Posted by
Bert Chapman on Monday, October 20, 2008 9:57:14 AM
Like a teenage schoolgirl in the blush of first love, the media establishment's hearts are fluttering with the news that Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama. This is viewed as being an ephiphany like moment in which the "anointed one" has received a papal like blessing from one of America's leading military figures. What you won't hear in most media stories is that this is a very calculated move on Powell's part. Colin Powell, despite being an amiable person with a significant political and military career, is the consummate Washington insider. A centrist "Republican" at best, Powell is eager to ingratiate himself with a potential Obama Administration, and may be angling for a cabinet level position like Secretary of Defense. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell was also very circumspect in the the circumstances in which he would permit the use of military force. By no means can he be regarded as a first-rate or innovative military strategic thinker. Powell acceded to the military's adopting the mushy and morally ambiguous "don't ask, don't tell" policy of homosexuals serving in the military instead of vigorously insisting on the military retaining its traditional prohibition on open service by homosexuals as being incompatible with military cohesiveness.
Powell was only an average Secretary of State at best. He let himself be seduced into thinking the "Road Map" was the best way to achieve peace between the Israelis and Palestineans and he refused to conduct vigorous defenses of the war in Iraq when things got difficult after Saddam Hussein's regime was overthrown. A truly honest historical biography of Colin Powell cannot be written for another couple of decades due to a much critical primary source material being classified. When such a biography is written, it should reflect that Colin Powell was more adept at timely political maneuvering whenever the political winds changed instead of being a first rate military leader, diplomat, or strategic advisor to Presidents. A good historical figure to compare Colin Powell with is Count Talleyrand, the French foreign minister from the late 1700s and early 1800s who managed to serve and survive French political regimes as diverse as the monarchy, the various Republican regimes including Robespierre's Reign of Terror, and Napoleon. Any historian desiring to write a comparative biography of Talleyrand and Colin Powell will find remarkable and eerie similarities between these two figures.