‘You break it, you’re going to own it’

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‘You break it, you’re going to own it’

October 19, 2021

Stephen Collinson and Caitlin Hu

'You break it, you're going to own it'

Most people outside the United States got their first look at Colin Powell during briefings on the US operation to oust Iraq from Kuwait in 1990-91. But it was another war against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein that would stain Powell's legacy, after his 2003 United Nations speech touted botched intelligence on weapons of mass destruction that didn't actually exist.

Torrents of tributes after Powell's death from Covid-19 as he battled cancer and Parkinson's disease prove he will be remembered for more than what he later admitted was a "blot" on his record. But during his tenure as Secretary of State under George W. Bush, he was outmaneuvered by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld and his stellar global reputation accrued as the first Black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was ultimately used to make a trumped-up case for war.

When Powell endorsed Bush in 2000, he offered a callow Republican nominee the approval of a statesman. His appearance at the Republican National Convention allowed a mostly White GOP to hail an African American hero. But weeks into Bush's presidency, it became clear that Powell, a traditional internationalist, was outnumbered by neoconservative peers. He said the new administration would pick up where former President Bill Clinton left off in pursuing a missile deal with North Korea. The next day, Bush knee-capped his top diplomat by saying the opposite.

His post-September 11 "Powell doctrine" was also ignored. Drawing on his experience in Vietnam, Powell believed that before the US went to war it should have a clear objective, a sufficiently dominant force and an exit strategy. He turned out to be right when he warned Bush about Iraq: "You break it, you're going to own it." But the ex-general never quit in protest; abiding by military code, he fell in behind the commander in chief.

Had the rest of Bush's administration heeded his warnings, however, the war-torn early decades of the 21st century might have turned out differently.

'We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails '

A former top aide to Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson, later told CNN that the bad information in the infamous 2003 UN presentation originated in a document that he described as a sort of "menu" provided by the White House.

"(Powell) came through the door ... and he had in his hands a sheaf of papers, and he said, 'This is what I've got to present at the United Nations according to the White House, and you need to look at it,'" Wilkerson said in a 2005 interview. "It was anything but an intelligence document. It was, as some people characterized it later, sort of a Chinese menu from which you could pick and choose."

According to Wilkerson, later that year, then-CIA director George Tenet was forced to call Powell to say the bioweapons labs claims were not true. "George actually did call the secretary, and said, 'I'm really sorry to have to tell you. We don't believe there were any mobile labs for making biological weapons,'" Wilkerson said.

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Crossing battle lines

He might have been twice honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and been a racial trail blazer but Powell wore his American hero status lightly. In one of many illustrations of his down-to-earth style, Powell once wandered unannounced into a bar filled with Australian troops during a refueling stop in Darwin in 2001, wearing the sweat suit he used to wear on his plane. He bought a round and soon they were hanging on his every word.

It was that common touch that once had both Democrats and Republicans sizing him up as a presidential candidate. No one rises that high in the Pentagon ranks without being a shrewd politician, and Powell was one of the best. The Clinton White House even feared he might run as a Republican for President in 1996; he would have likely proven a tougher opponent than ex-Senate Majority leader Bob Dole, who lost in a landslide. Powell did consider a campaign, but the career officer never had the stomach for the grubby politics of the campaign trail -- plus it later emerged that his wife Alma was strongly opposed.

Powell remained an important political figure even after retiring from the State Department in 2005 to care for his collection of vintage Volvos. There was a political thunderclap when he crossed party lines to endorse Democratic Senator Barack Obama in 2008, whom he called a "transformational" figure -- a huge boost for the man who would become the first African American President, and a disaster for Republican nominee John McCain.

And as the Republican Party became more radical, populist and nationalistic in the era of Donald Trump, Powell also endorsed Democratic nominees Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. "We have come to live in a society based on insults, on lies and on things that just aren't true," Powell said in 2018. "It creates an environment where deranged people feel empowered."

After years tearing down racial barriers, Powell in his final days became an emblem for a generation of centrist, internationalist Republicans marooned by their own party's extreme turn.

Thanks for reading.

On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken travels to Ecuador and Colombia. Fully vaccinated travelers from Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States will again be able to enter Singapore. Brazilian lawmakers are scheduled to hear high-level testimony about the Pandora Papers allegations.