Powell’s exit does not mean a change in direction. No one listened to him, anyway.
By: Hank Kalet
So long, Colin Powell. Congratulations Condi Rice.
Whatever.
The standard story line in Washington is that with Secretary Powell gone, the Bush administration will be free to follow an even more conservative foreign policy agenda. The standard line, of course, assumes that Secretary Powerll actually had the ear of the president. All evidence is to the contrary.
Then there is Ms. Rice, the national security advisor who admitted to not having read a major national security memo the one in which the administration was warned that Osama bin Laden intended to attack on foreign soil. Hey, you know, I don’t read everything that crosses my desk, but then I’m not being briefed on national security matters.
And, anyway, Ms. Rice does read the newspapers for our fearless leader.
Here are a couple of good pieces on the Powell legacy:
A politician, not a diplomat" by John Nichols in The Nation.
"Too much the good soldier" by Derrick Z. Jackson in The Boston Globe.
A taste: "Powell once said the lesson of the Vietnam War was "when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons." He said senior officers "bowed to groupthink," spreading "the comforting illusion of secure hamlets" and "inflated progress reports." When it was his turn to call the shots, Powell bowed to groupthink. He could have been the last line of defense against a madness that has now killed hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq. Powell instead crawled down into the UN to spin a credible illusion, ensnaring himself in the deadly lie."