Keeping His Memory Alive

Colin Powell was a great American. He served as a Four-Star General, Chairman of our Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State. In the last two positions, he was the first Black man to do so.

But Powell was special in other respects, too. Most military men get known for their deeds, not their words. Powell did notable things, but he was also good with words and strategy.

It was he who took the so-called “Pottery Barn” rule and applied it to international military affairs. “You Break it, You Own it,” he said. He did that in the context of Gulf I, our very brief war to kick Saddam’s Iraq out of Kuwait’s oil fields, which Saddam had taken and occupied without provocation.

Powell meant to warn against getting our troops too deeply involved in re-arranging the borders of the Middle East, or in “regime change” there. Otherwise, they might be there for a long, long time, perhaps in perpetual combat. So he identified, decades earlier, the very same problems that still face us in Iraq today and might soon face us in Iran.

But Powell didn’t stop there. He pronounced what became known as the “Powell Doctrine” for military intervention abroad. It has three parts:

(1) Have a clear objective;
(2) Bring and apply overwhelming force; and
(3) Have (and follow) a clear exit strategy.

Powell applied that doctrine brilliantly in Gulf I. The clear objective was to recover the oil fields that Saddam’s forces had stolen and return them to Kuwait (and non-Iraqi control). Powell spent five months transporting half a million troops, plus their tanks (with special artillery-resistant armor), to the theater. They were his overwhelming force. His clear exit strategy was to return the stolen oil fields to Kuwait and get out.

The war itself may have been the shortest in US history. The actual fighting lasted two months. It was our nation’s single, solitary, clear victory in major combat since the Korean war. And if you consider the Korean War only a partial success (because we left the Korean Peninsula divided), it was our only unambiguous, clear and complete victory since World War II, whose end involved the first and only wartime use of nuclear weapons.

Think about that. The Powell Doctrine gave us the only major war after World War II that was not a debacle (as in Vietnam and Afghanistan), a stalemate (as in Iraq, where ISIS still controls large parts of the nation) or a worthwhile but costly partial victory (in Korea).

As for his “Pottery Barn” rule, Powell created it to convince our then president (George Herbert Walker Bush, George W. Bush’s father) not to invade and occupy Baghdad, or even to try. The son, in what may have been a misjudgment of Oedipal proportions, later did invade Baghdad. That debacle, which spawned the Islamic State and is still ongoing, proved the Powell Doctrine’s value.

Powell was not perfect. In declining to invade Baghdad, he allowed Saddam to slaughter the so-called “Marsh Arabs,” a disaster that might have been avoided with a little air support. And before the son did invade Baghdad, Powell, as Secretary of State, gave a speech at the UN supporting intelligence (which later proved false) that Saddam had been developing nuclear weapons. But Powell had been trained as a soldier, and intelligence was not his remit. So his following orders at the UN was excusable, if unfortunate.

As his Powell Doctrine suggested, Powell was an honest, straightforward thinker. Early in his tenure as Secretary of State, a Chinese fighter plane, trying to scare off one of our spy planes, came too close and made contact. The fighter crashed, killing the pilot, but our spy plane, though damaged, managed to land safely at a Chinese air base. China refused to release the plane or its crew until Powell, in a simple but effective exercise of diplomacy, made a formal apology to defuse the crisis. Powell was never one to let pride get in the way of avoiding unnecessary conflict.

So why am I writing this essay? Because we’re beginning to forget who did these things.

In the last week or so, I have seen several mentions in the press of the “Pottery Barn” rule without Powell’s name attached. I have also seen at least one summary of the Powell Doctrine without mentioning his name or using his precise or even similar words.

Having grown up in a society whose biggest domestic problem, by far, is deeply entrenched racism, born of slavery, I’m suspicious and irritated. To me, it’s all of a piece with taking down plaques from public parks that accurately report the atrocities of slavery or depict key parts of Black history in the US.

Racism is not just our country’s worst plague, far more damaging than Covid-19. I think it has already changed our twenty-first century history, far for the worse.

As the turn of the century approached, Bill Clinton’s two terms as president were coming to an end. The Monica Lewinski scandal and the unsuccessful attempt to impeach him, plus his constant erosion or neglect of traditional Democratic Party values (to win elections), were tarnishing the Party’s brand.

So the Republican star was rising. Nevertheless, the GOP was rational and cautious then, so it wanted to seal the deal. What better candidate to put forward than Colin Powell, a hero and the architect of our only winning major war since the Big One?

Powell was reluctant at first. Then, just he as appeared inclined to yield, his wife objected. Reportedly at her request, Powell demurred, in an act of pure spousal chivalry.

Although I’ve never voted for a Republican for president in my life, I was disappointed. I thought Powell was a wise, careful leader, and I thought he would have made a good president. Later, when Obama became our first Black President, I railed at how the Republicans, having little reason to complain about his policy, made thinly concealed racism their chief plan of attack.

I’m 80 years old. I will go to my grave devoutly believing that, if Powell had been our first Black president, the Republicans would have suppressed racism in their ranks, just because Powell would have been their guy. There would have been no push, in the Supreme Court or otherwise, to replay Reconstruction and Jim Crow, and we would all be living in a much better, more peaceful and less racist country.

So let’s at least give credit where credit is due, shall we? It’s not the “Pottery Barn” rule: Pottery Barn, which still exists (a subsidiary of Williams-Sonoma, Inc.), is a housewares retail store, not a military contractor or a think tank. The military/foreign relations principle is “Colin Powell’s so-called ’Pottery Barn’ Rule.” And the three-part doctrine that, if followed as intended, just might keep us from making the same disastrous mistakes in Iran as in Iraq, is not the output of some anonymous think tank or war college. It’s the “Powell Doctrine,” named after the distinguished general and statesman who first enunciated it and applied it well.

If our “mainstream” press has any love of history and self-respect left, it will use these terms religiously. Then maybe some of us will recall how the GOP once had a chance to win big by embracing diversity and claiming the first Black president but, having lost that chance, went full-on-bonkers racist when that chance shifted to the Dems.