Colin Powell

Colin Powell made the news a few days  ago by endorsing Obama for re-election . This was neither a surprise nor news. Obama’s cheerleaders in the  traditional media  did not even try to make it a big deal, as they had done with his double crossing McCain in 2008. Powell, a man who perhaps could have become president in 1996, is fading from the scene and from the public’s awareness.

History, I think, should see him as America’s  most over rated  general since Douglas MacArthur, and a man whose overall impact on the nation was harmful. It was Powell the general who helped persuade the first President Bush to stop action in the first war in Iraq in the midst of a rout that would have removed Hussein from power and eliminated any pretext for a second war. Later, it was Powell the politician who made the case to the public for an unnecessary second war in Iraq on the basis of claims the Iraqi government had dangerous weapons no one ever found. It was Powell who supported and perhaps helped sell the administration of George W. Bush on nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan (“you break it, you fix it”),  leading to years of futile effort, bloodshed,  and cost with no legitimate  purpose. Then after things went obviously bad in those efforts, he turned on his benefactors and recast himself as an opponent of the wars and occupations he had supported, helped start, and urged prolonging.

His career calls to mind, not Eisenhower or Grant, but rather MacArthur and George McClellan, two other political generals who for a time enjoyed fame and reputation far beyond their accomplishments and who also had their trouble with loyalty.