His duty was to serve the American people and the constitution of the United States. Some people think he failed in this duty. I like to think that he knew there was no way to avoid the invasion of Iraq (by the time he made the speech in the U.N., we had already started mobilizing for the invasion) and all he could do was try to get others to go in with us and to drum up support so that our chances of success would be greater. On the other hand, he might have just been a big dupe.
Which gives him a run at being the eponymous hero of a Greek tragedy, but does not exonerate him from participating in an action that he knew, in advance, was based on lies, which (as you have pointed out) violated his own clear expression of the principles on which military action should be based, and which he should have known was doomed to failure, partly because it was ill-considered (which he might not have known), and partly because it was horribly planned and exercised (which he must have known, given that his own successors had protested the action in the Spring prior to Bush’s campaign to carry it out).
Yes, he was a “good soldier,” a point I have already made, but he was no longer in the military and he bore a responsibility to act as a responsible voice, perhaps even a conscience, in a White House filled with deluded champions of a doomed campaign. His military experience makes him more responsible for failing to take the honorable path of Carter’s Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, who resigned in protest when a botched rescue attempt was made to rescue the U.S. embassy captives during the hostage crisis was launched over his protests.
Tom, you generally are quite critical of hyperbole yet here you go yourself. Do you know that Powell knew the information he was presenting was false? Do you have evidence to that?
My understanding is that he tried to act as the responsible voice within that doomed White House team and that he thought (perhaps incorrectly) that his continuing to try to influence the policy from within was more likely to be fruitful than was resigning in protest/petulantly when the boss won’t take his advice.
Sure enough that United Nations speech made him damaged goods. I see him as having gone over to the Dark Side and could not vote for him now like I perhaps could have before. Still his intelligence, eloquence, and real foreign policy creds are substantial.
I maintain my belief that he could very well be a VP pick … he would give some international gravitas to a Rudy ticket, for example, and if the Dems end up with Obama would neutralize a lot of his buzz. And potentially eight years as VP could help erase a lot of bad karma from his Bush association. Remember, you heard it here first.
I’m quite surprised people still respect this guy. If starting an unnecessary war where thousands die isn’t enough to make one lose respect, wtf does it take? Leaving the toilet seat up? Wearing white after labor day?
Powell is the man who has been quoted as saying, prior to his UN presentation, regarding the information that he was being handed, “I’m not rerading this! This is bullshit.” Powell stood by and went along with the program when EVERY SINGLE CLAIM by the adminstration regarding Iraqi nuclear capacity was denied by the IAEA, EVERY SINGLE CLAIM about weapons was denied by the actual UN inspectors who were on the ground, (you know, the ones that Hussein let back into the country in cooperation with the UN resolution, following which Bush changed the rules about what was required). All the information that has been released from the intelligence agencies shows a steady stream of hedged bets, uncertain claims, and serious doubts about the rumors they were exploring and the only “intelligence” that supported the adminstration claims were the bits being released by the PR flacks in the OSP. If Powell could not distinguish the reality from the propaganda that was being produced between September, 2002 and April, 2003, then he is actually far more stupid than everyone on this thread has been claiming.
I have no problem with anyone up through August or early September 2002 believing that Hussein was a genuine threat who still possessed WoMD. However, from that period until the invasion, all the genuine intelligence continued to provide more and more evidence that there were no such weapons remaining in Iraq. Going to the UN with claims of “actual evidence” in the weeks before the war requires a willing suspension of disbelief that exceeds that required by the readers of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.
Here is an interesting examination of Powell’s presentation to the UN, published in The Nation fewer than six months after the invasion.
Colin Powell and ‘The Power of Audacity’ September, 2003.
Here’s an interesting examination of Powell in the time period between a few days before his UN speech to a few days after:
1/27/03 Colin Powell tips hand, asserts link between Iraq and Al Qaeda
2/5/03 New Evidence against Iraq?
2/5/03 Regarding a general lack of physical evidence in Powell’s presentation.
2/6/03 Colin Powell Plagiarizes
Doubts about Powell’s presentation were immediate. An honest, intelligent man should have had some himself. We didn’t here about any of that till after the invasion.
Here is the AP analysis referred in that article:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0811-09.htm
The pattern that should never be forgotten:
Like that, many other items were being found to be BS, one of the main reasons why I opposed the war.
I will always think the administration sure was scared, scared that even more evidence was coming up that showed they really had no good reason to invade. The window of opportunity was closing, that is the window of how long you could keep convinced other decision makers that invasion was necessary to end “the gravity of the threat”