Obituary: Colin Powell

The Secretary of State and Military General Failed to Comprehend and Defend the U.S.

Before he died this week, Colin Powell—who once pleaded for 76 minutes to the United Nations for permission to strike an enemy of the nation he served—told Barbara Walters: “I’m the one who [made the false assertion that there were “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq] on behalf of the United States to the world, [which] will always be a part of my record.”

Powell’s admission to the sensationalistic journalist is indicative of the late secretary of state’s atrocious—this is the correct word—philosophy and legacy. To my knowledge, the only prominent American to come close to making this point is America’s 45th president, Donald Trump.

The argument that Powell was a failed leader is clear and unequivocal—if one goes by reason. Colin Powell enacted and promoted statism, militarism and religionism in America. He did so persistently, consistently, explicitly, passionately and zealously. Powell manipulated, climbed within and thrived on the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower forewarned against—then spent his career being defensive about it.

It’s important to remember that Colin Powell wanted and sought to become president of the United States. What’s astonishing about this is that he sought the nation’s highest government position despite not having achieved a single military victory, including the so-called Persian Gulf war, which Leonard Peikoff dubbed the wrong war. Additionally, according to Time, Powell’s was the counsel that stopped President Clinton from retaliating against Iraq after Iraq tried to assassinate former President Bush. He was among the nation’s top military advisers during its worst incursions, including Bush’s Black Hawk Down debacle at Mogadishu in Somalia, which proved to be an African pivot point to Black Tuesday.

Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) graduate Colin Powell served two tours in Vietnam, sought and was granted a White House fellowship under President Nixon and advanced to general under President Carter. President Reagan tapped Powell as a deputy national security adviser, according to Time, then promoted him to a corner suite in the West Wing. The Times of London reported in 1986 that Colin Powell was part of the team that helped engineer the U.S. sale of arms to Iran. Think about that—Powell knowingly acted to trade military weapons with an Islamic dictatorship which had attacked America. Nevertheless, President George Herbert Walker Bush promoted Powell to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a post he also held under President Clinton. Powell’s is a dismal record.

Yet, by the spring of 2001, Powell had been confirmed as Secretary of State when, under President George W. Bush, Communist China dispatched a fighter jet, which collided with a U.S. Navy plane which was forced to land on a Chinese military base on an island in the South China Sea. Chinese boarded the American spy plane without permission and detained its 24-member crew—for days—refusing to release the crew or the plane. Powell met with China and told the press: "I hope it is a beginning of an end to this incident. I hope that this meeting will lead to the rapid release of all of the members of the crew ... and I hope also it will lead to the rapid return of our airplane."

Hope did not. President Bush chastised China, demanding that the Chinese return the U.S. plane. Though the crew was eventually released, China never released the plane. Powell said and did nothing, except that, while visiting Capitol Hill, in explicit reference to the regime that slaughtered hundreds of demonstrators at Tiananmen Square and held our Navy plane, he pleaded that the U.S. wanted “to be friends with anyone who wants to be friends with us.” By now, it’s clear how that story ended.

Powell had long since endorsed and was spokesman for the Reagan administration policy of arming radical Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan engaged against Soviet Russia. Years later, these same Islamic jihadists launched the worst attack on the U.S. mainland while Colin Powell was traveling overseas.

Colin Powell accomplished nothing for America’s military defense. His record of military service is, on the contrary, disgraceful. Powell also criticized Israel, siding with Palestinian terrorist and leader Yasser Arafat who was hiding from Israeli troops after attacking Israel yet again. Powell was first to travel to Afghanistan on a military plane in 2002 to meet with then-President Hamid Karzai. How that ended became clear earlier this year. Bush sent Powell to negotiate with North Korea after naming North Korea as part of an axis of evil. It’s clear how that ended, too.

Powell propagated America as a welfare state. The vaccinated 84-year-old general—who declined to publicize that he was diagnosed with a form of blood cancer (multiple myeloma) that weakens the immune system, putting him at highest risk of contracting the new virus (COVID-19)—constantly promoted ObamaCare, medical-industrial statism and the fallacy that health care is a right.

Powell also opposed emancipating gays in the military. Colin Powell, widely praised by leftists and conservatives alike, also proclaimed during his run-up to seeking the presidency that each American must serve the state and “share their God-given success” and that “all of us can spare an extra 30 minutes, all of us can spare an extra dollar” to help others—which he regarded as a moral duty. Unfortunately, it’s becoming clear that his call to moral duty seems likely to end in his favor, too.

Colin Powell was a celebrity general, one of America’s first state officials to ingratiate himself into the U.S. military and welfare state and become renowned for being renowned, not for his achievements. Colin Powell held and practiced the wrong ideas throughout his privileged career. He cost American lives and put America in danger.