I’m pleased, I think but I thought this merited a GD.
Colin Powell. Secretary of State.
(1) Does he match Ibn Bush? (As they say out here, rather catchy I must admit)
(2) Does he compensate for Ibn Bush’s --less than stellar understanding of the non-USA?
(3) Will he compensate in other areas?
(4) Does he deserve his excellent rep.
One small request. Keep it to the facts please.
Don’t know much about him, but I would have to say I HOPE he compensates for Bush’s shortcomings in the area specified. However, isn’t that the point of cabinet members in general? No one (except die-hard Gore supporters) presuppose that a president is perfect. Cabinet members are supposed to make up for a president’s possible shortcomings. Bush might not be the brightest chap, but I don’t think he is illusioned into thinking he is, either, which is good.
However, as a secretary of state…hmmm. Was he ever in a true diplomatic position? I would almost feel that were necessary to the case…
Let me make the first reply (sorry): I just was reading the WP article wherin CP is quoted as saying Saddam Hussein’s regime will suffer continued sanctions or it will be confronted. As most of you know, I work in the region for a non American multinational.
My reaction, Colin, what the fuck are you thinking? With Palestine/Israel in flames, the sanctions dragging on a decade or so and the Gulf States flush with cash and the
Europeans clearly tired of the whole game, you’ll be lucky to drag this out another few years.
My impression, from speaking with Arab colleagues, there’s no support for this in the region. Everyone thinks Saddam paid the price and its about time it all is wrapped up.
Mind you none of these folks, they do work for or with me, are Saddamistas. But the sympathy’s not there. And the street (I do speak Arabic, but I’ll come clean and admit its not that great, my infos are second hand) is 100% against this. Europe? I haven’t seen enthusiams for this in ages.
My take, we long ago reached the point of diminishing returns on this policy. Time to cut it loose.
If Powell had been in charge of ending in Iraq instead of Bush, it would have ended in Iraq.
Ola ARL
Beat me to the punch on my own subjet. Damnyouobjectivsts!
I hope so also.
True, but the issue is who does Ibn Bush listen to? I hope Powell. My head honcho is supposed to listen to me on certain issues, but that’s not always the case. Might be my delivery.
Well, no, except insofar as his prior upper level Pgon stuff was quasi diplomatic. He’s got the right skills, I think, but instincts? Dunno.
But I’m glad, I have to admit, that we’re seeing more color at the top. Bodes well for the future.
Pardon my ignorance and minor hijack, but what the heck does Ibn mean?
Ibn is “son of” in Arabic. Col spends many of his days hanging out in the mid-east, note:
Hey d’y’all remember back in 1996 when Powell was thinking about running for president and the conservatives got together to put a stop to that, putting out a position paper that criticised him for being, among other sins, “risk averse?” (Somebody at the time said “risk averse” was a good definition of conservatism.) Wonder what they’ll say about his being two heartbeats away? For that matter, I wonder what Jesse Helms is gonna say about a “fred” being two heartbeats away? JDM
Er… the way I remember it, Powell has ALWAYS said that he wouldn’t run for President.
A question that has nagged me before: were, exactly, was Colin Powell in the Armys hierarchy relative to the unit involved in the massacre at My Lai? What did he know and when did he know it?
I’m pretty sure the Secretary of State is more than “two heartbeats away” from the presidency.
As for Mai Lai, I haven’t been able to dig up any specifics on the web, only a couple references to him being involved in the cover-up. I doubt that there’s any real substance to the allegations. However, he did do his damnedest to keep gays out of the military, which I don’t like. On the other hand, that has nothing to do with how he will perform as Secretary of State.
Collounsbury said:
If by ‘match’ you mean counterpart, obviously not. Powell is smarter, abler, and has been shaped by a much more disparate set of experiences. If you mean complement, I guess so, but the interplay between them will be very one-sided. (BTW, I prefer Bush the Lesser or Quayle Lite to Ibn Bush.)
He certainly helps. Indications are that Bush has little knowledge and less curiosity about the world around him than most; it’s unclear whether Powell can bring enough to the table to counter Bush’s vacuity.
I think so. Good looking guy. Good speaker. Hero. Looks great in a tux. As probably the most popular American not a sports star he should provide some cover for any dubious moves he gets involved in, at least early on. His status as former head of Joint Chiefs should help him in Europe/NATO discussions. As a black American he would have special entree to black Africa, if this administration (or any) gave a damn about black Africa. It’s unclear to me whether his breadth of knowledge and experience extends to China, say, or Taliban-style terrorism, or South American coca policy.
Hard to say. It appears based mainly on his prosecution of the Gulf War, but really, how hard was that? Take overwhelming power, direct it against, not just a thug, or even a foreign thug, but a foreign thug who’s threatening to shut off our oil. Light up Baghdad, use bombs and rockets to grind immobile and defenseless troops to hamburger, send in the ground guys to mop up, book plenty of bands and ticker-tape. Still, it went off without a hitch so job well done.
All told, I would have thought a good choice. But then I read his remarks about Iraqi sanctions that could have been made by Helms or Delay or any other mossback, and I’m thinking What the hell is going on here? What is the putative SoS and chief American diplomat doing inciting a situation that is, thankfully, on a low boil. I wonder how his statement was read in Riyadh or Jordan? I’m wondering what’s next, a proposed naval blockade because Cuba cut off direct phone service to the US?
Now you have to know that is impossible.
]
Bush the lesser, I like that. Not quite sure which sense I meant. No doubt complement.
It’s a big chore.
I don’t know Powell brings anything to the table re Africa per se, as Bush the Lesser seems unaware it exists. Terrorism is probably within his scope of experience, if limited. But dealing with China? Dunno. We’ll see.
Quite true, on the other hand he did know enough not to let certain simpleminded adolescents in uniforms drive on to Baghdad, opening up another can of worms. Rush of the moment didn’t overturn cold judgement, so that is good.
The same comments that provoked my self response?
Badly.
Now you have to know that is impossible.
[/QUOTE]
Well, there is that other thread whose fact level seems much lower.
Physically, when My Lai occurred, Powell was not even in Viet Nam.
A few months after the massacre, when the first rumors of the massacre were being repeated outside the units that participated, Powell had been assigned to the (Division’s?) headquarter staff and was directed by the CO to conduct an investigation.
Powell went out and interviewed a bunch of guys and returned the verdict that he did not find any “credible” testimony that a massacre had occurred.
The two (not at all conclusive) claims made against Powell’s report:
After 30+ years, unless some of the interviewed troops recorded their statements and reactions to his interviws at that time, I doubt we will ever know what his investigation was really like.
Every source that I have seen condemn him seems to have found their evidence after their intention to condemn. That does not mean that they are wrong, but it makes it harder to weigh the evidence when there are no neutral sources of negative facts.
One has to suspect your last point is probably the truth. It doesn’t condemn the man to guess that he had some blinders on back then.
Re My Lai, considering the massive deception and self-deception the Army bureaucracy was involved in at the time about the war: It would take an unusual kind of mid-level officer with career ambitions to buck the overall atmosphere of his bureaucracy and issue a report that could only embarrass people. He may or may not have been actually ordered not to find anything, but he would have understood anyway. Perhaps that was dishonorable when seen from outside, but not in the context of Army command at the time.
Now, what worries me most about Powell and Rice running US international policy isn’t their basic intelligence, it’s their intellectual background. Both of them developed their views in the Cold War, with conservative views based on a bipolar relationship with another country that was dubbed The Only Other Superpower. All other relationships were forced to be seen through that single prism.
The structure of that policy approach is that we need a single enemy, or a few enemies, to defend against, and the rest of the world should basically take care of itself. With the USSR gone, you can see that segment flail around looking for a new boogieman to replace the USSR. With North Korea simply not credible as a threat, although there has been an effort to paint it as one, and having already had their chance at Iraq, they’ve simply declared China to be the new threat. If you start with basic facts about the China-Taiwan and China-world relationships today and try to draw conclusions from it, you don’t get there IMHO, but the basic psychology of the old Cold Warriors requires it anyway.
Maybe Powell and Rice have enough flexibility to accommodate a new paradigm, but they’d have to be more extraordinary people than I’ve seen so far. Look for US policy over the next 4 years to be a mix of neoisolationism even in the face of genocide, mixed with some Yellow Horde bashing, and occasionally some cruise missiles launched at Iraq.
ElvisL 1ves write:
Not an invalid criticism, to be sure. However, would you name someone who is:
[list=1]
[li]over 30[/li][li]not an apologist for the Stalinistas[/li][li]Hi, Opal![/li][/list=1]
as a potential SoS? Or, ought we to be depending on McNamara-ish wunderkinder to staff the administration?
See this thread ( http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=41973 ) for a pretty good discussion on why leaving Saddam alone during the Iraqi war was a good thing.
Paid his dues? Maybe. However, Saddam is a grade A a**hole. I have no doubts that he will cause trouble again given half a chance. I’m happy to see the US keep sitting on him indefinitely. I know that this policy mostly hurts the Iraqi populace but after Saddam siphons enough money to keep himself and his cronies fat, dumb and happy there is precious little left over to continue weapons development and the like. Anything to slow Saddam down in this area is fine by me.
Regarding Colin Powell:
The Good
Basically a guy who will do his best for this country and not merely look to pad his own pockets or be a glory hound.
The Bad
I have a some problem with the notion of a general as a diplomat. Certainly to get up the the 4-star rank of general one has to be political and understand diplomacy but that’s a different breed from the diplomacy a SoS has to do. Can a general kiss ass when it’s called for? I don’t know but something tells me generals aren’t made that way.
Elvislives
I think you just hit on my quesy feeling reading Powell and Rice’s comments on FP, as reported recently.
I’m much more in favor of mulitlateralism than they seem to be. I think it pays in the long run. Sure you miss some short term gains, give up on some 100% my way solutions, but it does tend to keep everyone in the play pen. Which is in the long run, I think the optimal solution.
Precisely, I think, the wrong approach to take if we wish to head off non-friendly “blocs”.
I’ve seen this crop up, and I got a wiff of it, IMHO, from Powell’s strange rant on Iraq. Frankly, I doubt sanctions will hold much longer, and pushing harder on this issue is as likely to get a highly negative reaction from the Arab states hosting our bases as to achieve anything productive.
Further, I rather suspect that just as the US position on Cuba or rather Castro in some ways aids Castro rather than hurts him, an excessively hard line stance on Saddam just gives him a nice fat excuse for things going wrong.
I hope we’re wrong. But then my employer is not American, so… Hmm, business opportunities?
Missed this. Good set of discussions. The unelightened in the other Powell thread need this reference.
Ahem, I was conveying the position of Arabs I work with (or rather a summary, there are many different positions I hear, but I think that’s a reasonable simplication). Not my position. Their position is relevant to the cost-benefit analysis of future policy to Iraq. The margin for maneuver, even with pro-Western Arabs, has become small.
Only if it gets us more than we lose from it. I’ve got no feelings re Saddam one way or another. So long as it more advantageous to sit on him, let’s do it. But let’s not do it for adolescent emotional reasons.
Of relevance here, the suffering of the Iraqi populace increasingly undermines support for sanctions outside the USA. I can’t recall the last time I heard a pro-sanctions policy report coming out of European media (other than maybe Brit media). Not to say there isn’t any, but the policy clearly hasn’t much strong support. And among Arabs! Oh man. Topic I avoid when I can if I don’t feel like getting lectured.
Right, what I was thinking about myself. Hopefully he’ll grow quickly into the role.