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“Colin Powell, the first Black U.S. secretary of state, a top military officer and a national security adviser, died on Monday at age 84… Powell served three Republican presidents in senior posts and ascended to leadership of the U.S. military as it was regaining its vigor after the trauma of the war in Vietnam, where he served two tours as an Army officer.” Reuters
Many on both sides applaud Powell’s lifetime of service:
“To survey the triumphs and disappointments of post-World War II American history is to marvel at their entwinement with the biography of Colin Luther Powell, who died Monday at 84. The career of this remarkable soldier-statesman… would have been unimaginable but for the greatest triumph of his era, the civil rights revolution. Yet Mr. Powell began his rise in a nearly all-White Army officer corps by serving in the disaster known as the Vietnam War…
“His personal and professional outlook shaped in that crucible, Mr. Powell, as an increasingly influential adviser to Republican Cabinet officers and presidents, went on to help shape history himself: the United States’ triumph over the Soviet Union in the Cold War; the American victory in the 1991 Gulf War; the U.S. response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan…
“This necessarily partial list barely does justice to Mr. Powell’s full impact on the country, which reached a kind of peak with the Powell-for-president boom in the mid-1990s. He demurred, but not before the phenomenon inspired many Americans, of all races, to take more seriously the possibility that Americans would elect a president of color.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
“Way back in 1995, I stood in a long line to get a copy of Powell’s autobiography, My American Journey, autographed… At that point, the only thing most Americans knew about Powell is what they had seen of him in the television briefings during the Persian Gulf War – professional, direct, the occasional dramatic flare from the simplicity of his statements, cutting through the usual Washington jargon: ‘Our strategy to go after this army is very, very simple. First we’re going to cut it off, and then we’re going to kill it.’…
“For a potential presidential candidate, it is near ideal to be associated with traits like directness, clarity, the sense of being a classic American success story and a key architect of a resounding U.S. military victory. It’s hard to overstate how much people in the early 1990s just expected Powell to be the first African American president someday…
“But by 1995, Powell had decided not to run for president – Bill Clinton was allegedly terrified of running against him. Powell told the public he lacked the passion and commitment for political life; his wife, Alma, reportedly threatened to leave him if he ran for president, fearing Powell would be targeted for assassination by a racist. We’re left to wonder how recent American history might have turned out differently if Alma Powell had less fear of her husband being assassinated.”
Jim Geraghty, National Review
Other opinions below.
“Powell became George W. Bush’s first-term Secretary of State, and the media obituaries fault his famous speech making the case for war with Iraq based on the threat of weapons of mass destruction. This has always struck us as unfair. Powell based his remarks on the intelligence offered by the CIA, and only later did the U.S. government learn that much of it was mistaken. He acted honorably in supporting Mr. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq…
“Colin Powell’s greatest legacy is less the decisions he made in office than the example of his life and service. He exemplified what can be achieved in America, no matter your birth, and he repaid the country many times over for the opportunities it provided.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“Powell, the first African-American chairman of the Joint Chiefs and secretary of State, was a widely admired symbol of the American Dream, and rightly so. A very capable man, he was also a conventional thinker whose perennial denunciations of the Republican Party had become toothless and predictable even before Donald Trump showed up on the scene. Over the years, we had substantial differences with him on politics and policy…
“Powell’s disaffection with his own Republican Party began in 2008, when he endorsed Barack Obama, and only grew over time. He was never a conservative, but a man of the center-right who moved left over time. He won’t be remembered, though, for his positions on politics, but for a long, consequential career of service to a country that he loved and that benefited from his devotion. R.I.P.”
The Editors, National Review
“A poor black kid from the Bronx, son of immigrants, rises to become an iconic American hero… Powell represents what our military can and should be. Non-political, fiercely patriotic, ambitious for nation but not for self. He believed we needed a strong military, not for conquest, but to deter our enemies from attacking us. He embodied Reagan’s ‘Peace through Strength.’”
K.T. McFarland, Fox News
“Powell gamely took on the task of being the face of the Bush administration’s case for invasion to the international community, enumerating the CIA’s alleged evidence of Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda. He immediately scrapped the speech materials that were first given to him — which he described as ‘bull----’ in part because of how poorly it was argued — and worked directly with the director of the CIA at the time, George Tenet, to build what was meant to be an airtight case for describing Hussein as an intolerable threat to the world…
“It would later turn out that Powell’s more refined and rigorous version of the speech was also, well, horse manure. While in many mainstream media accounts Powell is portrayed as a victim of poor intelligence — and he himself benefited from implying this was the case — there are, in fact, many indicators that he knew he was using poor intelligence and actively manipulating it to strengthen the case for war… Powell’s legacy does not rest solely on his actions regarding the invasion of Iraq. But when it came to that momentous decision, his behavior was shameful.”
Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC
“The iconic general's endorsement of the Obama campaign in 2008 was among the most important we would receive… At a moment when Obama's own patriotism and qualifications were under attack -- a precursor to the withering nativism that would unfold over the next decade -- Powell's eloquent imprimatur was a watershed in Obama's march to victory…
“Powell, who many thought might become the barrier-breaking president Obama turned out to be, was among the few people who could fully appreciate the responsibilities and burden of being The First. He understood what it took to defeat malign stereotypes and what it meant to carry with him the hopes and dreams of millions, who saw themselves and their children in his example. Even as we no longer can benefit from his wisdom, his example lives on, an inspiration to future generations. Rest in peace, General.”
David Axelrod, CNN
