colin powell and willamette university and iraq war and question and answer

The story, possibly apocryphal, is attributed to Harry Truman that when he looked for leaders for his and the next generation, he wanted "C" students. The "A" students were too interested in following directions in order get things "right" (and therefore weren't good at taking charge) and the "B" students often weren't quite as sharp as the "A" students, but "C" students often were people of big ambition and enormous capabilities who just didn't find the work of school that compelling for them. Colin Powell is one such "C" student. Though graduating late in the 1950s from CCNY in Geology, he (who confessed briefly that he was a "C" student) had a steady and impressive rise in the US Military and ended up serving under four US Presidents as National Security Advisor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State. As a child of Jamaican immigrants growing up in the Bronx in the 1940s, Powell's story is riveting, impressive and inspiring. When Thurgood Marshall retired from the US Supreme Court in 1991, he was quoted as saying that he did his best with what he had. The same can be said, without equivocation, about Colin L. Powell.

Putting His Visit in Perspective

Had he retired, like most sensible men, at age 65 his reputation would still be nearly untarnished, at least in the mainstream media. But, he decided to stay on the job until his 66th year, and in that year he did some things that have made many people reconsider their opinion of him. Granted, there is probably a greater number who are unaware of or unconcerned with his speech before the United Nations making the case for War against Iraq in February 2003, but make it he did. He admitted tonight that he had four days to make one of the crucial determinations of his speech--what was in the aluminum tubes in Iraq that our intelligence picked up. In that brief admission is what I consider the tragedy of Colin Powell. He, and many others, probably don't see him as a tragic figure, so I will have to lay out the case, after explaining a few other things.

Powell was on campus today in order to plug Willamette's new fund-raising effort. A dinner, awash in corporate dollars, is going on right now to help the University towards its first million or more, but he preceded his evening with the big donors with a question and answer period of one hour with about 800 people. Lest there be any doubt in my perspective, I think there is nothing wrong with the University inviting Powell to speak, to answer questions or even to be the keynoter for its fund-raising campaign. My thesis about his February 2003 UN appearance, detailed below, is that he was as much a victim of forces beyond his control at that time as a person who told untrue or incomplete statements to that body to try to get their support (which never came) for launching our March 2003 attack on Iraq.

The Forum

Let there also be no doubt when I say that I think the Q & A forum, which Powell said he really liked, was really set up to favor him. People were only allowed to ask one question. They had to be brief. He could reframe the question the way he wanted and address what he wanted. He could "set the tone" of the whole. And, he did so. But something about his manner of presentation reminded me eerily of George Will, who, in his visit to Willamette last year stressed how he was very committed to ideas but who, when push came to shove, only trotted out some old skeletons for display. We got a small insight into Colin Powell today, but no one should be convinced that we had anything like a real conversation with him.

Well, back to the campus event. Powell was available from 5:00-6:00 p.m. (the Dean made sure that things stopped right on time) for Q & A. About ten of the 800 or so people present had a chance to ask him a question. The questions ranged from inquiries about what advice Powell would give to minorities to his opinions on non-violence to his role in the "Don't Ask/Don't Tell" policy regarding gays in the military in 1993 to some questions about the Iraq War. One humorous story he told, not without a little partisan undertone, described the different styles of the four chief executives under whom he worked (Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II). President Reagan would often ignore the specific points Powell made about internal struggles within the cabinet and, on one occasion, pointed to a squirrel outside the Oval Office eating some nuts he had put out for them when Powell was trying to make what he thought was an important point. Powell charitably interpreted this as Reagan's wise way of telling his subordinates to solve their own problems while he focused on larger issues. On the other hand, he seemed bewildered by the informality of the Clinton White House, where he served for nine months, recalling his discomfort with Clinton and Gore just "pulling up chairs" when they wanted to gather around the table with the Cabinet.

The next essay describes his handling of Iraq questions and deals with what I have called his "tragedy."

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