THE LEGEND OF COLIN POWELL

The article you cited has the following quotation in it by David Roth:

"Powell has never felt a need to rebel or to assert his own desires apart from others around him. Every choice he makes is taken with an awareness of those others made before him. Each is made with an interest in the effects it will have on others."

Do you think this is a fair assessment of Mr Powell?

What in this article outlines anything or demonstrates anything "objectionable" about Powell?

Edgarbylthe is your distrust of Powell that he is inside the system? I agree with fishin' I did not see anything to detract from Powell's honor.

He goes along with the system, right or wrong. He treats evil-doers and honorable persons the same, without injecting his personal belief system into the formula. He is the sort, apparently, who would do a Hitler's bidding (I was just following orders), or a Roosevelt's bidding, depending which one he happened to be called upon to serve. If he were president he would preside over an orderly ship of state, perhaps, but I don't see any vision for the nation coming of it.

i think i have to agree with edgarblythe, especially the lack of vision part. he seems more of a technician than a visionary.

IMO, you are inferring quite a few things about him based on one person's biography and review of events. Some people are "revolutionary", others are "evolutionary". I've never seen him claim, or others state that he is one or the other. Both CAN BE effective. Clinton for one, was very effective at working within the system. He wasn't "revolutionary" in any sense of the term yet he's identified by many as one of the great Presidents.

Based on the article you provided the link to, he didn't know any of these people were "evil-doers" until long after the fact so it is hard to tell what he would have done had he been there at the time the events listed actually occurred. The entire article covers his military career where he is expected to do exactly what he is told to do unless those orders violate the law.

Last, "injecting personal belief" is exactly what you have been critical of Bush for doing all along yet here you criticize Powell for NOT doing it. Which is it? You can't have your cake and eat it too.

It is Bush's personal belief I object to most about the man, since it runs counter to most of what I believe.

I am not letting this single article say it all for me. I have, as stated here, been speaking out on this for a number of years. I just happen to agree with the way this person lays it out. It is distortions such as that that lead to false assumptions and pointless arguments.

I could point out a few distortions in this article just as easily.

"He ran the military at the end of the cold war, yet he hesitated to reconfigure the armed forces for a new world."

Apparently the author is unaware the the JCS doesn't configure the military. The Congress does which is why many in the Congress are up in arms right now over the elimination of many DoD jobs.

The author uses evidence like a citation from one of Powell's medals that cites him as being able to grasp and analyze problems in an attempt to prove that he should have managed to put minute pieces together based entirely on the name of a village even though the events where that village's name came up were a year apart. Can you recall the name of every person or event from your day exactly one year ago today? I know I sure can't.

All in all the author brings up a lot of issues but he comes across as a man with a grudge and he doesn't manage to find one single issue where Powell should have known what was going on at the time of the events listed to do much of anything about them. He's an armchair general with the advantage of being able to look at what transpired between the date Powell was first involved to the time the article was written. I'd guess that if Powell had the ability to see 30 years into the future he would have made different decisions at the time. Unfortunately, that isn't an ability humans possess at this point in out evolution.

One man's politics is another man's grudge, I guess. Of course not every word in the article is gospel. But the overall thrust is, in my estimation, right on. Call it a grudge if you will; I call it honest perception.

I sincerely hope this man never runs for the presidency.

I don't understand?

Your estimate of him was, "If he were president he would preside over an orderly ship of state, perhaps, but I don't see any vision for the nation coming of it."

Wouldn't anything like that already be a huge relief after the like of Bush Jr.?

I mean, I understand that you'd prefer a Dem president (so would I, in fact) - but say that, for some reason, the election of another Republican president were inevitable, isn't this the most harmless you could get, relatively? I mean, if it were inevitable, for some reason (say, the Dems put up another McGovern, or would allow Gore a second run), wouldn't you wish he'd run against the likes of Cheney in the primaries?

Assuming you are indeed with me on the observation that Powell would at least be a more harmless president than Cheney'd be or Bush jr. is, the only reason I can think of to hope Powell wouldn't run is that he'd stand more of a chance against whoever the Dems put up. Whereas a more clearly rabid Republican would have less of a chance, and thus be preferable. That's a very risky gamble to take. Two words suffice to sketch the risk you are proposing taking, it seems: Bush Jr. He was voted in, too, after all, in what should have been an easy campaign, for the Dems.

I personally never had much up with the kladderadatsch theory - it's good if things get worse, cause the worse they get, the sooner the people will see the light and revolt. That got the world into a lot of trouble.

Anyone compared with Bush looks like a welcome relief. Don't be fooled. Powell is not a Democrat in Republican clothing, as some Dems wishfully think. He is in bed with Bush and Cheney. He would not reverse many of Bush's decisions except for the reasons any polititian reverses course: to get votes. He is not the benevolent leader he almost appears to be. As for a real candidate in the next election, I haven't any idea who to support. It is not enough to simply not be Bush. The candidate has to show me something to pull my vote away from the Green ticket.

edgarblythe: well said!!!!

Well, yeh, I wasn't brainstorming about what it would take to get you to vote Rep - I'm not in your country, but if I were, I wouldn't be able to imagine myself voting Republican either, not Powell nor anyone. That wasn't what I was asking about.

You said, quite vehemently, "I sincerely hope this man never runs for the presidency". What would be so bad about it? Note: I'm not asking what would be bad about President Powell - as much as about any Republican president, I'm sure. But why would it be so terrible if he ran - why would it be worse than Republican primaries without Powell?

That's what I didn't get about your post. Powell may not be your vote's choice, but as a Republican, surely, he is as harmless as at this moment you can expect - as you suggested with your earlier quote yourself. So to want him, in any case, out of the race, leaving the primaries to Cheney or whoever instead - what's the logic behind that? What would be better about that?

That's what I was curious about, and thinking about what you could have meant, the only thing I could come up with was that gamble, of rather having a Republican hawk who'll lose, than a Powell who might win - which involves the very real risk that, without Powell in the race, the hawk wins anyway, and you're really up sh!t creek. Unless one does hope for the kladderadatsch, according to the logic of which a bad republican is good, because he'll make the voters swing all the more to the left in the end. Nader used that tack in the 2000 elections suggesting that it might be better if Bush were elected rather than Gore, as it would turn the voters back on their tracks and to the left all the sooner - but as I said, I consider that logic quite perfidious, as the example I think bears out.

Sorry. You know how one gets a mindset and fails to fully recognize another's meaning sometimes. The reason I hope he does not run is simple: He has a sympathetic ear from far too many moderate and even liberal potential voters. I believe he would stand a very good chance of getting himself elected. What is bad about that is what I have already said. He would be beholden to his Republican cohorts first and president of all second.
I don't believe Cheney's health will allow him to run that far in the future. I also believe that when Bush leaves office the public will be ready for something different. That bodes well for the Democrat, unless Powell is in the running - then anything could happen.

I'm not well educated on this subject at hand, but had read through the posts here earlier. I've just found an interesting piece written by (Canadian) former Bush speech writer David Frum...
http://slate.msn.com/id/2077778/
(I suppose I should add that I think Frum could lick a platoons' boots clean and still have appetite for a bum or two)

I've been somewhat on the fence about powell...up until he folded, for all intents and purposes, on affirmative action. If you see the passion in the speeches he made for AF in the past, then compare that to the post-bwana-said-shut-up, it makes me sick to my friggin stomach.

hail hail, snood

Powell continues to discredit himself by continuing to tell Bush lie after lie.