Gen. Colin Powell briefs the media during the First Gulf War. (Photo: AP)
Oct. 19, 2021 by David Silverberg
In 1991 during the First Gulf War, I had the good fortune as a reporter to be covering the Pentagon when Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a briefing on the state of the war.
No military in the world can function without presentation charts. Powell brought a bunch to show the media how coalition air forces were eroding Saddam Hussein’s command, control and communications capabilities in the prelude to ground operations. The charts had long, rising and abruptly falling lines displaying the decline in Iraqi forces’ ability to send and receive signals.
A reporter asked an obvious question: How could Powell be so sure this was true? And by extension, how could our audiences be sure that what he was saying was true?
Powell, a big, broad-shouldered man, smiled. “Trust me,” he said.
And people did. Powell had a reputation as a straight-talking, truth-telling guy. He could be trusted. As the nation’s top military man there was much he had to conceal and he might not provide the entire truth but what he did say could be taken to the bank.
Then, and later, the media, the nation’s leadership and the American people trusted him.
Powell died yesterday, Oct. 18, 2021. Tributes are pouring in. Much is being made of the fact that he was the first African American chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Secretary of State.
But when he was in office, when he prosecuted an astonishingly victorious war, his racial background was irrelevant—as it should be. Much more important today, in an age of distrust, deception and divisiveness, it’s worth remembering him as someone who is so rare in our time: someone who could be trusted.
It was because of this credibility that in 2003 President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney pressured Powell, then Secretary of State, to bless their effort to go to war against Saddam Hussein again. Despite flimsy evidence of weapons of mass destruction, a lack of provocations and his own deep skepticism of the intelligence, Powell did what he felt was his duty and followed his commanders’ orders. He presented the United Nations with the American justification for a war of choice. It was a decision he regretted the rest of his life and will always be judged a flaw on an otherwise sterling record of service, dedication and duty.
This was an aberration—and a big one. But in looking back over his life and career, it’s much more enlightening and uplifting to remember his thoughtfulness, his honesty and his honor. Powell was a true patriot; not the loud, vulgar, ostentatious kind or the kind who exploits appearances for personal gain but the kind who gets up and goes to work every day to make the country a better place and advances its best and highest ideals and values in every way he or she can.
Powell also exemplified something else. When he was thinking of running for president in 1996 he said that he wanted to appeal to what he called “the sensible center” of American political life. He eschewed extremism and divisiveness or fanaticism.
At that time there was a “sensible center,” a common ground of discussion and common sense where conversation and reason reigned. Powell’s passing at the age of 84 highlights just how much the sensible center that once governed the national dialogue—and the national course of action—has been deliberately undercut and assaulted. The kind of hatred, prejudice and rage that has taken its place is no improvement and is leading to disaster in every possible way.
We need to return to the sensible centrism he embodied.
The evaluation of Colin Powell has begun. Biographies will be written. Far too much focus is being placed on his race. His flaws and errors will be revealed.
But I’ll always remember him as a man of impeccable service and true patriotism, tall and commanding, his uniform immaculate and his decorations sparkling under hot lights, his charts behind him, smiling knowingly and saying “trust me.”
I did. We could. And restoration of his kind of honesty should be his greatest legacy.
Liberty lives in light
© 2021 by David Silverberg