A Role for Powell
“He will have a role as one of my advisers,” Barack Obama said on NBC’s “Today” in an interview aired Monday, a day after Powell, a four-star general and President Bush’s former secretary of state, endorsed him.
“Whether he wants to take a formal role, whether that’s a good fit for him, is something we’d have to discuss,” Obama said.
Being a top presidential adviser, especially on foreign policy, would be familiar ground to Powell on a subject that’s relatively new to the freshman Illinois senator. Obama has struggled to establish his foreign policy credentials against GOP candidate John McCain, a decorated military veteran, former prisoner of war and ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
I have some suggestions for Mr. Powell’s role.
* He could be assigned as the Goodwill Ambassador to Walter Reed Hospital, where he can advocate for the thousands of criminally neglected troops he helped send to Iraq, tend to their wounds (physical and emotional), and comfort their families.
*He could serve as a gravedigger in Arlington National Cemetery, carefully and respectfully burying the remains of those who didn’t make it home from the war Powell supported by lying to the UN about Iraq’s imaginary robot planes and WMD labs that never existed.
*Powell would make an excellent White House janitor: after all, someone’s gotta clean up the elephants’ mess, and it might as well be a [former?] elephant.
As for a serious role? Hell no. Powell’s a yes-man who had a chance to do the right thing, and instead knowingly consigned thousands of his fellow soldiers to death and mutilation. He’s an astonishgly immoral person, with no values other than covering his own ass and doing what he’s told. I wouldn’t hire Powell for dog-catcher, and I can only hope that this is the kind of substance-free rhetoric politicians use to allay their detractors.
There’s no realistic role for Powell in any administration that values human life, honesty, and any attempt to dig us out of the hole Powell’s party and Powell himself helped get us into. Frankly, it’s a wonder Powell even appears in public anymore, and that more military moms (and dads) don’t spit in his face.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
I know there has been a lot to scream about, and Powell’s record is far from spotless – in terms of human blood spilled or otherwise – , but it seems to me like you can’t percieve any of the benefits of this endorsement at all. There is nothing good about this? Really? Maybe you should change the name of this blog to the No-Win Zone.
Powell, in case you had your fingers jammed too hard in your ears, deftly told the Islamophobic right wingnuts that McCain can’t seem to silence to shut the fuck up about Obama being a Muslim, and was the first person to actually stand up and say that even if he was, IT WOULDN’T FUCKING MATTER. Nobody on either side has done that. Boom. There you go. That’s good.
And, believe it or not, one of the things that most struck me when I saw the (substantially unedited) interview clips of Powell that were taken this weekend was the level of circumspection, culpability and even regret on his part when he spoke in terms of his involvement in Iraq. It wasn’t like he was being hammered on it, either. He brought it up. It vibed candid, rather than scripted or calculated.
I don’t think Obama would necessarily offer Powell a serious, permanent role; he’s consulted with him in the past, but I imagine the exchange you quoted was more rhetorical deference than anything. One thing Obama has proven with his campaign is that he carefully chooses the people around him (i.e. going with Biden and not even considering Clinton); I think he would build his cabinet with as much forethought and scrutiny.
* I clarified right wingnuts, because the tone of your post reminded me that the right is not the only political persuasion with a lunatic fringe.
October 21st, 2008 at 1:24 pm
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