Jacoby Speaks Truth to Power about Colin Powell

(Washington, D.C.): President-elect George W. Bush is expected shortly to
name his national
security team and it is universally expected that he will nominate General Colin Powell to serve
as his Secretary of State. The former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is held in high esteem
by virtually everyone on both sides of the aisle and his speedy confirmation is assured.

Unfortunately, Gen. Powell’s laudable qualities, while numerous, are not necessarily those
required of a Secretary of State. As Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby
courageously points out
today, what will be needed, particularly in dealing with the world Bill Clinton and Al Gore
are
bequeathing to their successors, is:

Someone who is not uneasy with the assertion of U.S. leadership or nervous about the
projection of power abroad. Bush’s senior Cabinet official will need to assist him in
making hard decisions — even unpopular or dangerous ones, if that is what the national
interest and the pursuit of world peace require. He will have to be unshakable when it
comes to first principles and able to recognize at once when they are threatened.

Mr. Jacoby argues persuasively that “That is not a job description Powell can meet.”
Three
factors make this a particularly troubling conclusion: First, like most Presidents who come to
office from a governor’s mansion, Mr. Bush is likely to rely especially heavily upon his foreign
policy experts. Second, Gen. Powell reportedly is favoring a choice for Secretary of Defense —
another governor, Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania — whose selection would, among other things,
assure the former JCS Chairman’s absolute domination of the U.S. government’s security policy-
making machinery. And three, given Gen. Powell’s stature, it may prove even harder for Mr.
Bush to discipline him, should that prove necessary, than it was for Harry Truman to contend
with an insubordinate Douglas MacArthur.

Under these circumstances, even those who admire Colin Powell and applaud his willingness
to
render further service to his country would hope that he might do so in a position consistent with
his current interests and, arguably, less fraught with potential problems for the Nation and its
new President — for example, as Secretary of Education and/or Health and Human Services.

George W. Bush has made it all but official that — assuming he becomes president — Colin
Powell will be his nominee for secretary of state. It is a nomination sure to generate much
applause. Herewith a dissent.

In many ways, of course, Powell would be an admirable addition to any president’s Cabinet.
By
all accounts he is a man of fine character. His reputation could hardly be more lustrous. When he
considered running for president himself five years ago, both parties vied for his favor and
Americans of every political stripe acclaimed him a hero. He is dignified, tough, patriotic, and —
not a small thing after two terms of Bill Clinton — manifestly an adult.

His personal story is wonderfully inspirational. Born in Harlem, reared in the South Bronx,
Powell started out mopping floors in a Pepsi-Cola plant and wound up a four-star general, the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the first black American to be seriously thought of as
presidential material. It is a classic only-in-America saga, straight out of Horatio Alger.

But would he make a good secretary of state?

George W. Bush, it is clear, has no more of “the vision thing” than his father did; when it
comes
to foreign affairs, he has even less. More than most presidents, he will depend on his secretary of
state for insight into international developments and for guidance in setting America’s course in
the world.

After the irresolution of the Christopher-Albright years, the next secretary of state must be
someone who is not uneasy with the assertion of US leadership or nervous about the projection
of power abroad. Bush’s senior Cabinet official will need to assist him in making hard decisions
— even unpopular or dangerous ones, if that is what the national interest and the pursuit of world
peace require. He will have to be unshakable when it comes to first principles and able to
recognize at once when they are threatened.

And when the United States has to rally reluctant allies or face down menacing foes, the
incoming secretary of state will need the skill to make America’s case, as Thomas Jefferson once
put it, “in terms so plain as to command their assent.”

That is not a job description Powell can meet. He has many terrific qualities, but strategic
vision
and innovation have never been among them. He is a company man who plays by the rules — the
company in his case being the Army, in which he spent nearly all his adult life. He is a classic
consensus-seeker, a cautious insider who rarely moves until he knows that everyone is on board.
Thinking “outside the box” is not a Powell trademark; his instinct is always for the status quo,
and time and again it has occluded his judgment.

No chapter in Powell’s life illustrates the problem better, ironically, than the one that made
his
reputation: the Gulf War.

To this day he is routinely described as a “hero” of that war, and yet if his advice had been
followed when the crisis with Iraq erupted, the result would have been disaster.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Powell was prepared to let him keep
it.
As Michael Gordon and retired General Bernard Trainor reported in “The Generals’ War,” their
detailed account of the war in the Gulf, Powell was adamant that Kuwait was not worth fighting
for. “The American people do not want their young dying for $1.50-a-gallon oil,” he insisted to
then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. “We can’t make a case for losing lives for Kuwait.” Only if
Saddam attacked Saudi Arabia did Powell think America should act. When President Bush
bluntly vowed that Saddam’s aggression would be rolled back — “This will not stand” — Powell
was dismayed.

Even when the decision was made to confront Iraq, Powell opposed the use of military force.
He
was convinced, he told Britain’s air chief marshal in October 1990, that economic sanctions
would bring Saddam around, and he was willing to wait 12 to 15 months, and maybe as long as
two years, for them to work. In Powell’s view, wrote Gordon and Trainor, “war with Iraq …
would be politically damaging to Western interests in the Middle East.”

And as soon as Iraqi forces were out of Kuwait, Powell called for ending the war at once.
Saddam’s Republican Guard was allowed to escape — and then to brutally cut down the countless
Iraqis who rose up in desperation to topple the dictator.

This reluctance to act in the face of Saddam’s aggression was not an uncharacteristic lapse.
Powell has repeatedly counseled passivity and nonintervention.

During the Reagan administration, he was against arming the Afghan rebels with Stinger
missiles
— weapons that would prove critical in driving out the Soviet occupiers and beginning the end of
the Cold War. In 1989, he opposed the use of US troops to help Panamanian rebels depose
strongman Manuel Noriega. The result was that the coup failed, resulting in a massive and costly
invasion 10 weeks later.

And as Serb killers were slaughtering Bosnians by the tens of thousands, Powell rejected any
American use of force to stop the bloodshed — or even, at first, to airlift food to civilians. “When
the fighting broke out, should the West have intervened militarily?” he asked in 1995. “Nobody
really thinks it has a vital interest.”

A U.S. general who cannot discern a vital Western interest in stopping genocide in the heart
of
Europe is not the man to run the State Department.

Once the crucial decision to act has been made and a leader is needed to carry it out, Powell
is
superb. But muaking that decision — especially in the absence of strong public support — takes
vision, boldness, and clear strategic judgment. Powell’s gifts are many, but those are not among
them.