The evil of banality

A new biography confirms that Colin Powell went along with the Iraq war because he was following orders. The tragic irony of the good soldier is that he deserted the people he was trying to protect.

By Gary Kamiya

Read more: Books, Colin Powell, Gary Kamiya, Reviews, Book reviews, Iraq War

Photo: Reuters/Chip East

Photo composite of Colin Powell

Oct. 12, 2006 | On Sept. 19. 2005, eight months after Colin Powell resigned as George W. Bush's secretary of state, he gave a speech to the National War College. Afterward, an audience member asked him to explain whether he really supported the Iraq war and whether he had ever considered resigning. Powell replied that he had proposed trying diplomacy before going to war, and that Bush had agreed to try. Yet he had always known, he said, that Bush might decide to invade Iraq later. When Bush did, Powell said, "I supported him. I can't go on a long patrol and then say 'never mind.'" Powell concluded by saying that no, he had "never thought of resigning."

This story, which Karen DeYoung relates at the outset of "Soldier," her competent but constrained new biography of Powell, raises the crucial question that will forever hang over the career of America's most famous soldier: Why did he continue to give public support to a war that privately he had grave doubts about? In fact, the story also provides the answer. Powell's comparison of serving as secretary of state to going on a combat patrol says it all: He stayed on the Bush team because he was a loyal soldier, for whom resigning was not making a principled stand but deserting his post. Powell's decision cleared the way to a disastrous war, hideously bloody and apparently endless. The war, according to a new study from the Lancet, has cost the lives of 655,000 Iraqis so far, and the Army chief of staff has announced that he plans to keep the current level of U.S. troops in Iraq through 2010. But Powell seems incapable of grasping that he very likely could have stopped the war, and his biographer fails to sufficiently explore the issue.

Powell's military mind-set was the main reason he supported the war, but it wasn't the only reason. As DeYoung, an editor at the Washington Post, reveals, he was also a profoundly cautious man, not particularly ideological and not given to dramatic gestures or making waves. "He had risen steadily through the military and four administrations by maintaining a careful balance between deliberate prudence and intrepid competence," DeYoung writes. Powell's pride, and his past successes, also played a role. She notes that Powell "had been winning bureaucratic battles for so many years that he simply refused to acknowledge the extent of the losses he had suffered. Beyond his soldier's sense of duty, he saw even the threat of resignation as an acknowledgment of defeat. He was a proud man, and he would never have let them see him sweat." But the low-key professionalism that served him well in his illustrious military career proved a fatal impediment when it came to standing up to the radical ideologues in the Bush administration -- or indeed in even recognizing what he was dealing with.

Unfortunately, none of these are exactly earth-shaking revelations. DeYoung brings nuance and psychological depth to her analysis, but most of us already believed Powell went along with the Iraq war mainly because he was a loyal soldier and a consummate bureaucratic survivor. It isn't DeYoung's fault that she is unable to advance the story: The simple fact is that there seems to be nothing else to say. Until he made the fatal mistake of joining the Bush administration, Powell's life story was inspiring to millions; his autobiography, "My American Journey," was a bestseller. But his story, alas, didn't end there. And its sad climax and depressing denouement is not only thoroughly uninspiring, it's not even very interesting -- unless reading about a cautious executive's bureaucratic defeat is your idea of a good time. Of course, Powell's bureaucratic downfall had enormous consequences -- but that still doesn't make it, or him, ultimately very interesting. Hannah Arendt coined the famous phrase "the banality of evil" in describing the Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem; Powell's unfortunate saga might be called "the evil of banality."

DeYoung is a solid reporter and a sympathetic but not hagiographic biographer, and she mines Colin Powell's life story for all of the scarce nuggets she can. Its outlines are familiar: Raised in the Bronx by hardworking Jamaican-born parents, he was an indifferent student who suddenly shone when he joined the ROTC. He served in Vietnam, and left disillusioned by the war's execution but still believing in the rightness of the cause: "The ends were justified, even if the means were flawed." From then on, his military career went from one dazzling triumph to the next, culminating in his appointment, at age 52, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from which position he led Gulf War I. He flirted with the possibility of running for president, but ultimately decided he didn't have the passion for the job. (Powell hated indecision, and his Hamlet-like inability to make up his mind tormented him.) After starting his career politically uncommitted, he became a Republican more by default and loyalty to his colleagues than out of any particular conviction: a moderate in politics as in all things, he described himself as being at best "55 percent Republican."

DeYoung paints a portrait of a decent, somewhat emotionally reticent man, a natural leader and team player who thrived on order and self-discipline and disliked direct confrontation. There is much to admire about Powell, not least his unself-conscious, unself-pitying attitude toward race. Powell's mantra about his blackness, which he learned from his parents, was, "My race is somebody else's problem. It's not my problem." His deep sense of comradeship with and loyalty to those serving in the military, especially the lowest ranks, is also commendable. As secretary of state under Bush, he tried to stick up for diplomacy and multilateralism in a singularly hostile and dysfunctional, indeed borderline bizarre, environment. He did his best to steer Bush administration policy toward a more even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. He reined the hard-liners in on North Korea, and tried to soften the blunt edges of Bush unilateralism on Kyoto and other issues. He opposed the administration's draconian moves to approve torture and disregard the Geneva Conventions. Generally, and admirably, Powell was a voice of reason among the strange stew of ignorant ideologues (Wolfowitz), enigmatic and conniving bullies (Cheney and Rumsfeld), wet-behind-the-ears enablers (Rice), and rigid, callow leaders (Bush) he found himself dealing with.

But none of that will be remembered. What will be is the act that will permanently define his career -- his presentation to the U.N. Security Council of the supposed "evidence" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Few acts of political theater have been as momentous. The painful fact is that it was Powell's immense prestige, as much or more than his arguments (which proved to be almost all bogus), that sold the American people, Congress and the media on Bush's disastrous war. It is, of course, impossible to say for sure, but had Powell resigned in protest once it became clear to him that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were going to make war no matter what, there is a good chance that the whole tricked-up case for going to Iraq would have collapsed, and one of the greatest debacles in American history would have been avoided.

Next page: Administration hard-liners, in their hurry to get to Baghdad, rolled right over him