Powell creedence revival

This is the first of my two posts that commemorate tomorrow's Day of Shame. Please share your own recollections and analyses of — what should be — an unforgettably sorry day in American history!

* * *

The past year has seen much burnishing of the Colin Powell brand:

"Powell is a culturally individuated African American hero" -- Marc Ambinder

"enduring moral authority" -- Editors, The Guardian

"strength and legitimacy" -- Jon Soltz of VoteVets.org

There are those, however, who aren't so willing to vouch for Powell's respectability...

We may all love a reformed sinner, but pitching in for Obama and calling for a soft review of DADT shouldn't cut it when it comes to Powell. -- Emma Ruby-Sachs

Some of the year's best critical writing about Powell and his legacy comes from Chris Floyd, whom I will quote extensively here.

Democratic Party circles are in raptures over Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama. One can see the heavily-blinkered logic behind their elation; now that our national politics has been reduced to a petty squabble over spoils among shifting factions in the imperial court, a nod from a consummate courtier like Powell is indeed a glittering prize for an ambitious prince.

But out in the real world, where the operations of imperial power have left smoking trails of murder and ruin across the globe, the "endorsement" of a man who played an indispensable role in the slaughter of more than a million innocent people in a war of Hitlerian aggression should be regarded as a thing of shame, and vociferously rejected by anyone with a scintilla of honor or morality.

In fact, it is not too much of a stretch to say that Colin Powell is more responsible for the mass murder spree in Iraq than any other person except George W. Bush, who gave the actual order for the hit. For it was Powell who "made the sale" for the Bush Faction's deceitful warmongering campaign, with his infamous February 2003 presentation to the UN, laying out the false evidence about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. After that farrago of artfully delivered lies, the American Establishment -- urged on by the fawning, bloodthirsty commentariat -- lined up solidly behind the war. After all, if Colin Powell -- so "reasonable," so "honorable," so "honest" and "bipartisan" -- stood foursquare behind the Bush case for war, then it must be ironclad.

This was, again, the logic of courtiers, with little connection to reality. Powell's reputation as a wise, moderate, impartial statesman -- the very thing that made him the most effective shill for the war crime in Iraq -- was itself almost entirely a fiction. By the time he made his shameless UN appearance, Powell had already spent almost four decades as a bagman -- and frontman -- for some of the most vicious and ugly elements in American politics and government. From the My Lai massacre to Iran-Contra, from Washington's long and murderous collusion with Saddam to its long and murderous campaigns to remove him, Powell has been instrumental in perpetrating or covering up atrocities and abominations on a gigantic scale. [For details, see Robert Parry's investigation, "The Truth About Colin Powell."]

In a post titled "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien: Obama's New Advisor Stands By His War Crimes," Floyd quotes the great man himself:

"I'm well aware of the role I played [in the Iraq war]. My role has been very, very straightforward. I wanted to avoid a war. The president agreed with me. We tried to do that. We couldn't get it through the U.N. and when the president made the decision, I supported that decision. And I've never blinked from that. I've never said I didn't support a decision to go to war." -- Colin Powell

In an open letter, Ray McGovern challenges his former colleague to set the record straight:

Your U.N. speech of Feb. 5, 2003 left me speechless, so to speak - largely because of the measure of respect I had had for you before then.

Outrage is too tame a word for what quickly became my reaction and that of my colleagues in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), as we watched you perform before the Security Council less than six weeks before the unnecessary, illegal attack on Iraq.

The purpose - as well as the speciousness - of your address were all too transparent and, in a same-day commentary, we VIPS warned President George W. Bush that, if he attacked Iraq, "the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic."

That's history. Or, as investigative reporter Ron Suskind would say, "It's all on the record."

You have not yet summoned the courage to admit it, but I think I know you well enough to believe you have a Lady Macbeth-type conscience problem that goes far beyond the spot on your record.

With 4,141 American soldiers - not to mention hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens - dead, and over 30,000 GIs badly wounded, how could you not?

...

If we hear no peep out of you in the coming weeks, we shall not be able to escape concluding one of two things:

(1) That, as was the case with the White House Situation Room sessions on torture, you were a willing participant in suppressing/falsifying key intelligence on Iraq; or

(2) That you lack the courage to expose the scoundrels who betrayed not only you, but also that segment of our country and our world that still puts a premium on truth telling and the law.

McGovern's second theoretical conclusion is rather generous, as shown by a post from last year's Day of Shame commemoration:

Powell was far more than just horribly mistaken: the evidence is conclusive that he fabricated evidence and ignored repeated warnings that what he was saying was false... the State Department's intelligence staff, called the INR, prepared two memos on the presentation. They directly contradicted Powell on the aluminum tubes issue, but also warned him many of his claims were "weak," "not credible" or "highly questionable." -- Jonathan Schwarz

The record being what it is, it's hard to believe that anyone would be called upon to write such words as these:

"No president should ever take advice from this man again." -- Digby (after citing the following quote from a then-candidate for the presidency)

"He will have a role as one of my advisers" -- Barack Obama

The eve of the Presidential inauguration saw another flight of Airbushing Force One, as Powell was described thusly:

"remarkably consistent loyalty to a set of principles: truth, loyalty and determination" -- Barack Obama

I respectfully suggest that those with loyal determination for the truth find such sentiments — contradicted by too many smoking guns to count — rather painful to digest.

But we live in the age of "get over it," "let it go," and so forth — but only for the vilest and farthest-reaching acts of the most powerful, even as our prisons swell beyond all historic proportions.

Today, those who remember the past are condemned. Period.

Our new president says that "we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards" and "my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing."

Powell, shockingly, supports this "moving on" philosophy as regards his own malfeasance...

And so, my concern was not my past or what happened in Iraq, but where we're going in the future. My sole concern was where are we going after January 20 of 2009, not what happened in 2003.

... but the inimitable Mr. Floyd is on the case:

Well, if I had committed a hanging offense in 2003, I'd want to concentrate on 2009 too.... His concern is not "what happened in Iraq." This encapsulates perfectly the view of the entire bipartisan foreign policy establishment. They simply could not care less about what happened in Iraq: a million dead, four million dispossessed, social, economic, cultural ruin, torture, murder, destruction, suffering: It not their "concern." They do not give a damn. The only thing that matters is "where we're going in the future;" i.e., how can we -- not "we the people" but "we" the elite, "we" the deciders, "we" the wielders of imperial power -- retain our dominance, our privilege and the proper deference that is our due from the lesser peoples of the world.

If you're ashamed of the America that brought us the product called the "Iraq War," I ask you this: do not go gentle into that get-over-it.