Until Barack Obama came along in 2008 and stole the show as the first ever black President of the United States, Colin Powell was Black America’s, and by extension Africa’s, shining example of a black man in powerful American places.
He was a Four-Star General in the US Army, a rare feat in an army where blacks feature prominently in Other Ranks but not so much in the Officer Corps.
He was National Security Adviser under President Ronald Reagan [1987-89], a very big achievement for the son of Jamaican immigrants who grew up in Harlem.
Under President George Bush Senior, Powell became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [1989-93], the highest rank in the superpower American military. In that position he directed Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the American-led operation to throw Saddam Hussein’s armies out of Kuwait.
Colin Powell is best remembered for something he said then at a press briefing, about the US military’s strategy in Desert Storm. Pointing at a map, he said of the Iraqi enemy, “First we shall cut it off. Then we shall kill it.” The cold and cruel remark made headlines around the world.
Perhaps stemming from his Desert Storm performance, US President George W. Bush appointed Powell as Secretary of State [2001-05]. In that role he championed the American effort to justify to the international community an invasion of Iraq. His long speech to the UN Security Council in 2003, alleging that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled Weapons of Mass Destruction [WMDs] will go down in history as the falsest justification for war ever made in its chambers. He even showed some satellite photos of trucks, which he said were mobile bioweapons laboratories.
The subsequent US invasion of Iraq, made without Security Council authorization and later termed by Kofi Annan as illegal under international law, cost more than a million lives. No Iraqi nuclear, biological or chemical WMDs were ever found.
General Colin Powell, who died at age 84 on Monday, October 18 of COVID-19 complications, later expressed regrets for his WMDs claim, saying it was “a blot” on his record. Regrets cannot bring back a million lives. It was a very big blot to an otherwise stellar career.
