‘Tis the season for “big” political books in Washington DC. The WaPo’s Karen DeYoung has a new one just about to come out on Colin Powell– just at the same time that Bob Woodward’s book about the whole Bush administration will be hitting the bookstores. Today, he got a first chunk of his excerpted in the main section of the paper. As for DeYoung, she had a longish excerpt from her book, Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell, in the paper’s color-mag section today.
Her book won’t be coming out till October 10. It is based on a number of interviews with Powell– and probably even more from members of his entourage like Rich Armitage and Larry Wilkerson.
To me, the biggest revelation in DeYoung’s excerpt today is this: Colin Powell was held captive by heinous forces in his office in the State Department for the entire four years he was Secretary of State.
Who knew?
… Well, that, at least, is the only way I can interpret this little portion of DeYoung’s prose, where she was discussing the humiliating circumstances in which Bush brought Powell’s tenure as SecState to an end in Nov 2004: “After four long years, Powell had anticipated the end of his service and sometimes even longed for it.”
So, um, if he had– not just once, but “sometimes”– “longed” for the end of his service, then why on earth did he stay? I mean, being Secretary of State is not like being in the military, where you have to sign a termed contract that has some extremely tough constraining clauses. At least, I always used to think that a SecState was quite free to leave her/his post any time. (Especially if he or she “longs” to do so, wouldn’t you think?)
But now, I am learning that there must have been some heinous force tying Powell to his desk there. Mysteriouser and mysteriouser…
Pat Lang, however, has another explanation for what was going on with Powell. He calls it the “Great Man Syndrome”, that is, the delusion a person might have that he is “great” and even indispensable.
Here’s what else he writes about Powell there:
- Here is the case of a wise and great man (perhaps “dimly wise and rudely great” but, nevertheless..) who, I think, could have been president of the United States and who, with seemingly unwavering determination threw himself under the wheels of a bus. (rhetorical flourish)
Powell knew that “W” was out if his depth as president. He had to know that. He must have known that the “Vulcans” were successfully tutoring his boss on the subject of “the world.” Powell certainly knew that the imagined connections of [Al-Qaeda] to the Iraqi government were false. He clearly doubted the whole tissue of falsehood surrounding the WMD “pitch.” (Wolfie’s description)
If I am correct about this, than why on earth did he go up to New York to the UN to smear shit all over the memory of his service? Why?
The answer given to me by my bag of analytic tools is that he just could not remove himself from the action. He was a victim of GMS…
For me, there was an uncanny, almost a full-circle feeling in reading DeYoung’s piece. Powell’s hapless February 2003 presentation to the UN was the subject of my first two posts here on JWN (1 and 2). In the second of those, I noted the parallels between the flimsy public “justifications” Powell and his cronies were amassing for the increasingly imminent attack on Iraq and the extremely flimsy “justifications” Shimon Peres had provided for his 1996 assault against Lebanon.
The really frustrating thing is that none of these gung-ho militarists ever seems to learn anything from his mistakes or those of his close allies. I mean, Colin Powell, for goodness’ sakes!! He was the guy who quintessentially had “learned” the lessons of Vietnam, had worked hard to reconstruct the US army after that debacle, wrote very movingly in his memoir about the terrible costs of Vietnam… But there he was in February 2003– not in a uniform, but still, in a very real sense, playing a dealbreaker role there in the administration.
I mean, if he had come out in public back on February 6, 2003, and had said, “Mr. President, all this so-called ‘intel’ you’ve stove-piped to me about Iraqi links with Al- Qaeda or Iraqi WMDs is a crock of s**t,” then he could have stopped this war in its tracks. His credibility– then– was just so, so much greater than the President’s.
Heck, he didn’t even have to come out in public and say anything. All he needed to do, back at that time, was resign.
But he didn’t.
And the world got what the world got in the way of war, devastation, fitna, and destruction. Most of it, quite unforgivably, in Iraq, but some here in the US, too.
Just because of Colin Powell’s attachment to his position.
I am beyond words.
Helena,
With is flow of info about close circle of US administration, one question rises here where all this take us and what will be happen next?
I think with these think US administration don’t care much and it might its timing this for their political benefits (I am not sure here) but let Waite and see what next…
I don’t suppose I’ll ever live long enough to write the book that would explain why almost every Vietnam Veteran in our government fell hook, line, and sinker for such a colossal hoax as George W. Bush’s personal vendetta War on Saddam Hussein — oh, yes, and on the people of Iraq, too. I have my own theories, of course, and I think I possess the compositional skills to express them cogently. Still, for the present I find poetry the best antidote to massive depression, and the mention of Colin Powell in particular reminds me of:
“Deputy Dubya’s Droopy Diaper Rap”
You fell asleep on watch and let some bad guys blow us up,
And when you woke you swore to pay them back.
You then attacked a country that had never done us harm
Which seems to indicate it’s brains you lack.
You needed made-up reasons that you thought the rubes would buy.
You swore Saddam Hussein had done the crime.
You had Ms. Rice warn darkly of some sprouting mushroom clouds
In little less than forty minutes’ time.
Dick Cheney spoke of spies who may have met one night in Prague
Discussing who-knows-what? or when? or how?
He claimed that all this nothing added up to something big
That justified attacking Iraq now.
Don Rumsfeld claimed to know just where to find those awful bombs.
He said he knew exactly where they were.
That none had ever come to light disturbed him not at all;
For dreams, not facts, made better sales allure.
And Colin Powell played along and told the world untruths
In service to a man who oft betrays;
And now no thinking person who resides on Planet Earth
Believes a single word that this man says.
Your CIA did what it does, whatever that might be;
And spent more billions finding zilch to fear;
But undeterred you pressed ahead until the spooks agreed
To tell you everything you longed to hear.
The Pet Press pundit sycophants fell quickly into line;
For “access” they had sold their souls for free.
You gave each one a nickname in return for which they swore
To overlook your rank stupidity.
The Congress went along and did precisely not one thing
To cure us of our doubts about their worth.
They swarmed aboard the lemming liner, “Gulf of Tonkin II,”
And led us once again to rue their birth.
So came the night of green-hued TV pictures from “The Front”
With breathless claims of “Shock and Awe” profound
That really only lulled and bored the viewers back at home
Impressing no Iraqis on the ground.
You and your team, of course, converged to watch the main event;
To stomp and cheer each way-cool boom and bang.
You had photographers snap pictures of you gettin’ down
And doin’ that studly Texas hamster thang.
With manhood issues unresolved, you pranced and leaped about
With every adolescent urge fulfilled,
You launched three dozen missiles at a Baghdad neighborhood
Yet never cared to wonder whom you’d killed.
And don’t you think that forty missiles seem a little much
To cut the heads off three Iraqi men
Who, anyway, were somewhere else when all the bombs arrived
And not where you supposed them to have been?
That word “decapitation” sounded swell not long ago
But now only reminds us of your lies.
Some folks have lost their heads, all right, just not the ones you planned;
Just those who drive your trucks and cook your fries.
So things have gone from only-bad to worse-than-that and more
As GI coffins come home late at night;
And billions run into the hundred-billions off the books
Which makes those foreign lenders quake with fright.
You started spouting Jesus Jive because you think it sells
Among religious folks who live in dread
Of terrorist hijackers crashing into Red State barns
And working people organized and led.
To you, the Middle Ages sound like just the place to reign
With hopeless people waiting for their doom
Who every thousand years or so take off their clothes and climb
Up on their roofs to wait for what? and whom?
You learned to watch the NBA and do that high-five dance.
You’ve learned your three-word mantras through and through.
George Tenet taught you how to ‘slam-and-dunk’ and jockstrap-sniff
But still you’ve never grown to more than you.
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2005
Just in case I fail to make myself sufficiently clear: I don’t think very highly of these people who have shown such a dysmal lack of historical memory and the appalling lack of judgment that always accompanies such self-inflicted amnesia.
Colin Powell is surely the most despicable of a very despicable lot among the perpetrators of this sorry mess. He refuses to take any responsibility for his very decisive part in the debacle. He acted for his own self-centered reasons, whatever they were – most likely because he wanted to claim his place in history. Clearly he knew there was no factual need or even remote justification for attacking Iraq, yet he not only went along with it, he actively promoted it and participated in it. And now, ever since things went badly and he has found himself heaped in shame and not in glory, he has done nothing but whine about how he was deceived, how he was held captive and humiliated by the forces of darkness. How pathetic he is. He will certainly get no sympathy from me.
Dear Helen,
Somewhere I read something that might go further to explain Colin Powell. The modern army no longer produces great leaders of personal independence, the kind of men we saw in the Second World War. Modern military men are more like executives in a big corporation, people who learn how to fit in with the team and follow orders. Powell was probably not a very creative or imaginative junior officer, if it made he had to make waves. He got to the top by being the faithful junior officer who knew how to play the game. When he became Secretary, he could not change old habits. He knew what the president wanted. He faithfully delivered. Bill Taylor
Maybe it is all about his “good soldier” conditioning. Maybe, on the other hand, it was about ambition. Either way. He is a despicable whiner who is too weak and pathetic to accept responsibility for his own decisions and actions.
And by the way, let us not forget his part in the My Lai coverup. Perhaps it is true that a tiger cannot change his stripes.
Powell has a long carrier in matters of lies. During the Vietnam war he covered up the My Lai massacre for his bosses.
I can’t believe that any person in the Bush administration didn’t know they were lying concerning the reasons to invade Iraq. Even for a lay person the arguments they had looked very thin.
Helena
You havent picked up on this piece of pure Kafka
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092901334.html
The guy is guilty, but of what?
Michael Murry
a colossal hoax as George W. Bush’s personal vendetta War
The Worst President in History
Rumsfeld Uses Colin Powell as a Human Shield
About Colin Powell:
I believe that some lessons could be drawn from Soviet history. Did not Powell act as Bukharin, Tukhachevski, et al. A nice guy, maybe a bit weak, who doesn’t want to at any rate to betray his hierarchy, and ends in disaster. A British admiral (I forgot his name) in WWI (Jutland’s battle in the Skagerrak?) could also provide a model. One should not infere that I imply that GW equals “Uncle Joe”, though …..
“The guy is guilty, but of what?”
Frank, I was thinking on the drive home today about how normal and ordinary everything looks in the weeks and months after the rule of law is abandoned. Right now, it’s only people with names like Tariq Ramadan whose lives are actually changing because of this transition. People like me are free to go about our daily business, just like always. It’s not like you wake up and suddenly there are stormtroopers everywhere and your old aunty is being hauled off to the gulag. You just sip your morning coffee while reading an article in the paper that says the president and his cohorts are now immune from prosecution for war crimes, and can detain anyone they like without recourse to the court system, and do anything they want to them.
We’re just sheep, aren’t we?
Colin Powell was one of only two people on the planet who were in the right place at the right time, and possessed the requisite clout to stop Bush being driven into the disaster of the last 5 years. The other of course, was Tony Blair.
These potentially ‘Great Men’ were fatally nobbled by their cowardice. Call it rationalisation, manners, whatever you like, but these modern masters of oratory and argument were, in the end, followers rather than leaders.
I hope for his sake Powell decides to exit the scene entirely, rather than parody his former self as Blair does, with decreasing success.
John C.
We’re just sheep, aren’t we?
” the sovereignty of the United States, which takes precedence over international treaties and obligations, and the sovereignty of all other states, which is subject to the Bush doctrine. This is reminiscent of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”: All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.'”
-George Soros
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/03/04_soros.shtml
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/09/21_soros.shtml
Frank,
The guy is guilty, but of what?
Is he the same guy from Egypt who or his fatter founder of Islamic Brother Party?
Is he the same guy hired by Britt’s intelligent for Islamic consultations a bout tow years ago?
I wonder from of this guys, he insisted to go to US, he knows he his not welcomed there, what a dam mind some one keep knocks the doors and no one open for him, its some thing pathetic from him to put this long article just quite and stay there without this ongoing drama…
Salah
answer to both your questions is yes.
Here is a biography. Others can be found on Wikipaedia.
http://www.answers.com/topic/tariq-ramadan
I am trying to read one of his ooks, but it is heavy going becasue I am not humanities trained.
He is the first person to address one of the fundamental problems of the 21st century, that the Christians of Europe don’t have enough children and that the size of the Muslim population will inevitably grow.
Keeping a legal, educational and social system that is Christian focussed is a recipe for disaster, if it makes the muslims feel excluded.
I am inclined to listen to anyone who is well educated and articulate, because they may offer a solution that avoids ending up with a disaffected 5% of the population.
JohnC
We aren’t sheep. We still have the opportunity to change things.
If you are in the US, there are elections next month.
I don’t get to vote in them and so I rely on US citizens of goodwill (and good sense) to make use of their votes and change course.
I suspect that we are suffering from Taxation without Representation because we Europeans will have to pay the cost of picking up the pieces after the failure of the Tenth Crusade.
We are familiar with the results of upsetting the chaps to the East, having been invaded by Ghengis Khan, The Mongols, The Turks who besieged Vienna twice, and the Russians who periodically capture Warsaw and Berlin.
Meanwhile, the Cowardly Lion seems to have clammed up about the detainee torture legislation.
I suspect that we are suffering from Taxation without Representation because we Europeans will have to pay the cost of picking up the pieces after the failure of the Tenth Crusade.
That may be the case, but talking about sheep, there is no doubt that most European governments – elected by us here in Europe – are humble sheep, who love to be led by The Great Shepherd in Washington, and who participated in The Shepherd’s Crusades (directly, by participating in the occupation of Iraq, or indirectly, by inviting others to do so (UN resolution 1483)), or by following the Shepherd in his adventures in the disguise of a “military alliance”, called NATO, which in reality is nothing but the flock of the Shepherd in uniform.
All this discussion of what motivated Powell is pure speculation, of course. Having admitted that, I really do not believe it was cowardice, or being a “good soldier” so much as overriding personal ambition. I believe the same is the case with the creepy Condoleezza Rice (who comes off more than anything as an automaton simply repeating what it has been programmed to say). Powell would simply do anything to promote his career as a “great man in history” in the making. I think the same is true of Rice, and she adds to that a certain – not sure what to call it – incurious unintelligence? Inability to connect to reality? All of the above? Something about her creeped me out even before I knew anything about her.
Rebels, contrarians, complainers, and cranks don’t get appointed Sectetary of State, Chair of the JCS, head corporations, or even become church deacon. The classic consensus builder that people like has to be a person who plays with the team and does not let doubts or grudges get in the way of an orderly meeting, a stately prayer, or smooth game of golf.
A cabinet official who honors his executive, follows the party lead, and sticks with the message will be welcomed onto corporate boards and retire in comfort. The exact outcome of policies matters less. On the other hand, the person that bites the hand that feeds will go hungry and be villified by ideologues forever.
Remember, too, that Powell’s alternative was not peace and fraternal relations, but a continued battle over Iraq sanctions and military surveillance. Had Bush accepted advice not to make war, Current circumstances would not be pretty, and opponents would insist we’d lost a cakewalk opportunity to liberate poor Iraqis. Meanwhile, if W simply asked a recalcitrant Powell to resign, the Right would simply label him a chicken and we’d have a Richard Perle or John Bolton in his place. But this is a remote hypothetical. W’s advisors proposed Powell as secretary of state precisely because of his genial team-player demeanor.
Our current Secretary of State owes her job to the fact that she spent the first term praising and flattering W every day. He plucked her out of obscurity and elevated her to big time. She will never go disloyal. Even if Iraq stagnates or blisters, in 2009 she will have all kinds of corporate and institutional offers–especially if she continues to smile and be loyal.
Most everybody says the war in Iraq can’t be won militarily. Obviously, the war in Lebanon couldn’t be won militarily. Now Fristy is saying the war in Afghanistan can’t be won militarily.* Does anybody think the war in Iran will be won militarily?
If none of these wars can be won militarily, then why do we keep starting them militarily?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1003/dailyUpdate.html
*This may come as a surprise to most Republicans, who thought we’d won years ago.