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WASHINGTON: Colin Powell, who in four decades of public life served as the nation’s top soldier, diplomat and national security adviser, and whose speech at the UN in 2003 helped pave the way for the US to go to war in Iraq, died on Monday. He was 84. The cause was complications of Covid-19, his family said in a statement, adding that he had been vaccinated. Powell had undergone treatment for multiple myeloma, which compromised his immune system, a spokeswoman said. She said he was due to receive a booster shot for his vaccine last week but could not because he had fallen ill. Powell was a path breaker serving as the country’s first African-American national security adviser, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and secretary of state.
Born in Harlem of Jamaican parents, Powell grew up in the South Bronx and graduated from City College of New York, joining the army through the Reserve Officer Training Corps programme. From a young second lieutenant commissioned in the dawn of a newly desegregated army, Powell served two decorated combat tours in Vietnam. He was later NSA to President Ronald Reagan at the end of the Cold War, helping to negotiate arms treaties and an era of cooperation with the Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev.
As chairman of the joint chiefs, he was the architect of the invasion of Panama in 1989 and of the Persian Gulf war in 1991, which ousted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait but left him in power in Iraq. Along with then-defence secretary Dick Cheney, Powell reshaped the American Cold War military that stood ready at the Iron Curtain for half a century. In doing so he stamped the Powell Doctrine on military operations — armed with clear political objectives and public support, use decisive and overwhelming force to defeat enemy forces. When briefing reporters at the Pentagon at the beginning of the Gulf War, Powell succinctly summed up the military’s strategy to defeat Saddam Hussein’s army: “Our strategy in going after this army is very simple,” he said. “First, we’re going to cut it off, and then we’re going to kill it.”
It was a concept that seemed less suited to the messy conflicts in the Balkans that came later in the 1990s and in combating terrorism in a world transformed after the attacks on September 11, 2001. By the time he retired from the military in 1993, Powell was one of the most popular public figures in the US. In an interview with New York Times in 2007, he analysed himself: “Powell is a problem-solver. So he has views, but he’s not an ideologue. He has passion, but he’s not a fanatic. He’s first and foremost a problem-solver.” Powell was the first American official to publicly lay the blame for the 9/11 terrorist attacks on Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network and made a lightning trip to Pakistan in October, 2001 to demand that then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf cooperate with the US in going after the Afghanistan-based group.
Once retired, Powell, a lifelong independent while in uniform, was courted as a presidential contender by Republicans and Democrats, and became America’s most political general since Dwight Eisenhower. He wrote a best-selling memoir, “My American Journey,” and flirted with a run for the presidency before deciding in 1995 that campaigning for office wasn’t for him. He returned to public service in 2001 as secretary of state to President George W Bush, whose father Powell had served as chairman of the joint chiefs a decade earlier.
His legacy was marred when, in 2003, he went before the UN Security Council as secretary of state and made the case for US war against Iraq at a moment of great international skepticism. He cited faulty information claiming Saddam Hussein had secretly stashed away weapons of mass destruction. Iraq’s claims that it had no such weapons represented “a web of lies”, he told the world body. That speech, replete with his display of a vial of what he said could have been a biological weapon, was later derided as a low-point in Powell’s career. He left at the end of Bush’s first term under the cloud of an ever-worsening war in Iraq, and growing questions about whether he could have and should have done more to object to it.
He kept a low profile for the next few years, but with just over two weeks left in the 2008 presidential campaign, Powell, by then a declared Republican, gave a forceful endorsement to Senator Barack Obama. He later emerged as a vocal Trump critic in recent years, describing Trump as “a national disgrace”. Following the January 6 storming of the US Capitol, Powell said he no longer considers himself a Republican. agencies
As chairman of the joint chiefs, Colin Powell was the architect of the invasion of Panama in 1989 and of the Persian Gulf war in 1991. In 2003, he went before the UNSC as secretary of state and made the case for US war against Iraq. That speech, replete with his display of a vial of what he said could have been a biological weapon, was later derided as a low-point in Powell’s career.
Born in Harlem of Jamaican parents, Powell grew up in the South Bronx and graduated from City College of New York, joining the army through the Reserve Officer Training Corps programme. From a young second lieutenant commissioned in the dawn of a newly desegregated army, Powell served two decorated combat tours in Vietnam. He was later NSA to President Ronald Reagan at the end of the Cold War, helping to negotiate arms treaties and an era of cooperation with the Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev.
As chairman of the joint chiefs, he was the architect of the invasion of Panama in 1989 and of the Persian Gulf war in 1991, which ousted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait but left him in power in Iraq. Along with then-defence secretary Dick Cheney, Powell reshaped the American Cold War military that stood ready at the Iron Curtain for half a century. In doing so he stamped the Powell Doctrine on military operations — armed with clear political objectives and public support, use decisive and overwhelming force to defeat enemy forces. When briefing reporters at the Pentagon at the beginning of the Gulf War, Powell succinctly summed up the military’s strategy to defeat Saddam Hussein’s army: “Our strategy in going after this army is very simple,” he said. “First, we’re going to cut it off, and then we’re going to kill it.”
It was a concept that seemed less suited to the messy conflicts in the Balkans that came later in the 1990s and in combating terrorism in a world transformed after the attacks on September 11, 2001. By the time he retired from the military in 1993, Powell was one of the most popular public figures in the US. In an interview with New York Times in 2007, he analysed himself: “Powell is a problem-solver. So he has views, but he’s not an ideologue. He has passion, but he’s not a fanatic. He’s first and foremost a problem-solver.” Powell was the first American official to publicly lay the blame for the 9/11 terrorist attacks on Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network and made a lightning trip to Pakistan in October, 2001 to demand that then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf cooperate with the US in going after the Afghanistan-based group.
Once retired, Powell, a lifelong independent while in uniform, was courted as a presidential contender by Republicans and Democrats, and became America’s most political general since Dwight Eisenhower. He wrote a best-selling memoir, “My American Journey,” and flirted with a run for the presidency before deciding in 1995 that campaigning for office wasn’t for him. He returned to public service in 2001 as secretary of state to President George W Bush, whose father Powell had served as chairman of the joint chiefs a decade earlier.
His legacy was marred when, in 2003, he went before the UN Security Council as secretary of state and made the case for US war against Iraq at a moment of great international skepticism. He cited faulty information claiming Saddam Hussein had secretly stashed away weapons of mass destruction. Iraq’s claims that it had no such weapons represented “a web of lies”, he told the world body. That speech, replete with his display of a vial of what he said could have been a biological weapon, was later derided as a low-point in Powell’s career. He left at the end of Bush’s first term under the cloud of an ever-worsening war in Iraq, and growing questions about whether he could have and should have done more to object to it.
He kept a low profile for the next few years, but with just over two weeks left in the 2008 presidential campaign, Powell, by then a declared Republican, gave a forceful endorsement to Senator Barack Obama. He later emerged as a vocal Trump critic in recent years, describing Trump as “a national disgrace”. Following the January 6 storming of the US Capitol, Powell said he no longer considers himself a Republican. agencies
As chairman of the joint chiefs, Colin Powell was the architect of the invasion of Panama in 1989 and of the Persian Gulf war in 1991. In 2003, he went before the UNSC as secretary of state and made the case for US war against Iraq. That speech, replete with his display of a vial of what he said could have been a biological weapon, was later derided as a low-point in Powell’s career.
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