His Masters House; Colin Powell, the Soldier
Sell-out
By Sheila Samples
"I was never kinder to the old man than during the
whole week before I killed him"~~Edgar Allen Poe, The
Tell-Tale Heart
He has always been there, barely visible -- his comforting presence
more felt than seen. From ROTC to Vietnam,
from Iran-Contra to Desert Storm, from the Joint Chiefs to
Foggy Bottom, he has been quietly steady, honest,
trustworthy and obedient. Both in and out of uniform, Secretary
of State Colin Powell has served brilliantly.
Powell is the creme da la creme of the media's ability to
create heroic caraciatures, exceeded only by their
carefully constructed image of George W. Bush.
Although Powell's military career dates back to
Vietnam, he first appeared fullblown in America's line of
vision during the first Persian Gulf War where, as Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, he is credited with orchestrating that wild
and bloody foray that ended in a Feb. 1991 crescendo of
bullets in the backs of tens of thousands of Iraqi
civilians promised safe passage back to Baghdad along
what was to become the Highway of Death.
The Good Soldier
Colin Luther Powell is a good soldier. Few know just
how good, because Powell is a walking dichotomy -- very
adept at showing only his illuminated side to moonstruck
supporters. Americans who so generously bestow political
capital upon Powell are either unaware of, or do not
believe, the deadly murkiness of his dark side. They
see Powell striding confidently across the international
landscape -- compassionate, moderate, diplomatic -- issuing
gentle, tongue-clucking "warnings" to those who resist
the gift of U.S. hegemony. They fail to note the chaos and
the tangle of bodies that inevitably pile
up behind Powell in whatever country he approaches with
outstretched hand...
Americans are not only blind, they appear to be deaf to
those who chronicle Powell's evolution from a
cunning eager-to-please young officer on a military fast
track to a cold-blooded unrepentant shock-and-awe
executioner. What Powell has done -- is doing -- for those
he serves is public record. Why he would do these
things was put into powerful perspective last year by singer Harry
Belafonte, who pointed out
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/10/15/belafonte.powell/
that Powell, whose initial stance on policies is to be
admired, always "sells out" when pressured.
"There's an old saying," Belafonte said, "In the days
of slavery, there were those slaves who lived on the plantation and
there were those slaves that lived in the house. You got the
privilege of living in the house if you served the master...exactly
the way the master intended to have you serve him."
In the ensuing media furor, Belafonte, an avid United Nations
supporter, refused to back down. In fact, he was eager to put his
remarks into perspective -- "The idea that you work in the
house of the master is almost in itself its own opportunity to do some
mischief and make a difference, but when you are in that place and you
help perpetuate the master's policy that perpetuates oppression and
pain for many others, then something has to be said about it,"
Belefonte said. "And the master in this instance, of
course, was the president of the United States."
Powell harrumphed that Belafonte's slave reference was
an "unfortunate" throwback to
another place and another time and he was proud to
be serving his nation and his president.
Unfortunately for the nation, George W. Bush is president, and
it appears that Powell is increasingly unable to separate the
two, making "honor" as well
as "truth" an early casualty of war...
Other Places, Other Times
In 1996, investigative journalists Robert Parry and Norman Solomon
teamed up to produce a penetrating and meticuously researched
account of Powell's sometimes frenzied activity in the corridors and
tunnels of his master's house for most of his military life.
Even in a tight, "just the facts, ma'am" format, the
finished product, published in Consortium News, was so
voluminous it comprised a five-part series.
That critical series was republished in December 2000
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/powell.html after
Powell -- once compelled by a straight-shootin' sense of
integrity to defy the
Uniform
Code of Military Justice and publicly blast his
commander-in-chief about gays in the military -- stood
by silently at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, while
90-percent of Florida's African-American "Gore" voters were
disenfranchised. A scant four days later, Powell was
rewarded for his silence with the coveted Secretary of State
slot.
Read the Parry/Solomon
series. Slog through the steaming fetid excrement that
comprises Powell's smarmy sense of honor as he makes easy
choices in covering up Vietnam atrocities, including the hundreds
of unarmed civilians slaughtered in the My Lai massacre.
Recoil at his involvement in funding Nicaraguan contra
terrorists by illegally routing missiles through Israel to Iran.
Chuckle at how he covers his own ass by first setting up Oliver North
to take the fall for the Iran-Contra mess, and even his boss
and mentor, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, if it came to
that. Count the lies with which this soldier padded
his career -- in letters, reports, interviews and testimony before
Congress. How many, you ask? Well, it depends upon
how many times he opened his mouth -- and he isn't through
talking yet.
Our descent into Vietnam more than three decades
ago left an indelible mark on this country, and the mere mention
of the "V" word even today evokes a kaliedeoscope of
emotions about the brutal, needless slaughter of 57,000 U.S.
soldiers and 2,000,000 Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. I
cannot speak to Powell's emotions, but as a minimum, it
appears that his experiences in Vietnam allowed him to
dehumanize his enemy and to use overwhelming force to destroy anything
in his path -- civilians and combatants alike. His experiences
allowed him to adopt the murderous Weinberger Doctrine; his ego
compelled him to co-opt it and to refine it into what is widely touted
today as the "Powell Doctrine."
In his autobiography, My
American Journey, Powell coldly describes the
deliberate destruction of "the enemy," or villagers
who might sympathize with the Viet Cong: "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?"
In April 2002, shortly after the Jenin
refugee camp massacre, in Palestine's West Bank,
Powell took a turn around the site and returned to testify to Congress
-- "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 (emphasis added) died in Jenin - and in
the prosecution of that battle innocent lives may well have been
lost."
Powell was not asked why not one single
home in Jenin was left standing; he did not address the
problems he must have had maneuvering through the rubble, nor did he
give any indication that
the pungent, stifling smell of rotting corpses bothered
him at all. Anyway, that was then and this is now...
Although Powell says Vietnam is "another
place, another time," his unrepentant callous disregard for
the lives of innocent civilians is legend, and continues in this place
and in this time. When a reporter asked him in April
1991 about Iraqi military and civilian deaths
-- Powell shrugged with stunning indifference
-- "That's not really a number I'm terribly interested
in..." Now, 12 years later, we are back in
Iraq where bodies of the dehumanized stack up on city streets --
litter the desert landscape. But their number is not too
terribly interesting because -- as you know -- we don't do body
counts.
Don't Go There!
When tasked by his master in
February 2003 to go before the United Nations and convince
the world that Saddam Hussein was armed and poised to destroy every
living thing on the planet unless we immediately took preemptive
action, Powell obediently expended his considerable cache of
political capital -- and threw in his sterling
reputation for good measure.
"What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on
solid intelligence," Powell assured the UN Security
Council. Never mind that most of Powell's
"proof" of Iraq's intentions to wreck world havoc
was lifted from an article written by a postgraduate
student from Monterey, California. It didn't matter
because Powell's "bells-and-whistles" presentation,
which included aerial photographs of trailers designed for producing
biological weapons, wild warnings of secret arsenals of weapons
of mass destruction and hiliarous Republican Guard telephone
intercepts was aimed directly at the American
people.
Of course it worked, but at great cost in American money and in
American and Iraqi lives. Not to mention the damage to
Powell's ability to function on the world stage as an
effective diplomat. Casting aside his carefully
nurtured role of "reluctant warrior," Powell soldiers on,
reduced to defending his master's "vision" of a new
world order and to warning other nations such as Syria, Palestine,
Libya, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to get in line behind
U.S. policies or find themselves "on the wrong side of
history."
But nothing reveals Powell's brutish dark side so clearly or
exposes his utter disdain for all creatures brown or black as
his recent orchestration of the coup d'etat in Haiti and the forced
ouster of its democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.
Quietly, quietly, Powell stood by for three years as Haitian
rebels were trained and armed in the Dominican Republic for the
overthrow of Aristide's government. In early February, just
prior to the planned coup, Powell assured the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, "It is the policy of the government
that it is not for regime change."
Quietly, the administration cut off aid to Haiti, and Powell
administered a "hands-off" policy during the ensuing
violence and bloodshed. Rebel forces spread over the
provinces, toting U.S.-made M-16s and rocket-propelled grenade
launchers. Finally, Aristide, who refused to leave for fear
that all who supported him would be killed, pled for U.S.
assistance.
The assistance Powell sent was armed Marines who forced Aristide and
his wife aboard a plane under threat of death, and whisked them
out of the country. Members of the Congressional Black
Caucus courageously attempted to penetrate the public consciousness,
but to no avail. Randall Robinson, close associate
of Aristide and founder of TransAfrica, said "Colin Powell
is the most powerful and damaging black to rise to influence in the
world in my lifetime."
While America yawned, Powell quietly pulled the media curtain
on the Haiti regime change -- Cheshire-cat smile in place
as Florida television talk-show host Gerard Latortue was
installed as prime minister. The killing of
all who supported Aristide began. Bodies continue to
be dumped on a Haitian hillside, where dogs and pigs feast on
them. Caribbean countries seeking a UN probe of
Aristide's ouster have been intimidated into inaction.
Roll out the banner -- Another bloody mission accomplished.
Haiti is indeed another place and another time where Powell and
his masters would rather we not go. In Haiti last week to show
support for the new U.S.-backed regime, Powell echoed his master's
voice -- "I urge the proud people of Haiti to come
together in peace, to seize this new chance to put your country
firmly on the path to democracy."
Sound familiar? Before you get too comfortable, remember that
the blood of the innocent -- from Vietnam to Haiti -- not
only stains every warmonger in this administration, but cries
out for justice. Lest you are moonstruck by the
gentle warrior beckoning to you from the shadows of his
master's house, remember that few
things are more frightening than fascism in disarray when time is
running out.
And -- Don't Go There!
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma
freelance writer and a former US Army Public Information Officer.
She will accept praise and atta-boys at:
rsamples@sirinet.net.
Complaints and death threats should be directed to her cousin,
Junior Samples, at BR-549
