Does Powell really know what Iraq is Cooking?
This Bush guy is a real gem. He's in office without the approval of the majority of voters, he wants to start a war without the approval of the UN, Congress, and even a growing number of conservative voters and groups like the KATO Institute; a conservative think tank that is against the war in Iraq (not to mention without the approval of France). But whereas President Bush seems less driven by domestic and international concerns, it was hoped things would be different with the Secretary of State, former General Colin Powell. If critics from Nelson Mandela to out-going Ambassador John Brady Kiesling dont make him smell the coffee, then no one or nothing will.
As far as Powell may be concerned, we Blacks never really appreciated him as "an isolated moderate in a hawkish administration," as the Black Commentator calls him, so to hell with us. Powell is among a wave of integration-crazed Black republicans whom America will feign adoration for. This is where he, Condoleeza Rice, Clarence Thomas etc., part company with Martin Luther King. King heard the cries of the war protestors, and saw the commonality between that, and the Civil Rights Movement. Powell-who once wavered between hawk and dove in the Bush administration-and Rice, who has pushed for the bombing of innocent citizens in Afghanistan and now Iraq, are beneficiaries of Martin's Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X' bloodshed, and late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall's groundbreaking legal work. But their decisions today spit on their very images of them.
As talk show host Larry King once said: "You would not have been a Black conservative in Selma Alabama." Well Selma is still here, but it's approach is much more sophisticated than water-hosing, church bombings, and separate drinking fountains. The Selma of today is located in Washington DC, and Corporate America, and it's segregation isn't always clearly evident until you see the results, the racial, economic and educational disparities. This brings us to Powell and his big burqa (the traditional Islamic head to foot covering enforced on Afghan women by the Taliban); the Bush administrations war on terror. Sure Powell can brush off criticism from the likes of Harry Belafonte, but how long can he ignore the words of former South African President Nelson Mandela, who spoke against the US position on Iraq by inferring that Bush and Tony Blair undermine the UN and it's General Secretary Kofi Annan because he is Black? How long can he accuse Iraq with links to al Qaeda, when N. Korea may have nukes pointed towards us at this very moment? Iraqi President Saddam Hussein says the US covets his oil. Bingo!
This reduces Powell's tapes of supposed Iraqi conversations to hide weapons to be just as they resemble, outtakes and snippets from conversations between Boris, Natasha and "Fearless Leader." A more recent major embarrassment that is not being played up by the major news outlets is the resignation of John Brady Kiesling. Kiesling, a 20 year Ambassador, and political advisor for the Foreign Service to the US stated in a 2/27/03 letter to Powell: "Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security "your (Powell's) loyalty to the President goes too far." This view from an insider is important, strength alone is no safeguard from backlash against a war on Iraq. Bush's move on Iraq is anti-globalization by default.