Allow me to preface what I am about to say here with, I have always had a tremendous amount of respect for Gen. Powell. In fact, I could spend an entire post detailing my reasoning, but I can sum it all up in much shorter fashion:
I have said many times before, the best people for the job of President, do not want the job. This certainly is the case here.
Gen. Powell is an intellectual, a diplomat, a soldier, and most of all, a leader. But for numerous reasons (one of which is his wife's health), he has no desire whatsoever, to be President. I would say the prime reason for this is, the intense scrutiny and pressure that comes with the territory is so overwhelming and so frustrating that it is just not healthy for anyone. By reading this WaPo article you can get a mere taste of the world that people at this level, must endure day to day, week to week. The arm twisting, the manipulations (and so forth) are so intense and so relentless, a person could easily feel pulled in several directions, simultaneously.
With his military retirement pay, generous book royalties and speaking fees, he makes a decent living. He doesn't need the money. He has been at the top of the mountain in the military, so he doesn't desire the power. He understands the concept, with much power comes much responsibility. For him, power is not a toy. With this in mind, can we blame him for not wanting to subject himself and his family to this form of self-flagellation?
You see, the people that want to be President are usually narcissists. They are not the reluctant heroes. They are the ones that cry, "Pick me pick me, I want to do it! I can do it, I am the best. Pick me, pick me." They want the world to revolve around them, they want to be the center of attention. And if they can't be the main attraction, they either blow up (See:Bill Clinton) or take their ball and go home (See: Ross Perot).
Clinical psychologist Robert Godwin (AKA Gagdad Bob from One Cosmos) has a more in-depth examination into the mind of a narcissist. I recommend reading the entire article, but let's look at a particularly noteworthy passage that is pertinent to this argument.
After characterizing some traits of a narcissist, he inserts this little aside (emphasis is mine):
...this is why it is generally a mistake to elect someone president who desperately wishes to be president, such as LBJ, Nixon, Al Gore, Clinton. Our better presidents could take it or leave it, because they already had satisfying lives and were capable of generating meaning from within....
General Powell has already proven himself, what else would he need to prove? He needs no introduction anywhere. His face is pretty universally recognized and his name is a "household name" that most reasonably intelligent people already know. Whether it be written or spoken, people know who he is. And, if there is one person in the world that we could say is actually self-actualized, it would be Gen. Powell.
Can we say the same thing about the bulk of today's leaders that have been entrusted to lead this nation? I highly doubt it.
17 comments:
ME, I believe you have it wrong. Powell was in favor of taking out Saddam. Everything I've read says he was Bush's camp on this. However, I believe he was more cautious about the aftermath, sort of "you break it, you bought it", which turned out to be quite right.
LA, not sure Powell isn't a little narcissitic himself, but certainly not to the level of the average contender. Kerry comes to mind as a stark comparison.
LA,
I haven't yet gotten to all of yesterday's WaPo, but now that I've read your commentary here, I'll make sure to read the article in Washington Post Magazine. I often just toss out that particular section because many of the articles don't appeal to me. I'll make sure not to toss out yesterday's edition!
ME,
For argument's sake, I will assume that what you say is absolutely correct, in that, he put politics above what was right.
If that is the case, how would you feel if you knew he did for the purpose of keeping a buffer on the Bush administration? By that I mean, had he not been a part of the Bush admin., would they have run roughshod over everything? Or had he not been the voice of reason within it, would they have gone to war without first trying to solve the problem diplomatically?
Based on what I have heard and read. I agree with AC.
I do not think that he was against removing Saddam. I was not against it. But my criticism for the administration is that they didn't adequately plan for the aftermath.
Taking a civilization that is used to being oppressed and trying to institute a freely elected democracy is much more difficult than they thought and much more than they led everyone to believe. Some people do not want freedom, because there is too much uncertainty involved with it.
AC,
//not sure Powell isn't a little narcissitic himself, but certainly not to the level of the average contender. Kerry comes to mind as a stark comparison.//
The article I linked to on narcissism addresses this:
Narcissism is not a monolithic condition, but is actually situated along a spectrum from mild to severe. However, the most severe narcissists can often appear to be the most outwardly accomplished. One of the reasons for this is that the more severe the narcissism, the more driven they are to accomplish something in accordance with their grandiosity.
I think we all can be a bit narcissistic at times. It's an element of human pride that we all must come to grips with and battle.
AOW,
If nothing else it shows the world of politics that many of us never see and never consider. it's a good eye-opener in that regard.
ME, Woodward's book specifically says Powell wasn't against taking out Saddam. Since his main source seems to have been Armitage, there's no doubt that had Powell secretly been against the war it would have slipped out. Recall Armitage told Woodward about Plame and they blamed it on his tendency to gossip.
ME, read some of the Woodward book excerpts. In one he talks about Powell not being in the loop regards the intelligence before he was picked to go to the UN. He had to get himself up to speed.
Matter of fact, Woodward says Powell jettisoned the White House summary of the intel in favor of the NIE, which was a compilation of the 16 intelligence services including his own State Dept.
I think he probably knew some of it was worse case but that didn't take away from Saddam's capacity for mayhem nor did it mean he outright lied. Nobody knew for certain what Saddam had or didn't. Recall that UNSCOM was flabbergasted in 1992 when they saw the extent of Saddam's nuke program prior to the Gulf war, which everyone had underestimated. They were surprised again in 1995 when Saddam's son-in-law defected.
With that mindset people tended to give some credence to worse-case. Powell obviously didn't like being used in that situation, especially when stockpiles didn't turn up. But he was used just as much by CIA as anyone else, since they're the ones who developed all that intel.
ME,
//how does that justify lying to the American people about WMD?
Was the lie worth it?//
Okay, fair questions. But only if you ask the following people the same questions:
John Kerry
Bill Clinton.
Hillary Clinton
Sandy Berger
Madeleine Albright
Tom Daschle
Carl Levin
Nancy Pelosi
Al Gore
Robert Byrd
Jay Rockefeller
All of them are on record as saying there were WMDs.
Here are two links, here and here.
(The first link is to Glenn Beck and you do not like him, but he has these quotes linked to the sources, and the other is from CNN)
Now with that out of the way, here is the crux of my argument.
John Kerry is on the Foreign Relations Committee, Ted Kennedy is on the Armed Services Committee, and Bill Clinton was President. Of just those three alone, they should have been in the loop. Right?
We hire these guys for several specific purposes. One of those purposes is to serve as a check and balance to the executive branch. They said there were WMDs, they had every opportunity to speak up back when this was being debated. They could have cried loudly against this. But they didn't.
These quotes were accurate and were made on the record, we now have them all to use as evidence, they cannot be refuted. So if you say that they were lied to, why didn't they do their job back then and expose this as a farce and make the case back then? Why didn't they use all of their recources to bring this out after it was too late?
Either they believed they were there or they lied, those are the only two choices here.
Bottom line here is, if we apply the standard to all involved in the debate leading up to this, we see that it was just not the administration's fault. And yet all of that is assuming they weren't right to start with and the WMDS are in Syria.
So, to avoid getting sucked into the partisan politics in this thing, one simply must hold all those involved to the same standard. Either they all lied to us or they all miscalculated, but not one or the other.
//we wasted valuable resources to go into a war without a plan, without an exit strategy, with poor leadership (Rumsfeld) and sent our troops into battle poorly equipped.//
These are fair arguments and fair questions to ask. The responsibility to account for these things lies pretty much solely on the administration. If you opposethe war in Iraq, this is the argument that the Dems must make, but they aren't doing that. They are still focused on the WMDs.
Believe me when I say, that if the Dems were to come up with a better strategy and could articulate it well to the American people, they would be able to retake power of Congress without question. Bush is not vulnerable in the WMDs area because, the people have already made their choice on that debate. The area of vulenrability is in the prosecution of the war.
ME
On HJ Res. 114
Take a look at this here
I counted 28 Democratic votes for yea. The President took his case to the Congress and this is how the Senate voted. If these 28 senators would have voted nay, the use of force would have been denied. 51-49. There would have been no war.
If you hold the President accountable, how much more should you hold these people accountable for their votes? How can you not? They could have stopped it then, but they didn't.
All I am saying here is, this was the time to have shot this down. This is the moment they did not do their job.
In our system, the Congress (to include the Senate) has just as much power collectively, as the President does individually. I do not buy into the fact that they were lied to, if that's the case here and that is the truth, they should have caught that lie, then and there. If it is wrong now, it should have been wrong then. They should not have waited until it became politically expedient for them to oppose it.
They are just as guilty.
The only ones that have a right to complain about this are the ones that voted nay. The ones that voted nay are the only ones that should be registering their complaints, now. But if you look at the long list of who voted yes, that certainly is not the case.
ME,
//They weren't privvy to the material that was not in the report, the material from the CIA and other sources that countered the claim that SH had WMD. How can you hold them accountable when they were lied to from the beginning. They aren't mind readers...just humans, who trusted that their President wouldn't be so unethical as to lie about intelligence om order to sell them on a war that he was determined to go into. Voting on manipulated intelligence doesn't mean they are guilty of anything!//
My point is, it was the same intelligence that Bill Clinton had when he said they were developing WMDs. These high ranking committee members had access to all of the intelligence reports. They say they didn't only to cover their asses for having voted for the war. But they did. The reports did not change a hell of a lot from the time Clinton left office to the time Bush took over. Threat assessments do not change over night. They just don't.
And we CAN hold the Congress responsible because it is THEIR job to authorize the use of force and they authorized it. We have three separate but equal branches of government. They all have the responsibility to do their part. If the executive part gets out of control, then it's the job of the other two to keep that executive branch in check.
I know they are human and they have to respond sometimes and cannot always intitiate. But, think about ME, so very soon after the invasion began is when the cries of lies began. Why did those cries not begin at the time the thing was being debated?
My larger point is, since both the President and the Congress screwed up, it's too late to keep harping over this. The more criticizable offenses lie in the handling of the war, not the reasons we went. All were wrong in the reasons that led up to it, but only the administration can take responsibility for how the war was fought and how the resolve of the enemy was severely underestimated. Post-war planning was virtually non-existent.
I have always said, you go to war to win, or you just do not go. The Armed Sevices Committee can only appropriate the money and attempt to work through the oversight end of it. But it is the President that must be the COO of the war. the buck stops there, on that.
Look, if there was a Democrat that came along and said sonething to the effect of:
We were wrong about the WMDs, there is no time to keep beating this dead horse. I have a plan that will get this thing fixed so we can win the peace there, so we can pull our troops out. Then if they can articulate that plan and present it to the American people, and the plan look like it's worth a shot, I would vote for that person and so would everyone else who is sick of Rumsfeld BSing his way through this thing.
Let me put it to you mildly, if I had ben President, it would have been under control right now. You may not have liked my techniques. But if you are sincere in wanting this over by now, you'd have that. The Sunni triangle would now be named the Sunni Canyon. The Iraqi forces would be up and running their own country by now, I guarantee it.
ME,
BTW, even though I don't agree with you on this, thanks for invigorating this sleepy little blog a little bit. Now, if we can just get some of the lurkers to jump in. ;)
ME, why do you think the MSM and the democrats rapidly changed their tunes on Iraq between 2000 and 2003? Have you seen all the speeches and reports the above two parties executed in the years leading up to the 2001 election?
John Kerry was talking smack about SH until he won the nomination. So much of this is spin/politics, but the war is real. SH was most definitely a threat to America, if not immediately in 2003 certainly down the line. Were we supposed to maintain the no-fly zone posture forever while he scammed the Oil for Food program? The ONLY reason he allowed Blix into his country was due to the 200k troops sitting on ready on his borders.
As to Condi Rice not heeding warnings and such, that's just bunk IMO. Number one, I work in aviation, and can tell you for a fact that security measures were starting to ramp up in August of 2001. Second, the 9/11 Commissioners, at first aghast because they thought they weren't told about the July meeting, later realized they'd been briefed about it and just like Rice had forgotten. That can only mean it was more routine than either Tenet or Woodward are painting it.
Additionally, Michael Scheuer, the former head of CIA's bin Laden unit, confirmed that the Clintons could have fired on UBL numerous times and did not. He says they are outright lying. Since he's also been critical of Bush as well, I believe his account over Clinton's.
All this boils down to politics and the quest for social changes taking precedence over security. Has Bush made mistakes? Sure. Would his daily admittance of such things do any good? Probably not, since his enemies use anything they can against him and the US.
Finally, as to Powell, if he knew the aluminum tubes part was bunk he could have removed it since he refused several other items. You may have a point but keep in mind a lot of this looks different in hindsight. SH had snookered us before, and after 9/11 he was being awarded no quarter--and rightfully so.
//SH had snookered us before, and after 9/11 he was being awarded no quarter--and rightfully so.//
Here's the thing AC. There's a theory that SH wanted Iran to believe he had WMDs. His intel told him that Iran was working on nukes and he wanted the Iranians to think he had them, so as not to be vulnerable. He really believed that the U.S. would not attack and that he could weather the storm, once again.
And ME, I would also say:
Dealing with unreasonable people like SH is not an easy task. When they are erratic and unpredictable (as he was), they cannot be reasoned with. And if Bush would have done nothing at all and it was found out that he was behind a horrendous attack down the road, he would have had his ass in a sling, a hundred times more than it is now. And if that would have happened, both of us would have been calling for his head on a platter.
I still stand by my opinion that he had to go, but will say that I am not pleased at how he has handled it in the aftermath of SH's removal.
And BTW, how about those Cardinals, AC?
AC said ME, why do you think the MSM and the democrats rapidly changed their tunes on Iraq between 2000 and 2003? Have you seen all the speeches and reports the above two parties executed in the years leading up to the 2001 election?
John Kerry was talking smack about SH until he won the nomination.
Your statement reminds me that for the most part the Dems were giving lip service to supporting Iraq until a lunatic named Howard Dean almost walked away with the nomination based on an anti-war platform. When Kerry squeaked out the nomination, he catered to Dean's voters and there was a decisive shift from lip service support/mild criticism to taking the gloves off - all led by politics. Not principle.
AICS,
//for the most part the Dems were giving lip service to supporting Iraq until a lunatic named Howard Dean almost walked away with the nomination based on an anti-war platform. When Kerry squeaked out the nomination, he catered to Dean's voters and there was a decisive shift from lip service support/mild criticism to taking the gloves off - all led by politics. Not principle.//
Good point AICS.
I think the Dems were pretty much prepared to nitpick on certain policies and make their usual "the economy is in the tank" arguments. But with Dean exploding onto the scene, it definitely pulled the party further to the left than it already was. Which was a bit surprising, in that, Dean was a pretty moderate governor.
The mainstream Dems knowing they needed the anti-war support, allowed themselves to get caught up in the whirlwind and found the party situated farther left on the spectrum, to get nominated.
There is nothing wrong, in my view, with being anti-war, if you are that way all of the time and do not vascillate for political purposes. That's what hurt Kerry, so badly.
For the record, I am anti-war. I do not like it one bit. I do not glory in it.
But with that said, when one side in a conflict is decidedly pro-war and the other is not, the pro-war side will eventually defeat the anti-war side. One side cannot stop fighting or they will be conquered. And as long as one side wants to kill me or convert me to Islam, I am more than willing to support killing them first.
As a commenter on another blog said once (and I am paraphrasing), "as long as they are wanting to kill me I will do everything I can to kill them first. That doesn't make me happy, but I regret nothing".
Yep LA, ME, my Redbirds looked pretty good with Mr Cy Young on the mound. It's a best 2 out of 4 now. If they can all stay healhy they've got a chance to advance. I like the underdog status.
LA, I've heard the theory about SH spoofing his program to keep Iran (and Saudi, and Israel) at bay. There was no doubt he had chem/bio weapons at one point--none. As you say, you can't reason with the man.
ME, as to Blix, he did not give SH a clean bill of health. He found proscribed missiles and could not account for the destruction of VX and anthrax. That's a fact.
As to the effectiveness of No-fly, they were shooting at the planes constantly, not to mention it was costing millions and ticking off bin Laden. It was providing anger to the Arab street. It was NOT stopping the OFFP scam. And it did nothing to disarm him or stop his use of proxies.
cheers!
AC,
I watched some of the A's - Twins game today. Kotsay hit an inside the park homer. Also I watched the Mets beat the Dodgers. I have always been an Angels fan, but will root for the Dodgers if they get into the post season.
Post a Comment