Colin Powell, a son of Jamaican immigrants, became a United States war hero who soldiered on as the chief US diplomat presenting the case for the Iraq invasion to a sceptical world community.
The 65th Secretary of State, who has resigned from President George Bush’s administration, even kept telephoning foreign ministers from other countries in the hours after Saddam Hussein’s capture last December, when he was preparing to undergo a prostate cancer operation.
But there had been widespread speculation since the invasion in March 2003 whether Powell — a retired four-star general and former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — would stay on as secretary of state in a second Bush administration.
Powell, who sought a more prudent line, struggled against hawks in the Bush Cabinet over the Iraq war while trying to persuade allies to support an invasion.
But amid reports that he felt personally wounded after giving a presentation to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003 about weapons of mass destruction that were never found, Powell repeatedly told reporters: ”I serve at the pleasure of the president.”
Powell’s view of the world was refined through the extremes of the Vietnam War and the 1991 Gulf War.
”General Powell is an American hero, an American example, and a great American story,” Bush said when announcing Powell’s appointment in 2000.
”In directness of speech, his towering integrity, his deep respect for our democracy, and his soldier’s sense of duty and honour, Colin Powell demonstrates … qualities that will make him a great representative of all the people of this country,” Bush said.
Powell has risen further in the US administration than any other African-American, a fact he noted in his acceptance speech.
”I want it to give inspiration to young African Americans in this society,” Powell said, adding to those listening to the speech broadcast nationwide: ”There are no limitations upon you.”
As a black hero with wide appeal, his reputation as a man of honour aloof from the political fray was an asset in explaining Iraq and other US initiatives abroad.
For many Americans, he was the public face of the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq.
Powell’s reputation soared in the aftermath of the blitzkrieg that ejected Saddam’s forces from Kuwait and for a while he considered a run for the presidency.
After retiring from the army in 1993, Powell devoted himself to working on behalf of disadvantaged young people as chairperson of America’s Promise, a youth advocacy group, and fending off new questions on his desire for public office.
Powell’s experience of the disastrous Vietnam War as a young soldier led him to develop the so-called ”Powell Doctrine” that if the US must intervene in a foreign conflict, it should deploy overwhelming force based on clear political objectives.
Powell was initially lukewarm about the 1991 Gulf War and was later reported to have locked horns with his predecessor, Madeleine Albright, who was said to have asked him: ”What’s the point of having this superb military you are always talking about if we can’t use it?”
Born on April 5 1937 in New York City, Powell’s ”American journey” — also the title of his autobiography — took him from childhood as the son of Jamaican immigrants in the Bronx to Germany as a second lieutenant.
His army service saw him in Vietnam in 1962 as one of President John F Kennedy’s special advisers and with combat experience that won him a Purple Heart.
In Washington from 1969, he rose through the ranks and served three presidents, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Bill Clinton at the pinnacle of the National Security establishment, peaking as chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff between 1989 and 1993.
He was used during the Republican campaign as a talisman of a new inclusive Republican Party, which its public relations men hoped to be a far cry from its image as a home for the country-club set.
Powell freely admits his liberal social views make him a strange bedfellow for many Republicans.
He was also hailed for showing political courage and a sound judgement of his own worth to the party when he made an angry denunciation of the Republicans’ opposition of affirmative action, a programme designed to push minorities into better jobs, from the convention platform. — AFP
