Colin Powell had a long and distinguished career, but perhaps he could have achieved even more.
Four-star general Powell had a remarkable run. He served as National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan. He chaired the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush, and he served as Secretary of State under George W. Bush.
It is hard to argue he could have done more; however, I will play a game of “what if” and suggest that maybe he could have.
In the 1990s, Powell was at the top of the list of admired leaders in the United States. What if Powell had run for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1996 as most Republicans wanted.
I always thought he would have won. If so, the world would be different now. But he chose not to run, the Middle East—and America–became more problematic, and Powell played a significant role in that outcome.
Powell tried to caution President George W. Bush against invading Iraq after 9/11, but he was playing a losing hand against the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which advocated an aggressive foreign policy, including the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Ten of the 25 organizers of this think tank went to work for President George W. Bush in 2001, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.
While some Americans were wondering why Iraq was a target when there was no direct connection between that country and the 9/11 attacks, PNAC leader William Kristol went on Nightline to discuss the “smoking gun,” their white paper advocating the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Failing to halt the rush into Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell, the ultimate team player, was chosen to make the Bush administration’s case for war before the United Nations.
On February 5, 2003, Powell famously presented “intelligence” that Iraq’s government had ties to Al Qaeda and had weapons of mass destruction.
Using his formidable world standing, Powell “unknowingly” used this complete fabrication and convinced allies in the U. N. that Iraq should be invaded.
It baffled me at the time that few questioned if there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq why the U.S. intelligence community did not tell the U.N. inspectors where to find them. But of course, “weapons of mass destruction” was the weak excuse to follow the PNAC.
After a three trillion-dollar needless war, that area is more unstable than it was before the invasion.
On the other hand, what if Powell had become president? Despite close friends questioning my sanity, I was not sure I wanted Powell to win, but I thought he would. I saw some of the same things that many saw later in Barack Obama—and more.
He was “a clean one,” as Joe Biden described Obama, his nomination competitor in 2008. And as some observers stated, neither Powell nor Obama had any direct ties to U.S. slavery and did not remind America of that giant skeleton in the closet. And neither had a robust civil rights platform, except that Powell was quite open about his support for affirmative action.
In retrospect, I think that Powell would have had an easier time winning the presidency than Obama did, as he would have the Republicans behind him along with many African Americans and a significant number of liberal Democrats.
One of the reasons some analysts argue that Powell did not run is he saw the direction the Republican party was heading with the 1994 mini revolution led by Newt Gingrich that set the county on its current path, and he disagreed with it.
“President” Powell might have slowed the march of Republicans past Gingrich to Trump.
Also, and very importantly, there would have been no Iraq war because few if any of the PNAC members would have gotten a foothold in the White House.
Of course, “what if” games are problematic. However, I think they help us analyze how we got to where we are.
