Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are talking about Iraq, these people were not exactly living happy lives under Saddam rule. Colin lie is inexcusable, but Iraq war was a good thing for Iraq. Net zero at least. (Feel free to downvote, downvote is used for disagreement on HN these days.)
My understanding is that the entire area is just brutal in general and Saddam was actually the least evil solution available at the time. He held it together through brutality, but he still apparently held it together, and now look at it.
Colin Powell has died
71–80 of 236 posts
Re: Colin Powell has died
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
If he didn't deliver that speech, they would have found someone else to do it (and he would have been fired). The responsibility lies with Bush and Cheney, not with the messenger.
I know it's a stretch and I don't want to Godwin the discussion too much, but that is really not an excuse. The Nuremberg trials clearly rejected this "Nuremberg defense", but of course it was the beaten party standing before the court back then. But in principle, since 1945, no one can evade personal responsibility for a clearly unlawful act by pointing to superior orders.
Yet, USA is doing similar for decades and goes through with it because they can. Just look at their bouts with ICC, as also the case of Guantanamo Bay. Whether a Soldier can evade personal responsibility is still just a matter on which side they serve.
Re: Colin Powell has died
#73Good riddance.
I will not grieve for a war criminal.
Re: Colin Powell has died
#74I won't understand respect for someone who was reponsible for the deaths of 100s of thousands of people because he lied.
I’m no fan of Colin Powell but IMO the responsibility for those deaths does not fall on him specifically. The US was going to war in Iraq with or without the UN’s backing, everything Powell did was window dressing. False, deceitful and criminal window dressing, but still.
The nature of modern complex organizations like the United States is that no one person is responsible for everything. You can't so much as get $600 checks to every American without the support of a sizable bureaucracy, let alone single-handedly wage a land war halfway around the world and remake the government of 40 million people.
But that doesn't mean we have to let our sense of morality hold nobody culpable, as if everyone is part of a firing squad and you can't prove who had the blank. Merely signing up for the firing squad shows that you intended to kill, and the responsibility for the death falls on all the people in the squad (as well as all the people who organized it and decided to put a particular prisoner in front of it, etc.), not none of them.
"The US" was only going to war in Iraq because a lot of people arranged things so that it could happen. It's probably true that if any one person decided not to participate, it would still have happened. But if enough people decided not to participate, it wouldn't. And we saw clearly in the last months of the previous presidency that one high-ranking individual can certainly make things a lot more difficult for a president who wants to wage war and that more generally "resistance inside the administration" can be at least partly effective.
I think if we're going to say that an illegal war happened, that people lost their lives because of it, and that it would have been good and moral to try to stop the war, we also need to say that it was bad and immoral to go along with making it happen.
Re: Colin Powell has died
#75[flagged]
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7018e1.htm?s_cid=mm...
In a multistate network of U.S. hospitals during January–March 2021, receipt of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines was 94% effective against COVID-19 hospitalization among fully vaccinated adults and 64% effective among partially vaccinated adults aged ≥65 years.
Re: Colin Powell has died
#7613 Rules of Leadership First printed in the August 13, 1989, issue of Parade magazine,[41] these are Colin Powell's 13 Rules of Leadership.[42][43] It ain't as bad as you think. Get mad, then get over it. Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it. It can be done. Be careful what you choose. You may get it. Don't let adverse facts stand in the way of a good de…
Basically rules to be a "yes-sir" man. Talk is cheap. Do the walk. And that failed at walk will be greatly remembered in American history. He could easily just resigned when being forced to act at UN. He choose to go on and display his wmd nonsense act in the process assisting Rumseld, blow 10+ trillions and gotten at least 8K American boys died on fabled WMD. He knows it is a lie showing he was a hypocrite or don't know which them absolute idiot. Either case, not a trait of a great man.
Re: Colin Powell has died
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one who was against the Iraq War from the onset is doing particularly well. When was the last time you heard anything from Phil Donahue?
Phil Donahue is 85. I imagine he's been taking things a bit easier for 10 or 15 years. It's not as though Colin Powell has been making headlines for a while either, and for no doubt similar reasons. This has nothing to do with whether or not he should have taken a stand against the war in Iraq. I agree with disneygibson: Colin Powell had an exceptional career, all of which led up to that moment, where he simply blew…
Phil Donahue was fired for questioning the evidence that was sending us to war.
Re: Colin Powell has died
#78I see many people here hating on Colin Powell and perhaps there is cause for that. In my opinion though, I will remember him an uncommonly principled man.
Did he have party loyalties? Sure. Did they sometimes conflict with his personal views? Sure. I'll admit that there were some disappointments.
However, his ultimate ability to break with powerful past loyalties that conflicted with his personal views and to speak publicly about this schism makes him a hero in my opinion.
Though he was a staunch republican at the time, there was a brief moment in my life, when members of both political parties hoped he might run for president under their banner. I don't think that can be said of any other modern figure.
Re: Colin Powell has died
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one who was against the Iraq War from the onset is doing particularly well. When was the last time you heard anything from Phil Donahue?
Well, I hadn't heard much about Phil Donahue for some years before that.
He had a fairly popular cable show, and the ratings for it weren't a secret. He was fired as the television networks went on a war footing.
Re: Colin Powell has died
#80Colin Powell is a textbook case of "A thousand 'Atta-boys!' and one fuck-up!". He joined the Army in the 1950s, served through 2 tours in Vietnam, and made it all the way to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs by the end of the 1980s, leading the military through Operation Desert Storm and the post-Soviet era. That's a rare career for ANY American, let alone a black one. But all that went "poof!" after his shameful performa…
How is a career imperialist a role model? Classic war mongering liberal take.