US relations with foreign countries.
Here is a small excerpt illustrating the point:
“…The caution flags, however, were ignored. When the secretary of state addressed the Security Council, he not only included the aluminum-tubes claim but made several other assertions that have since proven to be inaccurate. A performance that looked to be the high point of Powell’s illustrious career has now been thoroughly discredited and sits as an indelible stain on his record.
“Powell’s reward for doing the soldierly thing was a slap in the face to his department. On January 20 [,2003], just after Powell met with Bush and agreed to go before the United Nations, Bush signed National Security Directive No. 24, which gave the Pentagon responsibility for administering postwar Iraq. In retrospect, it was a tragic decision, one that needlessly complicated efforts to stabilize Iraq and that has undoubtedly cost many American soldiers their lives”.
The whole article is well worth reading.
Powell is an impressive, well-spoken presence–a moderate force in an administration of radical reactionaries run amok below a president with little respect for Powell himself and with little grasp of international issues. But Powell has lost every policy struggle and has no discernible power.
So Powell is a tragic figure. As a “doer” rather than a “thinker”, he is a functionary hobbled by his own liabilities and lack of “strong and specific” vision of what America’s role in the world should be.
“The neocons, for better or worse, had such a vision, and something usually trumps nothing”.