Sharon seems to be allied with the NeoConservatives including C.Rice in an attempt to widen the war on terrorism. Their first task, take Powell down a notch or two.
Powell's detractors misguided in criticism
By James Klurfeld
Newsday
Friday, October 5, 2001
It's one of those axiomatic truths about life in Washington, D.C.: If you are riding high, you will eventually be knocked down.
The latest example is Secretary of State Colin Powell.
First, the Washington press corps put him on the Mount Olympus of pedestals. The more he insisted he didn't want to run for president, the greater his image became. But since he has decided to dirty his hands as secretary of State, Powell has become a target. It started before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but it has accelerated since then.
The essence of the attack against Powell is that he is a reluctant warrior -- a too-reluctant warrior. And the chief exhibit against him is the so-called Powell Doctrine, a formulation for using -- or not using -- U.S. power, which resulted from Powell's time as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after the Berlin Wall fell. That doctrine basically said that in the post-Cold War period, the United States should intervene militarily overseas only as a last resort, with overwhelming force and with a clear exit strategy.
His enemies, both outside and inside the administration, claim that his emphasis on diplomacy is symptomatic of his reluctance to use military force and a formula for inaction. They say he isn't willing to take the type of brutal military action needed to deter terrorist attacks in the future.
Some in the Pentagon want to go after Saddam Hussein immediately, whether he is implicated in the Sept. 11 attacks or not. Overall, the charge is that if Powell's criteria for military intervention were applied today, the United States would not intervene because it can't guarantee the outcome of the intervention or the consequences it would cause. It's a wrongheaded criticism.
Powell's prescription for the post-Cold War period made perfect sense. The dilemma then was when to use military force when the nation's vital interests were not at stake but there were lesser interests -- humanitarian or economic, for instance -- involved. Powell correctly understood that the American public was not going to accept the deaths of a large number of its young when the nation itself was not directly challenged. Nor should it.
But all that changed Sept. 11. The post-Cold War period ended that morning. It isn't that Powell's Doctrine is wrong; it is that it is irrelevant. There are few who doubt that the nation's vital interests are at stake in the war against terrorism. In one spasm of terrible violence, approximately 6,000 people were killed. And who doubts that the terrorists believe if they could do it once, they could do it again? Unlike Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kuwait, Kosovo or even Vietnam for that matter, Sept. 11 was an attack directly on the United States -- on not only the nation's economic well-being (which is what Saddam Hussein threatened in the Gulf), but on its very way of life. And just as the people understood that its vital interests were not at stake before (with the exception of the Gulf), they understand they are now.
But that does not mean that the response should be indiscriminate. The same sober, analytical but determined approach that Powell prescribed for the post-Cold War interventions are as necessary now as they were then. The United States should assess the costs, calculate the potential gains and risks and understand the consequences of its actions. To do anything less would be foolish and dangerous. At the same time, the nation cannot be paralyzed by analysis. But its response must be effective.
What was dangerous during the post-Cold War period, and would be even more dangerous now, would be an irresolute use of power. Threatening to use power and then not following through on those threats, as Bill Clinton did time and again, damages the nation's credibility.
Powell is correct to insist that Washington build an effective coalition against Osama bin Laden and the nations that harbor terrorists. That doesn't show he is a reluctant warrior; it demonstrates that he wants to fight this war in the most effective way possible. Indeed, what is the matter with being a reluctant warrior? Isn't that a description of the American people? As military historian Stephen Ambrose has written, when aroused there is nobody as fierce.
Of course, Powell isn't the icon of his earlier press clippings. For that matter, neither was George Washington. Of course, there are policy disputes inside the administration. On matters this grave, there ought to be. But Powell is a good man, with the right instincts about using U.S. power. And as we go into a long, dirty, difficult conflict, he is just the type of person we should want at the president's elbow.
Klurfeld is editor of Newsday's editorial page. |
