COLIN POWELL: AN AMERICAN HISTORIC ANOMALY

This week’s death of former State Secretary and retired four-star general Colin Powell marks a reflection time for America. Powell died October 18 from complications of COVID-19.  Cancer exacerbated his condition.  He was 84. We regard Powell as a complex figure on the American political scene, but let no one doubt his historical significance to the nation. 

Powell was the New York-born child of Jamaican

immigrants. He rose to the top of the U.S.  military. He served in significant political and diplomatic positions.  We suspect history will regard him as one of the most accomplished and important Americans of his time.

         

A Fistful of Firsts

Some will remember Powell as a black man who checked off a long list of firsts:

· First black National Security Advisor to a President of the United States. Ronald Reagan named Powell, then a three-star general, his national security advisor on November 5, 1987.  The famously conservative Reagan wasn’t known for appointing people of African descent to high office, but Powell became a trusted advisor.

·  First black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Powell ascended to that job as the nation’s top military officer after being nominated by President George H.W. Bush (41) and confirmed by the Congress. Powell was one of the architects of the quick American victory in Operation Desert Storm, the televised war that demonstrated the technological superiority of the U.S. military.

· First black Secretary of State.  President George W. Bush (43) made Powell thecountry’s top diplomat. He served with distinction, except for one major blemish, his support for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. He was allegedly  duped by others in the Bush administration into believing Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Powell subsequently took responsibility for his action. It’s commonly believed he accepted the story Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and others peddled because Colin Powell was, first and foremost, a soldier who followed orders and carried out the plans of his superiors.   

                       

A Man of Courage

Powell served in combat. In his memoir, My

American Journey, he wrote extensively of coming under fire and being injured while on duty in Vietnam. His experience there encouraged him to formulate the so-called Powell Doctrine – the idea that the United States should get involved in foreign wars only after reaching a political consensus about its objectives and amassing whatever force it needed to achieve those objectives. Arguably, that’s what the U.S. did in Desert Storm. Maybe it’s what we didn’t do in Afghanistan.

Whatever battlefield courage Powell demonstrated in Vietnam, he sometimes eclipsed it in the political arena. Take for example his speech at the 2000 Republican convention when he defended affirmative action in college admissions before an audience notoriously hostile to that idea. Supporting affirmative action before progressive Democrats and civil rights activists is one thing. Doing so before a hall full of Republicans is another.

Then there were his presidential endorsements in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. Despite being a Republican and serving in a Republican administration, Powell endorsed Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden in those elections. He got plenty of blowback for those endorsements, but he stood by them. He said he believed the candidates he backed would better serve the national interest.

Seeping into the Culture

Colin Powell wasn’t just a military, political, and diplomatic figure. He came to stand for the respected man the country and its political class

could trust. He even became a model in the literary world.  The Race is a political novel by acclaimed writer Richard North Patterson. Mostly, the story concerns a fictional Desert Storm hero turned United States Senator who seeks the Republican presidential nomination while carrying on a very public romance with a black actress lugging around potentially devastating personal baggage and an activist history at odds with the GOP agenda. Even in the world of fiction, the Republican Party wouldn’t nominate such a candidate. His campaign works well enough, however, that he succeeds in helping deny the nomination to the compromised candidate favored by most party insiders.  Divided and dispirited, the GOP turns to a black military hero/general bearing an uncanny resemblance to Colin Powell.

That Patterson used Powell as the model for his savior candidate spoke volumes about the stature the real life Powell attained.  Americans from most segments of the political spectrum looked up to and respected him. He wasn’t perfect, as his championing of the Iraq misadventure demonstrated, but most indicators are that he was a patriot. 

THE U.S. GETS OUT OF AFGHANISTAN: FIRST, HOW DID WE GET IN?

 

The United States is out of Afghanistan. On August 30 the last transport plane carrying American military personnel and equipment, U.S. citizens, and Afghan allies lifted off from  Kabul

International Airport. After twenty years and at a cost of  2500 U.S. military lives, 1200 soldiers from allied countries, 3900 contractors, 111,000 Afghans (31,000 of them civilians), and $2 trillion, the United States is done.

The Biden administration took a lot of heat for the
exit. Future investigations will determine if could have been done better. Polls showed Americans in favor of leaving, but the president’s approval rating dipped in light of the grim pictures of civilians
exit. Future investigations will determine if could have been done better. Polls showed Americans in favor of leaving, but the president’s approval rating dipped in light of the grim pictures of civiliansclinging to U.S. military aircraft at the Kabul airport. Republicans pounced on the optics and slammed Biden for how he handled the end game, ignoring the fact former President Donald Trump, before leaving office, set a deadline for an even earlier American departure.

We think the exit presents a topic for another time.

Today, and in posts that will come later, we focus on the way the United States got involved in Afghanistan, how and why we stayed as long as we did, and what lessons the  experience teaches. The issue involves fundamental principles of constitutional law, foreign policy, and the American role in the world.

                                    

The Legal Framework for War

America’s constitution provides a specific process for going to war. Since the end of the Second World War, it’s never been followed. Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 gives Congress the power to declare

war. Though Article II, Section 2 makes the president Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, Congress, not the executive, was supposed to have authority to involve the country in wars.

Why has this happened? First, Congress let

it happen. That’s what occurred with Afghanistan. President George W. Bush, after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and Washington, sought and received from Congress  what’s called an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). It wasn’t a

declaration of war against a specific country, but a grant of authority that the president could use “all necessary and appropriate force” against those who planned and carried out the attacks.

The measure passed 98-0 in the Senate and with 

one dissenting vote – California’s Barbara Lee – in the House of Representatives. Lee said she voted ‘no’ not because she thought a military response was unwarranted, but because she believed the broadly worded AUMF provided a blank check for endless conflict. The record shows her foresight. Besides being the 

basis for two decades

of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, by 2016, that AUMF had been cited 37 times as a justification for military actions in 14 countries and on the high seas. Presidents from both parties used it in justifying their actions -- Bush 18 times, Barack Obama 19 times.

 

An Old Movie

The story of how the U.S. got involved in, and stayed, in Afghanistan so long seems uncomfortably familiar. The Korean War was never declared. American troops participated as part of a United Nations “police action.”  Seventy years later, we still have 28,500 military personnel in Korea. We understand the South Koreans want us there and we recognize that perhaps we have strategic interests we didn’t have in Afghanistan. There was, however, no declaration of war and we’ve stayed a long time. Those are just the facts.

Vietnam was different, but in degree, not kind.

Congress didn’t declare war. It authorized the use of military force in response to an incident involving an American ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. President Lyndon Johnson used that authorization as a basis for sending over half a million U.S. troops into a civil war that had been grinding on in South Vietnam for years. We stayed until we lost, at a cost of 58,220 U.S. military lives and $168 billion (a trillion in today’s dollars).

Our more recent involvements in the first Gulf War (Desert Storm) and the 2003 invasion of Iraq haven’t been different.  Those were presidential operations, accompanied by some kind of congressional authorization that amounted to a rubber stamp of what the president wanted. In neither case did Congress declare war. Desert Storm ended quickly, but Iraq dragged on and on. We still have 2500 troops there.

 

The Failure of Limits

As we’ll note in coming posts, Congress has tried reigning in the ability of presidents to wage war by themselves. In 1973, it passed the War Powers Act which seeks a balance between congressional oversight of the country’s involvement in war and

the commander-in-chief role the constitution gives the chief executive.  The president must tell Congress within 48 hours when he or she has ordered U.S. military forces into action and requires removal of troops from that involvement after 60 days if Congress hasn’t declared war or otherwise authorized the operation.  

This hasn’t worked. The statute has never ended a foreign military operation.  The 60-day time limit has rarely been triggered. Presidents from both ends of the ideological spectrum have ignored it -- Ronald Reagan in his El Salvador intervention, Bill Clinton in Kosovo, and Barack Obama in Libya.

How we got into and stayed in Afghanistan may well represent a case study in the way presidents violate both the constitution and the War Powers Act. We’ll dive into that question when we pick up this topic in our next post.