by Russell H. Smith

Created on: July 24, 2007   Last Updated: March 14, 2008

When unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate as George W. Bush's nominee as Secretary of State, Colin L. Powell became the 64th individual to assume the role as America's chief diplomat. In doing so he would follow six former U.S. presidents and two highly decorated 4-star generals as the 65th Secretary of State on January 20, 2001. It was an internationally lauded appointment, Powell together with his then field General H. Norman Schwarzkoph, were soldier-heroes of Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm during the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991).

Powell is the quintessential American success story. The son of Jamaican immigrants raised in humble surrounds of the South Bronx, but instilled with a determination and personal ambition that would make Colin Powell a first amongst equals a "genuine American hero". His emblematic 35-year military service is strewn with decoration and honor as far back as the Vietnam War.

It was during his first tour of duty as one of many military advisor's to President Kennedy in South Vietnam that Powell was assigned to investigate the now infamous My Lai massacre. Were revenge-seeking American soldiers killed 347 Vietnamese peasants in the hamlet of My Lai including women and children. This remains one of the darkest moments of that terrible conflict. Despite numerous "eye-witness" accounts Powell's final report to the Army tribunal would greatly water-down the incident saying among other things "there may be isolated occurrences of POW abuse but these are limited". Powell's report would be viewed years later as his desire to tell his superiors "what they wanted to hear" rather than the facts, a character-flaw that would manifest itself at critical times throughout his career.

At the helm of America's foreign policy apparatus surreal as its metonym "Foggy Bottom" implies, Powell would display this deference trait post 9/11 and the lead up to the war in Iraq. Generally accepted a moderate or dove in a U.S. administration besieged with nationalists and neoconservatives, Powell was there to provide equilibrium and reason to the inexperienced President Bush. But he was continually outmaneuvered by the politically savvy combination of Vice-president Dick Cheney and the erstwhile secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld and their sub-Cabinet apparatchik. At a time when the nation and indeed the world looked to Powell to practice diplomacy he and "Foggy Bottom" seemed paralysis-stricken.

Powell apologists will claim that it's his overt loyalty to George W. Bush and will attempt to blame his military career for his acquiescence. History however will attest that no other Principal within the Bush Cabinet was more admirably experienced to know the cost of war and the tell-tail signs of "cooked" intelligence. Furthermore, the historical chronicler will go on to record that never before in modern American political history has one individual promised so much but delivered nothing but a legacy squandered.

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