Can we Continue to Listen to Colin Powell?
December 12th, 2008Explain the Conclusion That This Person is a Republican
Colin Powell. What was George Bush thinking when he hired Colin Powell?
For some reason, we automatically respect generals. It’s silly, if you think about it. Wesley Clark was a general. Would you want someone that weird and ruthless and ambitious in public office? This is the guy who wanted to launch a military attack on our allies, the Russians. Then there was the general who ran Abu Ghraib. And how about General Benedict Arnold? The notion that all generals are brilliant and of sound character is clearly unfounded.
Colin Powell, like Albert Einstein, benefits from a strange kind of mindless worship. Einstein is quoted as an authority on absolutely everything, from politics to religion to personal relationships. Outside of his narrow field, Einstein was almost helpless. He had no common sense. He was selfish. He was absent-minded. He was a bad father and husband. He had a naive, childlike belief in some sort of central global government. He was wrong about lots of things. In fact, he spent many years trying to disprove quantum mechanics, which was a complete waste of time and an embarrassment. Still, we quote him as though his words were scripture. And the press gives the same treatment to Powell.
What exactly has Powell done to justify his guru status? If I recall correctly (from reading Schwarzkopf’s book), he was among those who discouraged Bush I from entering Baghdad and putting an end to Saddam Hussein’s nonsense, back when we had a giant, enthusiastic coalition that could have administered a postwar Iraq relatively painlessly. Would anyone seriously claim this was good advice? Our generals told us the Iraqis would fight to the death, and that we would have to go house-to-house, slaughtering their brave troops and suffering terrible casualties of our own. Is that what happened in 2003? NO. We suffered very few losses, and the war was over in a few weeks. Since then, we’ve had trouble dealing with terrorists and religious nuts, but we are definitely in charge, and the job would have been much, much easier with the rest of the world on board, as they were when Powell and the others were telling us to cut and run.
Powell endorses affirmative action. Is that a sign of mental acuity? Affirmative action divides our country and ruins people’s lives. All over the US, there are people who earned jobs and college spots, yet who did not receive them because they were given to applicants with inferior qualifications. As a result, many of these victims of politics have suffered very severe financial damage and emotional pain. And many of the people who got the things earned by the dispossessed have proven incompetent and unable to benefit from them. If you want to see what affirmative action does, go to any law school and compare the percentages of minority students in the first and second-year classes. Affirmative action beneficiaries show up in August of their first year, full of hope and optimism, and many of them leave in January or April with their dreams crushed.
Affirmative action discounts the achievements of women and minority members who get their success through merit. Have you ever been treated by a minority doctor and heard a little voice in the back of your head, asking you how he or she got his job, and whether you should make an excuse to see another caregiver? I sure have. On the other hand, if your doctor is a white male whose parents aren’t rich, you can pretty well assume he earned his wings, because when he applied to medical school, the entire system was trying to destroy him. It must be frustrating, being a highly capable black professional and knowing that people are unwilling to take your credentials at face value because so many of your peers are barely adequate. Powell is wrong about affirmative action, guru or not.
Colin Powell told us Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Personally, I think he was correct, and I believe whatever Hussein had was moved to Syria, while the French and Russians and Germans dawdled, in hopes of preserving their multibillion-dollar contracts with Hussein. That would certainly help explain the huge truckload of chemical weapons that departed from Syria in 2004 and was intercepted in Amman. But Powell now says he was wrong. Would a genuine guru let himself be wrong about a thing like that? Would he stake his reputation on it, as Powell did? Would he do that with war at stake? After leaving office, Powell turned on George Bush and tried to depict himself as the victim of a corrupt regime bent on invasion. Would a true statesman wheel around and attack his President in order to rehabilitate his own image? Is that what we call character?
Now Powell is telling us the GOP has been hijacked by religious nuts and far-right extremists. His advice is as sound as ever. He says we’re supposed to embrace minorities instead of “shouting” at America. Have you ever heard anything more vacuous and wrong? The GOP crawls on its knees, trying to attract women and minorities. How does Powell think he got his job? We’re already reaching out. The only way to reach out more effectively is to stop being Republicans, which is what Powell really wants us to do. He wants us to abandon God and conservatism and start pushing affirmative action. So we can have more visionary leaders like Colin Powell, I guess.
The ideas Powell is discussing involve notions like unity and chain of command. A political party’s leadership has to understand those things. Are we supposed to learn about them from a backbiter who undercut his former superior while we were still at war?
What is the point of having a Republican party that agrees with the Democrats? Didn’t we just try that concept, nominating a liberal Presidential candidate who, the press told us, could not possibly lose? That worked out real good, didn’t it? When we become a liberal alternative to the DNC, most of the base will disappear, and the rest of us will become Democrats or independents. Going to the GOP for the implementation of leftist policies is like going to Dunkin’ Donuts for health food.
Powell says, “Can we continue to listen to Rush Limbaugh? Is this really the kind of party that we want to be when these kinds of spokespersons seem to appeal to our lesser instincts rather than our better instincts?” I guess disloyalty, lack of firm principles, and personal ambition are our better instincts.
Furthermore, what’s wrong with voting your religion? If God is God, he is among us, working powerfully every day. Are we supposed to believe he won’t support us and help us if we let our belief in him shape our politics? If we believe that, we believe in a powerless God who is no god at all.
I plan to support conservatism and the most godly candidates available. Colin Powell’s opinion means nothing to me at all. Ronald Reagan was the most popular President of his era, and he would have sneered at Powell’s willingness to grovel and cave. Voters don’t vote for political philsophies; they’re not smart enough to understand them. They vote for people with confidence in their beliefs. Reagan proved that, and in the future, other conservatives can prove it again.
Here’s what I think is going on here. Colin Powell messed up his future by picking the GOP as his party. Now there is talk of a position with the Obama administration. Criticizing the GOP can only make his candidacy stronger.
I don’t think this guy is a statesman OR a saint. I realize I’m in the minority. Not the GOOD kind of minority, of course. But you know what I mean.
December 12th, 2008 at 10:09 AM
Nice essay. Well put.
December 12th, 2008 at 11:27 AM
My father-in-law worked for Powell in the Pentagon and thought highly of him at the time. His opinion of Powell has plummeted in recent years. And for the reasons you’ve so deftly addressed.
December 12th, 2008 at 1:28 PM
Well said, and right on the mark.
December 12th, 2008 at 2:13 PM
Dear Steve-O, you make a lot of sense today.
December 12th, 2008 at 2:49 PM
We fail to judge politicians by the political views of their wives, and by who is paying them after the age of 60. At the end of a term or a career, husbands typically tilt heavily toward the politics of their spouse. Also, he took a gift of a Jaguar for his wife from his tennis partner (since the 1970’s) Saudi Prince Bandar.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/023173.php
Recommended extensively researched reading:
Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America’s Security, by Joel Mowbray
The War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed The Jewish People, by John Loftus and Mark Aarons
I think if philosemitic Christians read these, they’d put levelling Foggy Bottom as removing the national threat of Biblical curse per Genesis 12:3’s “those who bless you will be blessed, those who curse you will be cursed”.
Exodus 23:7-8: Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay thou not; for I will not justify the wicked. And thou shalt take no gift; for a gift blindeth them that have sight, and perverteth the words of the righteous.
Bribes (and Saudi pension plans for State Department employees) that we American citizens knowingly allow our government employees to receive from people who represent openly hostile forces that would dhimmify, convert or kill us will haunt us or worse.
What is interesting about falsehood is that the Bible doesn’t say stay far from unkosher food or other scriptural sins. It’s simply enough not to partake. Accepting falsehood, however, distorts our ability to discern what is right and wrong and is more likely to be soul-corrupting.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:55 PM
1. Worked with a lot of generals over the years.
2. Have met Powell a couple of times. Didn’t think ill of him based on those encounters.
3. Almost all of the military leadership was against invading Iraq.
(When the Arabs come sloshing ashore at Myrtle Beach, weapons at high port, in their many thousands -then they constitute a security threat).
4. Am reasonably certain Powell was talked into supporting the 2003 invasion, despite personal reservations.
5. WMD in Iraq just wasn’t much of a security threat to the continental US.
6. Back to Powell. Don’t see his actions through exactly the same set of glasses you do.
7. Generals are a lot like high ranking politicians and Hollywood types.
8. Surrounded by a coterie of suitably deferential assistants, they soon buy into the idea of their infallibility.
9. Whatever powers of introspection they may once have had, are lost.
10. General Powell (Secretary Powell, if you will) was promoted for his political skills. The man is hardly visionary.
11. Any guru status he derives is in direct proportion to the harm it causes Mr. Bush’s administration. Non-inflamatory statements will be ignored.
12.I’m sure he feels his grasp of the tenets of Republicanism is the correct one. See #8.
13. More fools the Republicans, if they thought this man was on their side. I always though he was on his own side. From his point of view, if you disagree with him you are wrong.
14. BTW, don’t think he’s been trying to curry favor with the incoming administration. When you’re Mahommet, the mountain comes to you.
15. You may have trouble believing the size of this man’s ego. This transcends rationality unless you have a support system as in #8.
V/R J West
December 12th, 2008 at 4:19 PM
RE consensus among the military, don’t confuse invading Iraq in 2003 with finishing the job in 1991. And the consensus, which was negative in both cases, doesn’t change the fact that they were wrong about continuing into Baghdad. We should have removed Hussein when we had the whole world behind us.
.
As to the WMD not posing a threat to the US, well, consider what they did to us with a handful of box-cutters. The attack they tried in Amman was supposedly intended to kill tens of thousands of people, and it involved an amount of material that could be driven over the Mexican or Canadian border in one truck (or inside the bodies of many cars).
December 12th, 2008 at 5:58 PM
“We should have removed Hussein when we had the whole world behind us.”
Bear in mind, “the whole world behind us” was conditioned on us NOT removing Hussein.
December 12th, 2008 at 5:59 PM
1. Will give you the military POV on 1991. Schwartzkopf was ordered to stop short of Baghdad, not by Pres. Bush 1, but by his Saudi coalition partners.
2. Remember, that whole operation (except the amphibious feint in the gulf) originated out of Saudi Bases. (Which btw was the main source of UBL’s discontent with us.)
3. The Saudis were less worried about their Arab cousins in Iraq than the Iranian folks across the gulf.
4. Stopping may have been a mistake, but we were equal partners in the coalition -and to a nauseating degree.
5. Not surprised the 9/11 stuff came up.
6. CT is an intelligence and police function. As such, 911 was one of about 60 intelligence failures I have either observed or suffered from.
7. Mr. Freeh and Mr. Tenet should have been fired on 9/12/2001. When Mr. Bush awarded Tenet the Medal of Freedom, almost lost my lunch.
8. Doubt anything as heinous 9/11 will happen in the US soon. Young mideastern men are watched fairly closely, despite injunctions against profiling.
9.The effects of WMD use have disappointed their terrorist initiators. What happened in Bombay last week is more effective. AND ten well armed men wouldn’t stand off American authorities for sixty-two hours.
10. In the wide world of CT and international crime, its a given that the US is formidable in signal intercepts and overhead observation. Our human intelligence usually has to be handed to us by other players -and is disregarded or ignored often as not.
11. The NYPD intelligence operation compares very favorably to what the feds do with all their resources.
V/R JW
December 12th, 2008 at 10:02 PM
Powell is a product of the military bureaucracy. His soldierly attributes are far outweighed by his bureacratic (and self-serving) instincts.
Of course he’ll continue to indulge in casual denigration and backstabbing – it’s served him quite well so far.
December 13th, 2008 at 4:03 AM
Affirmative action – 1984 – Forest Service: We’re aware you’re the only applicant, a veteran, and well qualified, but we will not be filling the position unless it helps our EEO ratio.
Still Bitter.
December 13th, 2008 at 7:32 AM
“Ronald Reagan was the most popular President of his era, and he would have sneered at Powell’s willingness to grovel and cave.”
I can’t imagine RR sneering, unless it was written in the script. I think he’d just shake his head in disapproval.
Otherwise, a brilliant essay, on a par with Bill Whittle. J West is probably right on his points, but that doesn’t detract from the assessment of Powell.
December 13th, 2008 at 12:20 PM
At one point, I thought I was destined to be a writer, but my
ADD made the words jump around in my head, unable to be corraled into logical order. Although I don’t profess to possess your knowledge, you are able to put my thoughts “on paper” as I wish I could. It’s as satisfying as if I had written it myself. Thank you!
December 14th, 2008 at 6:16 PM
Most critiques of Powell here are right on the mark. He was a very average officer promoted along with several other black colonels over more well qualified contemporaries as the Army’s answer to the Black Power movement in the early seventies that had some Army Divisions in Europe and Korea almost at the point of mutiny. These newly-minted black general officers were used to bring administrative punishment and courts-marshal against the ringleaders. It quelled race riots and was a smart move at the time. Powell’s subsequent rise was due exactly for the reasons others have mentioned: He was a self-serving politician who played the bureaucratic game well–aided by the fact Republican Presidents found it convenient to use someone like Powell to prove their non-racist bona fides.
Again, as others have stated or hinted, I feel Powell feels himself becoming an irrelevant fifth wheel if he doesn’t jump on the Obama bandwagon and ingratiate himself with the left-wing MSM. Not my cup of tea.My parents both knew him and thought the same–my Father being a retired Army officer and a Hall of Fame College BB and tennis coach who got that way by really knowing how to judge horseflesh, i.e., character.
December 14th, 2008 at 9:08 PM
J West, listing w/# is annoying.