BF2S Forums The Dead Pool

In all fairness the early days of the invasion and some years after were very murky. Even when it came to light that the WMD story was bad intelligence at best and a fabrication at worst, people like Hitchens held on to the idea that removing Saddam was the morally right choice still (until his deathbed). I'll have to admit that in the mid-2000s I thought similarly. Hitchens didn't get to see ISIS though, and with every passing year it's become crystal clear that grave errors were made and that people were misled. The Chilcot report probably being the final nail in the coffin for the notion that the whole thing was in any way defensible. Hasn't stopped Blair from trying anyway.

In retrospect it seems that many people in particularly the US/UK leadership & bureaucracy were adamant that the ends justified the means, and that the pretext for invasion needed to serve only as a contextual reason for the removal of Saddam. I imagine Powell felt the same way, particularly considering his personal participation in the first gulf war. At the end of it all I don't know what I consider worse; the willful misuse of bad, uncorroborated intelligence to manipulate the public & allies in order to launch a war, or the complete strategic disaster that ensued after the defeat of the Iraqi military. Even if in some way you can apply moral credence to the idea that Saddam had to be removed no matter what, in a sort of twisted application of the UN's R2P, the succession of strategic errors made during the invasion & in the occupation period and all consequences that ensued (civil war, the rise of ISIS, etc.) cut down any moral highground that might've been claimed.

It's still going to take a while for historians to pinpoint the precise moment, but if we're talking about the end of western hegemony, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria will figure prominently as some pivotal chapter(s). Though ironically while this all has been a blow to the confidence & credibility of the US on the world stage, I see European countries as the ones most definitely left in the dust by it all. Former world powers completely impotent in the face of an ally starting wars they did not agree to, also forced to deal with the consequences which again it seemed/seems unequipped for. Add to that the economic marginalisation of these countries during the same period and you get a bleak picture.

In the long view it's pretty clear to me that Powell's achievements and positive notes in his legacy will be overshadowed by his role in one of the biggest disasters & geopolitical shifts in history. People reading about him will remember the man primarily as one of the principal actors in the Iraq war. Most of those outside the USA already do.

never get a passport macbeth

Mac's doing a bit. I don't know what that bit is exactly, but it also involves cozying up to gropers and people he believes are attempted rapists.

Didn't you once plan to murder a neighborhood dog? I hardly think you should be the one going around saying stuff about people hating dogs, lol.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Only the absolute most liberal of dorks care about dead Muslims at this point. Caring about the plight of Muslims ended with ISIS. Complaining about the U.S. bombing Muslims is like an early 2000's fad. Like listening to a Linkin Park album.

The people defending the poor Muslims are like people defending owning Pitbulls. Sure, you shouldn't set the neighbor's pitbull on fire because a different pitbull bite you. But don't write essays about why the pitbulls are harmless and we need to give them a chance.

your callousness about the metric tonnage of misery and death meted out to other human beings is not big or clever.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

uziq wrote:

1 in every 5 Iraqis has someone in their family who died because of the invasion of Iraq.
More than half of all babies born in Fallujah between 2007 and 2010 were born with a birth defect.
The average lifespan in Iraq is 70.
Powell died at 84 surrounded by family.

Nobody here is defending the War in Iraq.

The issue I and Newbie had is with people erasing the totality of his life in favor of a bitter complaint about the Iraq War.

Quick search, the last time Colin Powell's name was even brought up on bf2s was nearly two years ago on the 2020 thread where uzique clipped an article mentioning a guy who worked for Powell.

I'm criticizing the overall (expected) spike of interest in negative aspects of his career in the brief window of the wake of his death. People have had years to be unrelenting on this. This is my issue, though it might have gone over a few heads. I'm not defending Colin Powell or the Iraq War. Not minimizing uzique's statistics (I've brought up DU exposure a few times as well). I wish reporting would be more critical while people are still alive to experience it, rather than right as someone dies and is being mourned by family.

Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2021-10-21 11:46:45)

The man faded from public life, he was 84. Publishing news articles about the Iraq war and Powell's involvement in the last few years would've amounted to beating a dead horse. The Chilcot report in 2016 was as I stated above, probably the final nail in the coffin on the subject that garnered significant media coverage.

@macbeth, hate to tell you this and repeat myself but Iraq was the single most important event powell was involved in. He wasn't Bill Cosby, but having participated in the orchestration and execution of a faulty, badly managed war that conservatively estimated left some 300,000 people dead (of which over half civilians) is pretty shocking. Powell may have been a decent, even exemplary person in many respects, but the end of his career saw him make some absolutely colossal misjudgments ultimately ending the lives of countless of people. It leaves a complicated legacy to say the least.

uziq wrote:

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Harping about the Iraq War when a man whose success, at least at one time, was a nationally unifying inspiration to blacks and others is also tone deaf. You want counterexamples to Dilbert if he brings up the shape of black skulls but also want to bring up a conflict that is old news compared to everything else going on in both of our countries. Can the blacks have just one military hero? Why does everything need a critical reexamination to highlight the worst of our lives?

He wasn't Bill Cosby. He died an early death from a preventable respiratory disease. That's punishment enough.

somehow i doubt colin powell's success was a 'unifying inspiration to blacks' in the united states. plenty of black folks didn't see it that way. i just linked a video of a black power activist saying so. colin powell's message was the diametric opposite of MLK. MLK was precisely a unifier and a pacifist, importantly. colin powell was a department of defense stooge who killed half a million iraqis.

why does 'unifying' people need to come at such a high cost? it doesn't.

sorry but you are talking bollocks.

Opens up an interesting point though; reading the obituaries it struck me that there was little mention of Powell's reflection on race, particularly considering he grew up in a time of black panthers and even served in Vietnam as a black person. Reading up on him - Powell was the son of Jamaican immigrants. He also rarely made remarks on matters of race. He grew up in NY. Considering all this I don't think he personally shared in the generational history of many other african american black people (particularly those who had family & roots in the south), but got lumped in the group anyway because of his skin colour.

Larssen wrote:

having participated in the orchestration and execution of a faulty, badly managed war that conservatively estimated left some 300,000 people dead (of which over half civilians)

The fact that you coached your criticism of him by quoting the number of maybe dead Iraqis just proves how much you don't get it.

America has moved past Iraq. The last sympathy the vast majority of Americans had for Iraqis died with ISIS. If your criticism had instead focused on the dead and maimed Americans, you would have made a good point. But instead you wanted to talk about the poor poor Iraqis and their terror bombing relatives.

I go to liberal and democrat events (DADT). I guarantee you very few people there have the poor poor Iraqis on their mind or want to hear about them. I guarantee you I could find vastly more blacks there who would speak well of Powell than I would find people of any race angrily denouncing his role in starting the Iraq War.

The number of dead includes combatants, so includes precious american lives. The 'maybe' is because it's hard to quantify exactly macbeth. Fyi at some point during the ISIS period I kept track of daily # of dead in several Iraqi regions because it's a security situation indicator. All the various sources are in agreement a fuckton people died.

this early summary of powell in vietnam, by one of his authorized biographers, is pretty instructive i think.

https://www.historynet.com/colin-powell … -years.htm

Colin Powell’s journey “from a working-class immigrant neighborhood in the South Bronx to the highest echelons of military, political, and diplomatic power was truly remarkable,” writes Jeffrey J. Matthews in Colin Powell: Imperfect Patriot. He says a crucial component of Powell’s rise—ultimately to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state—was his development as an “exemplary subordinate,” an extremely competent, hardworking, loyal assistant who in turn became an effective, inspirational leader. At times, however, superior “followership” led to failings in independent critical reasoning and errors in judgment, including in Vietnam, contends Matthews, who informed Powell “there would be sections of the book he would not like. To his credit, he encouraged me to ‘write what I think is right.’”

the pattern of being a careerist and company man in vietnam, over my lai and other war crimes, repeated itself continually through the iran-contra years and the use of american military power to extend hegemony. he professed a need for multilateralism in public and then literally went to the UN to 'sell' a war proposal that was a foregone conclusion.

but i guess there can't possibly be any better black folks in public life to serve as an inspiration. it's not like african-americans ever produced any notable pacifist thinkers. nope.