Sunday, October 19, 2008
Colin Powell's Endorsement of Barack Obama
Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama was about as thoroughgoing as this dinosaur could have hoped, the general’s polite qualifying phrases aside. He demolished Senator McCain’s potential closing arguments for the last few weeks of the campaign: the “experience and c-in-c prep argument,” the economics argument (though McCain had already ruined that one himself), the character attacks alleging radicalism, and the insinuation of an unacceptable degree of “otherness” in Obama’s person and background. McCain isn’t likely to change many minds from here on out, especially since his running mate and high-level supporters keep declaring whole swaths of the country “un-American,” claiming that our core values are hunting and fishing, insulting us by lying to our faces about things that have already been proven several times over against them, and so forth. They just can’t help saying transparently blockheaded, alienating things because if they didn’t say them, they would have nothing at all to say. For once, we seem to be showing some collective determination to invalidate the cynical judgment that “nobody ever lost a nickel underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” (Either P. T. Barnum or H. L. Mencken said that, I believe.) What I’m seeing – based in part on those huge St. Louis crowds Barack is drawing now, and the amount of money he raised in September ($150 million, mostly from small donors) -- looks like a genuine upwelling of healthy regard for participatory guv’ment. Still two weeks to go, but at present things are looking good. Maybe humans aren’t so bad after all, though I still think things were better and simpler in the Jurassic. We didn’t have politics at all because we had already achieved Aristotle’s dream of “the good life.” Bloody asteroids!
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Blessed with keen memories and acute problem-solving abilities, octopods are highly regarded as the most intelligent of mollusks. One would think those large-brained humanoids would have similar intelligence, but their brief and violent history on planet Earth has shown them to be quite stupid. Humanoids live in constant conflict with nature and themselves, covet more than what they need to survive, are quick to arm and spill blood over any affront … especially from fellow humanoids. My advice: Avoid them assiduously
ReplyDeleteSo what are we to think of former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama? Skylanda, one of Echidne’s more cogent co-bloggers, sums it up this way:
I'm trying to figure out if I'm reaching for the word "hypocrisy" or the word "redemption" when I feel around for the right way to describe one of the main players who enabled Bush's [Middle East policy] … I've always liked Colin Powell despite it all. I'll go with redemption.
I too go with “redemption” but not without reservations. There is a difference in making the case for war based on “what-was-handed-to-me” versus the kind of critical analysis that only a man with Powell’s experience and knowledge could bring to bear during cabinet meetings. On Meet the Press this morning, Tom Brokaw quoted James Baker [from Bob Woodward’s account of the Iraq Study Commission in The War Within], who said of Colin Powell: “He is the one guy who could have prevented this.”
That is why I do not fully exonerate Powell for his role in marketing the Iraq war to the world. Consider this video about how the former Secretary of State claims to have been mislead on WMD intelligence.
Justifications for war become ducks in a shooting gallery. When one argument fails, there is always another followed by another. First was the WMD argument, but no WMDs were ever found. Next were supposed links between Al Qaida and Sadaam, but no links were ever proved. Finally the “pied piper” argument, the one that states: “We are fighting terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.” Here is the one justification tailor-made for dimwitted followers, the one that could truly withstand all burdens of proof. There is no more cowardly, deceitful, and morally degenerate argument than one based on demagoguery.
However Colin rationalizes his case of Irritable Powell Syndrome, Bush and Cheney expressed no regrets or apologies over the Iraq war (and still none to this day)! Powell knows that history will not be kind, and perhaps he is trying to revise how history will regard him. In abandoning friends and party to endorse Barack Obama, will history render a kinder, gentler verdict?
I am too practical to make predictions. Octopods have little commerce with history. There is no future in it. Only the present counts.
Hello Octo,
ReplyDeleteYes, have heard of the remarkable intelligence of your kind, and of course much evidence is to be had on this very blog.
On Colin Powell, I, too, have ambivalent feelings about his role in the run-up to the Iraq War. My thinking has long been that if I was able to see just how ridiculous were GWB's "reasons" for starting a war, surely high-powered senators and generals and cabinet members should have known far better. You identify the problem well: when someone offers you a series of incompatible or unrelated justifications for the same action, something is most likely wrong with the action itself as well as with the promoter. Of course, one line of defense on the part of the mighty is their close proximity to even higher power: they're too near the sun to see clearly, so to speak.
I think much the same problem besets high-level journalists: they interact with famous and powerful people like GWB, so they find it hard to say, "this person is talking pure trash--just flat out lying or deceiving him or herself." And in their case, there's always the prospect of being denied access to material and people they need for future stories.
Finally, the claim I find most outrageous is indeed the one you mention: the "over here / over there" argument. It makes almost no sense at all. The worst of it lies in the assumption that intense, systematic violence is fine so long as non-white people with names we can't pronounce take the brunt of it. A fair amount of what is said to constitute "the national interest" sounds to me like racism and other forms of moral imbecility codified as high principle.