The top of Powell’s trailblazing resume

Colin Powell died yesterday at 84 from covid. He had an astonishing 47 year career in the military and government. He was a trailblazer; first black to rise to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Advisor, Secretary of State. At his retirement in 1993 he was among the most, if not the most, popular public figures for his straightforward blunt talk, leadership qualities and believability.

Sadly, it was that believability that caused him to make the biggest mistake ever made by a revered U.S. public figure. In 2003, the George W. Bush Administration was struggling to sell their impending criminal Iraq war to U.S. and world public opinion. Anyone with an iota of common sense and decency saw thru the blizzard of lies.

So George W. Bush and his ferocious war cabinet of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, tapped Powel to present the faked evidence of Iraqi WMD programs before the world community at the UN. On February 5, 2003, Powell’s dramatic, sincere sounding, but utterly false testimony sealed the deal, forcing enough war skeptics off the fence and onto the march to ‘Shock and Awe.’

Had Powell not only refused to shill for a criminal war, but resigned with a public statement of condemnation, the war would almost certainly not occurred. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, over 5,000 U.S. military troops and civilian contractors, and trillions of dollars would have been saved.

In a way, it’s not surprising Powell dutifully ‘followed orders’ to grease the wheels of war. He used his 2 tours of duty in Vietnam, another totally unnecessary war, to begin his meteoric rise in military and government. As Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989, he was key architect of the unnecessary Panama War, which killed over 500 Panamanian civilians along with 26 Americans. Powell’s efforts allowed the George H.W. Bush Administration to claim we’d ‘thrown off’ U.S. defeatism following our devastating loss in Vietnam.

Powell ultimately and publicly regretted his fatal flaw that allowed a monstrous war to go forward. Much of Powell’s obituary will focus on his storied career. But for me, his enabling of the Iraq war goes to the top in my remembrance.