Colin Powell – Wimplomat
Nov. 13, 2001
Norman LiebmannNewsMax.com
It is time to reconsider Colin Powell, America's Persian Gulf tea time warrior, former battlefield hobbyist, and current international darling of the Washington one-world cognoscente.
Powell, it will be remembered, is the military architect that turned Desert Storm into Desert Sham and snatched not defeat, but ignominy, from the jaws of victory. It seemed a reprise of Jimmy Carter's infamous fiasco in the Iranian desert.
Mercifully, Carter is no longer empowered to waste the lives of gallant men and has turned his attention to pursuits more suited to his skills – building outhouses and ceding to America's enemies control of waterways vital to our nation's defense.
The Persian Gulf campaign required a general and got a master of ceremonies. Armed with a telescoping map pointer, Powell led a military campaign that might be called "The Jerry Lewis Telethon Goes to War." Powell now has the distinction of tying the hands of yet another George Bush, a highly suggestible nepotist president. This is déjà vu at its most indiscriminate.
It took the Israelis 2,000 years to find the Dead Sea Scrolls in a cave. With Powell's guidance, it will take Bush 4,000 years to do the same with Osama bin Laden. Powell's blunder in Iraq should have barred him from the halls of government in perpetuity. As with Baghdad, here he is again, recommending the city of Kabul not be taken.
Ten minutes of slippery sweet talk from Colin Powell is all it will take to convince George W. Bush to order the Marines to give the island of Iwo Jima back to the Japanese.
A compassionate governor can become a sentimental president. A sentimental soldier is quickly a dead soldier. The price of Powell's determination to let Saddam Hussein skate has yet to be determined. Only God knows how many millions may have to pick up the tab for it.
Powell is the classic paradigm of the Peter Principle, having raised to the level of his incompetence, though his gift for being equivocal and his ample wardrobe equipped him to become a prince of bureaucratic class. Without demonstrating the carousing charisma of Bill Clinton, Powell revels in the ceremony and pomp of state dinners although, it is reported, he dislikes following the precedent set by his predecessor, Madeleine Albright, that obliges him to clear away the dishes.
Powell is especially valuable to the Bush administration, since being black has become an unchallengeable passport into New World Order councils. He has the additional virtue of not being Jesse Jackson, which is a redeeming characteristic in anybody. He is Bush's race card intended to consolidate his non-existent reservoir of good will in the black community, where the exemplar of happiness is seeing Eddie Murphy on the big screen pretending to beat up white stunt men.
Powell road-tested his diplomatic skills while still in the Army (Powell has always been a kind of Neville Chamberlain without portfolio.) George W. Bush designated him America's emissary to the world. He convinced Bush Senior that letting Saddam Hussein remain in power would create Paradise on Earth. Rather, the oil fields were set afire to become the nearest approximation to Hell on Earth yet seen.
Though the environmental damage it caused was incalculable, the people generally fanatic about such things were silent. About this he did nothing and, to date, said nothing. Likely, had he commanded the U.S. forces in North Africa during WW II instead of General Patton, we might still be waiting for Rommel to knock the chip off his shoulder.
As secretary of state his first move was to declare his opposition to another war with Iraq, even as America was receiving envelopes filled with anthrax spores from Saddam Hussein's Disease of the Month Club. This second Powell moratorium on kicking Saddam's despotic ass has given that Iraqi madman time to abandon the primitive technique of sending spores around the world by snail mail, and begin making anthrax available in the handy carry-home six-pack.
In the meantime Bush continues issuing a steady stream of dire warnings to Americans who are twisting their handkerchiefs and fretting about why Bush has no advice on how to prevent all these horrendous things he want us to remain calm about.
It is karma that the malleable Powell shall have traded his general's brass buttons for the diplomat's striped trousers and segued to the State Department, where appeasement is always stalking the corridors on little cat feet. This present Bush effort in Afghanistan unmistakably carries the Powell imprimatur – the winning of hearts and minds of Islamic murderers by delivering a wrist slap from 40,000 feet and carpet bombing the terrain with American cheese sandwiches. (America has been assiduous in using our largesse to alleviate the deprivation of Arab people whose hatred of the U.S. confirms the thesis that people never forgive you for the sacrifices you make on their behalf.)
Bush and Powell share an immunity that renders them incapable of detecting flaws in Bill Clinton, America's recreational opiate and political addiction of choice. It is especially unacceptable in Powell's case when you consider Bubba's enfeebling of the American military for which Powell simulates a surface fondness.
Because of his naïveté about Islam, Bush is often referred to as Alice in Turbanland. If America succumbs, it will be because Bush is too compassionate to fight on Arab terms and needed to find a nation that has the belly for it. Hence, Bush dispatched Powell on a tour of the nations in the Hate America Belt to implore them to stand by us, when he should be disseminating the caveat to the rogue nations of Islam that we are equipped, mentally and militarily, to go it alone and to decimate (with a smile) those who oppose us.
Some in Washington do not feel confident about Powell's ability to out-hondle Islamic marketplace hustlers. After Powell spent a day in the area, the Taliban were assured of a place in Afghanistan's post-war government. It will only take the seeking of the middle ground for Powell's striped pants to end up in a display case in some Saudi sheik's rumpus room
Still, Bush feels he selected the right ex-general when he sent Powell coalition-building with instructions to leave no Arab unkissed. Powell was charged with consolidating Bush's basic belief that once the Arabs get to know us, they will love us. This is a 180-degree mirror image of reality, in that the problem is not getting the Arabs to love us, but to fear us.
What dubious success that Powell has achieved is due to Bush's promise to give Pakistan a billion dollars. (There is some possibility Egypt may give the coalition its blessing once Bush implements on his promise to provide funds to cover the pyramids with aluminum siding and install speed bumps across the Sahara Desert.
The Sellout of Israel
Nothing could have confirmed more profoundly George W. Bush's antipathy toward Israel than the verbal bouquet thrown his way by former Israeli leader, Ehud Barak, who all but sunk his nation. If the Bush administration Middle East policy is not anti-Israel, then it has no identifiable Middle East policy at all. It has disqualified from consideration the Jewish presence in the Holy Land that goes back 5,000 years. Conceivably Powell believes that God's Chosen People is the name of a rock group he saw on "Soul Train."
Colin Powell is yet another Westerner to have succumbed to the romance of the desert and the heady perfumes of Araby. He considers himself a kind of Lawrence of OPEC. Like all diplomats who work the Middle East, Powell suffers from delusions of neutrality. The bias of his sympathies became suspect when he was seen on a camel. Those suspicions deepened when he was seen under a camel.
The subverting of Israel will consolidate the current alignment in the U.N. of the Afro-Islamic anti-civilization bloc, and would make Powell almost as big a hero in the inner city as Bill Clinton. Idi Amin would have brokered a more equitable peace between the Palestinians and Israel.
Bush has declared his intention to establish a Palestinian state on the West Bank, and cannot understand why Israel, already surrounded by a sea of hostile nations, balks at the creation of another contiguous nation sworn to its destruction.
Apparently, the Bush/Powell foreign policy will send America to Hell – but not until they've sent Israel on ahead to see if the coast is clear. Bush wants Israel to pull out of the West Bank. Who better than Colin Powell to sound the retreat?
The State Department is the relay team that passes the baton of animosity toward Israel from one administration to another, and now has the ideal secretary of state to bring that animus to flood stage. When Bush put Palestinian statehood on the table, he put his honor (such as it is) on the table with it. Apparently, George Senior never taught his boy it is considered impolite to give away pieces of other people's countries. Presumably, his next act will be to promise Yasser Arafat, as leader of the new Palestinian State, could reinstate the Third Reich's Nuremberg Laws.
With regard to Israel, Bush's highly advertised compassion is down a quart. His lopsided bias against the country is consistent with the misshapen perception that allows him to "move on" from the criminality and treason of Bill Clinton. Like Clinton, Bush perceives the survival of the state of Israel as an impediment to his pursuit of a niche in the corridors of history.
It falls to Press Secretary Ari Fleischer to sell the media on the proposition that Palestinians are victims and Jews are troublemakers – that all that metaphoric open-mouth kissing going on in the Oval Office between Bush and the Moslems is just good clean fun, and the Jews are just being paranoid.
He must also advise the press corps not to read too much into the fact that "it's serious" between Colin Powell and Yasser Arafat just because they exchanged friendship rings. (Israelis learned quickly they could not count on the word of George Bush any more than the conservative Republicans who voted for him.)
The Bush lopsided anti-Israel policy might be explained by the fact that Arabs fit closer to the profile of Mexicans than Jews do; or that perhaps he can discern elements of compassionate conservatism among suicide bombers. It appears to have become something of a tradition in the Bush family to get elected president and try to bully Israel into waiting patiently for extinction as if it were a streetcar. Dubya must reconcile himself that Israel didn't walk the plank for his father – and it won't for him.
Israel is a citadel of civilization in the Middle East and consequently a menace to Islam. It is an island of cultural attainments surrounded by a sea of uncollected garbage and poisonous envy. Environmentally, the Gaza Strip makes an ideal cuspidor for camels. While the Jews are busy creating their 21st-century state, history has not yet persuaded nomadic Arabs that they are unlikely to find water in the desert and that there are undoubtedly more promising places to look for it.
Israel's salvation is that it is nuclear-capable, while the Palestinian missile technology peaked with the thrown rock. The mistake that may end civilization was spreading Western technology to the Arabs whose culture peaked with the invention of the six-hole flute. (It is conceivable that Allah, in His Infinite Wisdom, situated the Arabs in the middle of the desert so the rest of the world would not have to listen to them practicing it.)
It is no longer a surprise to see one secretary of state after another pimping for Islam. Madeleine Albright lowered our nation's moral base in the Middle East and Colin Powell kicked over its ethical pedestal. America's standing among the nations of the world has never been mocked more than since Colin Powell began his coalition scavenging.
The history of the Hebrew people has been such that at a Rose Bowl Game on New Years Day a Jew can sense it when an anti-Semite walks into the stadium. He could sense it in Colin Powell while the ex-general is still in the stadium parking lot.
Palestinian fanaticism – road rage afoot – isn't on Powell's list of terrorists, nor are there any Israelis on the "comp" list for his book. Likely, Powell would have erased all the names from Schindler's list. Seemingly, the difference between Colin Powell and Louis Farrakhan is that Farrakhan wears a bow tie and has teeth larger than a milk-wagon horse.
Bush's urging Israel not to defend itself indicates either his lobotomy didn't heal correctly or that his oxygen supply needs a boost to get above his necktie. Yet it is the cornerstone of Bush-Powell – a policy Israelis have named "committing Jewicide." There are still survivors of the Holocaust there to say "Been there! Done that! Never Again!"
Despite Arafat's assassination squads and the U.N.'s attempted racist gang rape of the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel does not covet the West Bank, because it doesn't need another cat box. Nor does it like living next door to one. Likely, had Israel wanted the West Bank, it would already have taken it and paved it over.
Bush and Powell are again trying to resuscitate "the peace process," which, so far, has been a conveyer belt for trundling suicide bombers into Israel and giving new meaning to the term "population explosion." History shows, the more process, the less peace. Its chance of succeeding, however slight, is contemptible. The Israelis are not a nation of garment center salesmen and violin players. The Nazis saw the last generation of Jews willing to "go quietly." Sabras of Israel are made of sterner stuff than the Jews in the U.S. Senate.
[Note: The fact that Israel is again being sold out by another American president has not provoked a whimper of protest from Boxer, Feinstein, Joseph Lieberman, Charles Schumer, Arlen Spector, Paul Wellstone and Russ Feingold, who, presumably, won't show sympathy for Israel for fear of losing the Ku Klux Klan vote. Surely Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, driven by the Yenta Imperative, are not about to do anything inconvenient to their political careers no matter how much it embarrasses Jehovah.]
Ahead of his time, ex-General Powell was emotionally better suited to conduct war in Bill Clinton's Don't ask-Don't tell-Don't laugh Army. He turned the military into something that approximates a Julliard Conservatory ROTC with Reveille being played by a string quartet.
The most dangerous aspect of Clinton's pansyfication of the military is that it left America with a klatch of quibbling diplomats as its first line of defense. Bill Clinton determined it to be politically safer to dismantle the American military than trust in its strength. As with Desert Storm, even if we do not lose the war in Afghanistan, Powell will see to it once again that we don't win it.
In his defense, people point out that Colin Powell served in Vietnam, but, of course, we lost that war, too.
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Norman Liebmann is a former television writer [Johnny Carson; Dean Martin; wrote and produced "Chico and the Man" and created the characters for "The Munsters" (who are all named after his relatives)] and a brilliant and insightful columnist/humorist. Please visit his Web site, Firehat, a treasure trove of Clinton- and media-bashing.
E-mail: firehat@gte.net.