Colin Powell, the anti-hero
Observations
Monday 20th September 2004

Observations on Stuff Happens. By John Kampfner.

Some of the protagonists in the Iraq war are waiting to be judged by history. Others are not leaving it that long. The most assiduous self-justifier is Colin Powell. Courtesy of Bob Woodward, and now James Naughtie and David Hare, the US secretary of state is being portrayed as the valiant force of resistance to the dastardly neoconservatives. If only the story were that simple.

Powell has gone through the motions of complaining about the account given by Naughtie in his new book, The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the presidency. Naughtie describes how, in one of their almost daily phone conversations, Powell told Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, that his administration "colleagues" Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were "fucking crazies". Neither Powell nor Straw is likely to be entirely discomfited by their depiction as the sole voices of sanity in a sea of malevolence and madness.

In his play Stuff Happens, which premiered on 10 September, Hare takes the narrative further. Powell is the central character: an eminently reasonable man juxtaposed with a grinning George Bush, a vicious Cheney, a belligerent Rumsfeld and a sweaty and lightweight Blair. In the most dramatic scene, Powell shouts at Bush during a private meeting in August 2002, in his attempt to persuade the president to seek a UN resolution for war.

Even allowing for dramatic licence, this heroic portrayal does not correspond to the reality as described in many first-hand accounts that I have heard. Hare, who consulted me and many others when researching the play, insists that his version of Powell is well sourced. Yet even if this version is right, what did Powell achieve? In the short term he outmanoeuvred the neo-cons by convincing Bush to give the UN a chance. In so doing, he gave a fleeting and spurious diplomatic imprimatur to a military conflict to which Bush, with Blair's blessing, had committed himself the previous April.

But Powell need not have been so weak. Back in 1998, when the only Bush anybody thought likely to run for president was Jeb, governor of Florida, Powell was being courted by Democrats and Republicans alike. To the consternation of both, he declined. When he joined the Bush administration, Powell could have set his own terms. As Hare points out, his poll ratings were far higher than those of the president. He need not have allowed himself to be taken hostage by the neo-cons.

Instead, the hapless secretary of state was consistently undermined. On one occasion when in the air on his way to Israel, Cheney contacted Ariel Sharon to advise him to ignore anything Powell said. And yet Powell took it, time and again, seeking solace by crying on Straw's shoulder. Had he quit or gone public, he could have brought matters to a head. As war beckoned, Powell did what he was told, culminating in his absurd slide presentation to the UN detailing Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction.

History's verdict may be that at least you knew where you stood with the neo-cons. The verdict on Powell may be as un-heroic as it is on Blair.


This article first appeared in the New Statesman and may not be reproduced without permission.