Blumenthal: He Won the Battles But Lost the Wars (Powell)

[kskiska]

Colin Powell accepted policies on Iraq that he believed were calamitous. He is diminished as a result

Sidney Blumenthal


Shortly before the holidays, just before he underwent surgery for prostate cancer, US secretary of state Colin Powell gave a forlorn and illuminating interview to the Washington Post, published only in one brief excerpt. In it he explained that there was no matter of principle over which he would resign and depicted tenure as a long mission of retreat and loss.

Powell's elegiac tone is in striking contrast to the reigning triumphalism of official Washington. Bush's popularity has spiked to one of its high points with Saddam Hussein's capture. His campaign operation is ginning up his national security doctrine of "pre-emptive self-defence" (as a Republican TV ad has put it) to pose against the supposedly soft Democrats. And, meanwhile, Powell presents himself as bereft, tragic and noble.

In the full transcript of his interview, posted without fanfare on the state department's website, Powell chooses to identify with two of his predecessors: Thomas Jefferson, the first secretary of state; and George C Marshall, like Powell an army general. He observed that the "single trait that always comes to me when I think about these two guys is selfless service". When Marshall was passed over as commander of the D-Day invasion for Dwight Eisenhower, Powell said that "whatever disappointment he felt over that, he simply ate it". When Marshall argued against President Truman's recognition of the state of Israel, he took his loss in silence, and Powell quoted him: "No, gentlemen, you don't take a post of this sort, and then resign when the man who has the constitutional responsibility to make decisions makes one you don't like."

more…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1118388,00.html

[KG]

1. ol' colin is delusional. he over-estimates his place in history

or his level of greatness.

he'll be remembered as a career water-boy willingly doing the bidding of his RW masters. his shamefull exhibition at the UN is the low water mark by which his career will be measured.

[candy331]

2. Powell went down

the tubes and want be climbing out. His credibility is washed up. I often wondered what they had on him to blackmail him into the administration or was he truly delusional thinking he could be equal. What a waste.

[KG]

3. he's been a RW errand boy his whole career

starting with his attempt to cover up the my lai massacre.

he's NEVER had any integrity.

[The Zanti Regent]

4. His place in history is below the bottom of the barrel

Belafonte was right.

Powell is the most inept and incompetent Secretary of State of all time.

[Manix]

5. ..when BushCo took over I took small comfort in that Powell might be

the one wise statesman in this bunch, however he turned out to be just another used car salesman.

[priller]

6. Wrong, Colin, wrong wrong wrong!

"No, gentlemen, you don't take a post of this sort, and then resign when the man who has the constitutional responsibility to make decisions makes one you don't like."

Your first responsibility is to YOUR COUNTRY, not to the man who happens to be president. And in the case of Bush, it's not simply a matter of decisions "you don't like", it's a matter of decisions to turn the country around 180 degrees into a decidedly un-American direction, to change the beacon of freedom and democracy into a warmongering empire. When the president is ruining the country, the damn right you better fight him any way you can. Colin, you stink!

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Powell should take a lesson from Robin Cook

when you realise your leader is lying the country into a war, the only honourable thing to do is to resign. His Commons' resignation speech:

"We cannot base our military strategy on the assumption that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a threat.

Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term - namely a credible device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target.

It probably still has biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions, but it has had them since the 1980s when US companies sold Saddam anthrax agents and the then British Government approved chemical and munitions factories."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2859431.stm

And now it turns out even Cook was overestimating Iraq's capability.

[Gin]

8. How symbollic for cancer to appear...and in an area of masculinity

To me it represents "something is eating away at him"...it was revealed in his words...and his body.

He may have swallowed what * decided (like a good little soldier)...but.... his body is reacting to the lack of courage for his convictions.