A Conversation With Colin Powell - Part two
P. J. O'ROURKE: <font size=4>You know, that drill sergeant could have been a useful influence at times during his life. But I won't go there.
Something I really wanted to ask you about, because there's been so much whining about the war on terrorism. I don't have to tell you. Do you see any parallels between the early Cold War and the early part of the war against terrorism? It's not like we didn't make any mistakes then or didn't have any problems.
SECRETARY POWELL: I don't know. What were you expecting?
P. J. O'ROURKE: The way that Eastern Europe kind of got away from us and China fell. The Doctrine of Containment. I guess that wouldn't really apply. Mistakes we made in the Korean War.
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I think there's something to that. A dawning recognition of a new kind of threat. <font color=red>The President spoke about it in his—I guess it was his May 24 War College speech—that we have to see this terrorism problem not just as a temporary aberration that's going to go away. He really saw it in the very beginning, right after 9/11, when he said this is not just a fight against al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, but against a persistent threat. And he took a little heat for it. We don't know when it's going to end. I mean, it took the Cold War forty years. It took World War II six.
P. J. O'ROURKE: And very few people were ambivalent about the Nazis.
SECRETARY POWELL: We were until 1941.
P. J. O'ROURKE: People don't own up to it now.
<font color=black>
But the Communists, that was another matter. A lot of people styled themselves as some kind of Marxists or Socialists. To all of a sudden regard this as evil, as the late Ronald Reagan did, twinkle in his eye and all. When he said <font color=red>"Evil Empire,"<font color=black> people gasped.
SECRETARY POWELL: One of my colleagues thought all you had to do was détente them forever, and you'd do okay. But Reagan said no, they're evil.
P. J. O'ROURKE: I think it's been hard for people to understand how Islam can be a good religion, and yet the Islamists are evil. Those of us who have had experience with Islam understand this, just as we understand the difference between snake handlers and people going to church on Sunday morning. But I think a lot of people are having trouble getting their head around who's the enemy.
SECRETARY POWELL: <font color=red>There probably is a parallel to the Cold War. You need somebody like a George Bush to come along and say this is our challenge for this generation and then start to put together coalitions, as was done in the post-World War II period, with the creation of NATO, ANZUS, CETO and CENTO.
There was a growing realization of the threat. Even though it was localized initially in Europe and the Soviet Union. Suddenly we saw it could be China. And remember, Greece almost fell. And the Italian Communist Party had a hell of a good time for a long time ...
It was a real danger that could have swept everywhere. It was for real.
<font color=black>
P. J. O'ROURKE: This is why I don't feel as discouraged by events in Iraq as some people do, because looking back, none of our previous fights have been instantaneous victories.
SECRETARY POWELL: No, and maybe we should never have characterized this thing as something that would be a tough fight but then it would all be over.
P. J. O'ROURKE: <font color=red>I don't think anyone did say that.
SECRETARY POWELL: I didn't.
P. J. O'ROURKE: Yet the feeling grew.
SECRETARY POWELL: The feeling grew.
P. J. O'ROURKE: Do you think, as in World War II and the Cold War, it may take us a while to find out what the right policies are going to be—what's most effective?
SECRETARY POWELL: Everybody thinks all you do is sit in a room and design a policy and that's it. But if you look at the experience of World War II and the Cold War, there was a great deal of trial and error, or as I like to call it, <font color=black>"audibling."<font color=red> You know, no plan—no military plan—survives first contact with a real enemy. Who was it who said that? Was it Clemens? Some humorist. <font color=black>"Even the most brilliant strategist must occasionally take into account the presence of an enemy."<font color=red> There's a thinking, breathing enemy out there and he's not subject to our policy whims. You have to respond to how he responds. Therefore, you are always modifying policy, changing policy, discarding that which doesn't work and looking for something that does work. Why this should shock and surprise people, I don't know. But it does. Everybody wants perfect answers right up front, and then they start criticizing right away if—
P. J. O'ROURKE: They want all D-Day, no raid on Dieppe.
SECRETARY POWELL: Yes.
P. J. O'ROURKE: Are we getting worry fatigue? Are we so worried about Islamicist terrorism that we're not looking at other things we ought to be worried about?
SECRETARY POWELL: I don't think we are. I don't think the President is. I don't think this Department is. If you were to spend a week with me and saw how much time I spend on economic issues, trade issues ...
P. J. O'ROURKE: I actually meant the public more than you.
SECRETARY POWELL: I think the public is worrying too much about terrorism. It's starting to affect us too much with respect to issues like traveling. I get all kinds of questions from people. Somebody came up to me at church yesterday and asked, <font color=black>"Do you think it's okay for my daughter to go to Singapore?"<font color=red> I said, <font color=black>"I can't think of anywhere on earth she's going to be safer."<font color=red> But they were terrified that their daughter was going to this faraway place and the terrorists were going to get her. I said, <font color=black>"Let her go and enjoy it."
<font color=red>
And now everybody is running around and saying they're going to be bombing all the shopping centers.
P. J. O'ROURKE: I was wondering whether we should be concerned about issues like, we've got some countries out there that seem to be trying to decouple the idea of economic freedom from personal liberty and political liberty—something we once would have called Fascism.
SECRETARY POWELL: Yes, without naming countries, we're nervous about this trend, but I don't think it works. Because if you are going to be economically successful you can't really constrain your people too much. Your people are the ones who are going to make it happen for you. You have to turn them loose. They may originally start out being robber barons, but so did we.
<font color=black>
The society eventually catches up with them and makes something useful. We had robber barons in the last century and we had junk bond dealers and a number of them went to jail. But, man, before they went to jail, did they get something going. The cellular industry, the computer industry—it was junk bond guys who did that in the '80s. We probably wouldn't have advanced as quickly as we did if it had not been for junk bond dealers who went to jail.
P. J. O'ROURKE: You're optimistic.
SECRETARY POWELL: I am optimistic because I think there's a historic determinism that's going on now, and people will learn that in this world success is going to come from solid political grounding, a vibrant economy, and economic progress. The key is to have a representative form of government where people are free to make choices, economic choices and political choices that adjust with the times. Anybody standing around thinking that centralized planning—<font color=blue>"How do I cook the books so I can be elected again and again and again and again?"<font color=black>—will sustain this is wrong.
When you look at some of the undeveloped countries that we are working with now ... The Foreign Minister of [the Secretary named an undeveloped country ] was here. [This country ] doesn't get a lot of ink.
P. J. O'ROURKE: No, it doesn't. It's hard to spell.
SECRETARY POWELL: It is a country the size of Texas and Mexico combined, four million people, and the per capita income is $377 a year. It's been the same president for twenty years, so they've got a ways to go. And he locked up his opponent the day before the election and released him the day after. But, nevertheless, the Foreign Minister sat here and—not just to butter me up—he talked about reform. He knows what he needs to do and they are trying to figure out how to get there. And so I lectured him about locking his boss's opponent up the day before the election, and I told him, <font color=red>"We're going to be friends, we're going to have a good relationship, but we are going to nag you about this stuff all the time."
<font color=black>
He had a woman with him who is a senator. They actually had a woman run for president. She didn't win, of course, but she ran. So they're trying to figure out how to make it work. They know that what they've got doesn't work.
Same thing with [the Secretary named a country from the former Soviet Bloc ]. The ambassador was here. He was quite sophisticated. And he was going on and on about all the things they're doing. <font color=blue>"Our economy is booming, we want to do more with NATO, but you guys keep ignoring us,"<font color=black> blah, blah, blah. He said, <font color=blue>"What do we have to do?"<font color=black> I said, <font color=red>"Have one decent presidential election."<font color=black> And so these guys, it's not that they are ignorant, they know what they have to do. It's just that it's a bitch for them to do it. So they almost like it when I lecture them. They don't like being screamed at and I don't scream at them. I just take them through it. They need it because they have got to be able to go home and say to people, you know, <font color=blue>"This is what the guy told me."
<font color=black>
P. J. O'ROURKE: It's kind of the swing coach that Tiger Woods fired.
SECRETARY POWELL: Yeah. Also, I'm stuck with all these regulations. I've got the human rights report, the trafficking in persons report, the global war on terrorism report. And in all of these reports I have to give report cards to all these countries, and they don't like it when they get singled out. But I think historically this is the determinant for more and more countries doing the right thing. I think ultimately we'll win. And in my almost twenty years of fairly—mostly—senior service in both political and military jobs, I have seen all my enemies of the Cold War go away.
All of the bad guys that used to be in Latin America have been replaced by fragile democracies. Only Castro is still out there. And they are all having difficulties of one kind or another. But, hell, so are we. If you look at Asia, it's pretty stable except for North Korea. Africa, they're starting to understand what they have to do. Russia also knows where its future lies. They can't just rely on $41 dollar barrels of oil forever. They've got to start making things that somebody wants to buy.
<font size=3>
The deputy press secretary caught Secretary Powell's eye.
SECRETARY POWELL: It looks like I have time for one or two more questions.
P. J. O'ROURKE: Ok, well, this is the key one. Which is your favorite Beatle? I actually asked Bill Clinton that. When he was running for President, I interviewed him and I said, <font color=blue>"Which one's your favorite Beatle?"<font color=black> And he looked quite surprised because he thought only policy questions would be asked. And it was Paul, wouldn't you know?
SECRETARY POWELL: That's what I would say. Because I know Paul. Paul's a bud of mine.
P. J. O'ROURKE: I'm sure he's a great guy and all, but I would have thought anybody in their right mind would pick Ringo. He wanted the act to last just long enough so he would have enough money to open a chain of hairdressing shops. And, by God, he did.
SECRETARY POWELL: And Paul ended up with the most money.
P. J. O'ROURKE: He did. And he is alive.
SECRETARY POWELL: You know what I like about him, he is so normal.
P. J. O'ROURKE: Yes, so I understand.
Clinton also liked the skinny Elvis stamp, which I thought showed a lack of self-confidence.
SECRETARY POWELL: I knew Elvis.
P. J. O'ROURKE: Really?
SECRETARY POWELL: I met him when he was in the Army. I was a lieutenant; he was a sergeant. He was in the neighboring regiment—or combat command, as we called it—in the Third Armored Division in Germany.
We were in the training area one day and I was driving my jeep around and suddenly came upon this unit from the other outfit and there he was. And so I went over and shook hands.
He was a good soldier. You never would have thought he was anything but a soldier. He had a pimple on his face and everything else. He was not a big star. He was just another soldier.
P. J. O'ROURKE: I'll be darned. Well, good for him.
To change the subject completely, is there symbolic or psychological significance to your fondness for Volvos?
SECRETARY POWELL: No. They just came into my life when my kids needed a car in college and they refused to drive their grandfather's Chevy Belair. They wanted something sporty; I wanted something safe. They wanted something distinctive; I wanted something safe.
I came upon this '77 Volvo and gave it to my son who took it to college. It was a pretty interesting car. I bought another one, an older one. I play with sophisticated non-zero-sum things all week long. On weekends, if I really want to relax—and I don't anymore, I can't relax because I'm too busy here—but there was nothing that was greater fun for me or more relaxing than a zero-sum problem with the car. It's not running? You put on a new distributor cap and it either runs or it doesn't. And so the joy for me was to take—drag—home a car. I mean literally drag it home. My driver and I would do it. We've been known to go through Alexandria with a Volvo on a rope dragging it home. People started calling and giving them to me. They heard about me. I was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. <font color=red>"I'll give you a Volvo on a rope."<font color=black> The rope broke one day coming through the gate at Ft. Myer, with the MPs waving the Chairman through. We coasted until we could get another rope.
We used to do this all the time. Bring them to the house and Sergeant Pearson, now Mr. Pearson, and I would take them apart. We had extra engines, we had extra radiators, had extra transmissions.
P. J. O'ROURKE: Did you have room to do this? My wife gets upset about carburetors on the dining room table.
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, so I had five garages at Ft. Myer. On the weekends, I would go out there and start rebuilding cars. I still have one of them. I've had it for twelve years now. It's still out in my yard. And it just—it cleared my non-zero-sum mind.
The URL for this page is
theatlantic.com. |
