The Powell Problem

By Danilo Mandić '07

Hypocrisy is an art. There is a limited number of Orwellian words and phrases that the ear can take in the course of a lecture. When purging an audience of any traces of critical thinking, one must be sure to prevent the occasional thought that might come up in the minds of some listeners – a thought like “perhaps 15 000 corpses are not a good step towards peace” or “perhaps a good way of preventing terrorism is to stop practicing it,” or just maybe, the most dangerous thought of them all: “perhaps the blame we are so eagerly willing to place on others is to be found in the mirror.” As challenging as this task is, Colin Powell, who recently spoke here at Princeton University, has proven to be a true artist.

University President Shirley Tilghman correctly pointed out in introducing the speaker that “Secretary of State Powell is not a stranger to conflict.” Nor is he a stranger to being a hypocrite. In a speech delivered in March of 1990, shortly after directing the slaughter of the people of Panama, Powell told a Californian audience that “our values, our economic system, and our altruism” are making the U.S. “lots of friends.” Unaware of this friendship, the victims of Powell’s attacks on Panama have spent ten years petitioning for compensation for death or injury of themselves or family members. On the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Panama (a deadly ground invasion as well as a highly destructive bombing campaign), hundreds of Panamanians protested Powell & Co., demanding compensation. Predictably, none has been provided to date.

Panama was merely the opening chapter of Powell’s commendable career as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His first attacks on Iraq set a precedent in targeting biological and chemical agents plants as well as nuclear reactors, a precedent that was condemned by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the European Parliament and, most importantly, the United Nations. The 1990 UN Resolution No.  45/52, aimed at the “establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the region of the Middle East,” which explicitly prohibited attacks on nuclear facilities in the region, was ignored in defiance of international law and American public opinion. To add insult to injury, Powell responded to a question concerning the number of civilian casualties of his actions by stating “It’s really not a number that I’m interested in.” (NYT 3.23.91). Indeed, the by-now infamous case of the baby food factory that was bombed as a “biological weapons facility” appears benign compared to statements like these.

Off duty, Powell was an energetic supporter and vocal advocate of the murderous sanctions in Iraq. “Sanctions are our policy in Iraq,” Powell declared on numerous occasions during the 90’s, embracing the economic warfare that resulted in the death of some 2.3 million civilians (500 000 of them children), widespread poverty, mass hunger and disease, tens of millions of refugees and a consolidation of power for Saddam Hussein. All those present in Richardson Auditorium had the opportunity to hear the four-star general who played cheerleader for what Human Rights Watch correctly calls a policy of “silent genocide” say the following:

“But democracy and ending of a regional conflict doesn't mean anything to people if they got no more food on their table, they're still dying from disease, still don't  have access to clean water, healthcare, a better life for their children. If we don't do that, then people will lose faith in all the wonderful things I talked about.”

These true words of wisdom might make us wonder whether there is a subtle irony to this point of his, in so far as Powell has systematically backed a policy that deliberately seeks to inflict “disease, poverty and hunger” in order to achieve “all the wonderful things…talked about.” This should hardly come as a surprise – Powell’s views on human rights are well represented by his thoughts on the Vietnam War. In his autobiography, he praises the harm done to villagers sympathetic to the NLF (National Liberation Front), including the burning of crops and houses.

"We burned the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo lighters... Why were we torching houses and destroying crops? Ho Chi Minh had said people were like the sea in which his guerillas swam. We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable. In the hard logic of war, what difference does it make if you shot your enemy or starved him to death?"

Examples of the “enemies” were, of course, the 347 unarmed and defenseless civilians in My Lai, who were brutally slaughtered by an American division. Tom Glen, a young soldier, reported his moral outrage to Colin Powell (who was a staff officer at US headquarters in Chu Lai at the time) and accused US forces of deliberate mass murder. In a report no doubt inspired by the “humanism” and “optimism” talked about at Richardson, Powell dismissed the accusation, reporting that “in direct refutation of this [Glen's] portrayal is the fact that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent." By 1970, reports of the My Lai massacre as well as Glen’s accusations were substantiated, marking the incident one of the most heinous American war crimes after World War II. The “excellent relations” between US soldiers and the Vietnamese population are apparently being used as an ideal for the analogous relations between US soldiers and the Iraqi people today.

Powell’s appointment to the position of Secretary of State gave him an opportunity to top the number of war crimes and broken international laws his career had seen. Or, in the language of the Crystal Tiger Award Committee, to “provide us with a richer humanity and inspire us to pursue it.”

Visiting Israel, a country that has defied overwhelmingly more UN resolutions than Iraq, Powell witnessed the aftermath of the Israeli massacre at Jenin, where Palestinian homes were bulldozed (evacuated or otherwise) and where foreign journalists reported 30 Palestinian corpses being buried in a mass grave. Local hospital personnel described seeing the Israeli military loading other corpses "into a refrigerated semi-trailer, and taking them out of Jenin.” Amnesty International concluded that “serious breaches of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed” and that the victims were mostly Palestinian civilians. In April 2002, shortly after his visit, Powell testified to a congressional panel that

“I've seen no evidence of mass graves ... no evidence that would suggest a massacre took place ... Clearly people died in Jenin - people who were terrorists died in Jenin.”

Perhaps the “optimism” that Powell found in Kennan, alas, blinded him to this massacre, or perhaps it was his fondness for Ariel Sharon who is, in case you forgot, a “man of peace.”

Revisiting Iraq was another shining example of Powell’s achievements. It defied the UN Charter directly, as opposed to bothering with mere Security Council Resolutions. UN inspectors were labeled “irrelevant” by Princeton’s latest Crystal Tiger recipient, as their thorough search for WMDs failed to provide any evidence of their existence. Also “irrelevant” is the fact that, after 1995, Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law Hussein Kamel testified to the UN that he personally ordered the destruction of Iraqi WMD and that chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter explained that the inspection efforts have corroborated Kamel’s claim. And what is most “irrelevant” is the unanimous claim among expert analysts and weapons inspectors that Iraq’s chemical weapon stockpiles have a short-life that makes their use after the mid-1990’s an impossibility. Powell was quick to cite former chief US weapons-inspector Dr. David Kay as saying that Iraq “maintained WMD programs and activities and that it “clearly had the intention to resume their programs” but was apparently less comfortable with quoting his later disclosure (made after Dr. Kay was off the payroll and once inspectors were in action) of the fact that he felt “We were dreadfully wrong. Almost completely wrong.”

Equally fabricated were Powell’s claims of an Al Qaeda-Iraqi connection. Echoed in his speech at Princeton was the general danger of “weapons of mass destruction as a first resort in the hands of terrorists” and as an obvious justification for the invasion of Iraq. Not only has no credible piece of evidence been provided for a link between the former Baghdad regime and any terrorist networks, but the CIA has reported that the potential for such a link was created by the Anglo-American invasion, as terrorist networks opened their ranks to governments in need of support and as Hussein’s regime looked frantically for allies against American aggression.

None of this prevented the Secretary of State from addressing the Security Council on Feb. 5^th, 2003 with a bold set of claims including the existence of “between 100 and 500 tons of chemical agent” and a quasi-presentation of “irrefutable” evidence of Hussein-backed Al Qaeda activity. His presentation was later refuted, most notably by Hans Blix, the head of the UN weapons inspector team. The US intelligence community felt “embarrassment” at the way Powell misinterpreted, omitted, and/or exaggerated pieces of intelligence information (see the film “Uncovered: the Whole Truth About the Iraq War”). All this, nevertheless, is a triviality considering the almost two-year-long campaign of hysterical, fear-mongering, deceitful propaganda that Powell has bombarded the American public with.

The result? An occupied, destroyed country with over fifteen thousand dead Iraqis, over 500 dead Americans (in counting), over 50,000 injured or maimed, countless refugees and internally displaced persons (IDP), a near-civil war state of disorder and instability, a scorn of global public opinion and the UN, and an assurance that the oil of the region will go to New York and London rather than to Iraqi people. Add that to a crime of aggression, and you’ve got a prime candidate for a Crystal Tiger Award.

The hypocrisy would not be complete, however, if the occasion was appropriate. Thus, we have a prime figure of the Bush Administration honoring George Kennan, a vocal critic of the second Iraqi invasion. Those attending Powell’s talk might remember his cryptic grin when mentioning the “advice” and the “suggestions” of Kennan’s letters to him. Interestingly, he didn’t mention whether they echoed Kennan’s conviction that the war was “wrong in principle.” Similarly, he didn’t mention Kennan’s firm belief in diplomatic solutions – the kind that Powell dismissed as “irrelevant” in the months building up to March  20^th, 2003,  including several initiatives of the General Assembly, a SC draft resolution and Iraqi offers at an alternative weapons inspection procedure.

One has to do a bit of translating to understand Powell. “Democracy,” as spoken of in his lecture, was Powell’s enemy for the past two years. In the months building up to the war in Iraq, Secretary of State Powell traveled to Turkey on several occasions and met with Turkish government officials with very simple demands: Turkey was to ignore the will of 98% of its population and grant the US free usage of its airbases to assist the illegal war effort. Turkey’s refusal was labeled “undemocratic” and Powell clearly conveyed the Bush Administration’s willingness to cut off much-needed financial support for Turkey if it disobeyed. Thus, Turkey’s acting in splendid defiance of its population is “democracy.” Similarly, the unelected Iraqi interim government that is censoring any media critical of US policies and repressing dissidents, as well as Karzai’s council of unelected Afghan officials, is “democracy.” Iraqis, Afghans and world opinion tend to disagree but, as we are told:

“Creating a democracy in a place and out of material where there's no experience with democracy won't be easy. But Ambassador Bremer, working with the Iraqi Governing Coalition, working with the United Nations and working with our coalition partners, will succeed.”

Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), then, being officers handpicked by the Pentagon, are the representatives of “democracy.” Giving the three Iraqi peoples the elections they have been demanding for the past several months would be, conversely, “undemocratic.” Stalin would have been amused.

Considering the above, it is ironic that Powell’s career and even rhetoric represent the very statism and imperialism that George Kennan spent his life fighting.

Powell had a chance to see a lot during his visit: he saw standing ovations; he saw the Prince photo of hundreds of students waiting for hours in line to get tickets for his lecture, in much the same fashion Detroit kids wait to see Eminem; he saw Princeton’s very own ROTC military recruiters parading in his honor; he saw some of the future joint chiefs of staffs and potential secretaries of state (oh the glory!) showing their admiration and respect for his accomplishments. What Powell did not see is the frantic woman screaming “You killed my son! You killed my son!” from the Tiger Park protest as his limousine was passing it. He also didn’t see this mother of a dead American soldier fall to the ground crying as she remembered her son’s death in Powell’s glorious military project. Perhaps the Crystal Tiger Award committee might have considered Powell’s “transformative impact” on her life.

Danilo can be reached at dmandic@princeton.edu.