Jewish Atheist

I received the following forwarded invitation from BlueGal:

“On February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations to rally support for an invasion of Iraq.

“Thank you for helping commemorate the tragic day — two days after the anniversary of Buddy Holly’s, Richie Valens’s and the Big Bopper’s death — the day the music really died.”

Colin Powell: Ultimate team player sells out his country

It has been five years since the genesis of American’s latest foreign military fiasco, and I have so far not spoken of the unspeakable. Others have done an excellent job.

Part of the reason has been that sometimes the reality itself leaves me speechless.

Bizarro World

I often feel as if I’ve slipped out of the real world, where America is respected and at peace, and into a bizarre dimension, in which all the lessons of Viet Nam have been forgotten, and it happens AGAIN…in an alternate universe where everything is the same except that the President, a cocky, inarticulate naif manipulated by diabolical subordinates, decides, on trumped-up evidence, to attack a Middle Eastern country, thus unleashing a civil war there and sinking America into a military and economic quagmire ($250 million A DAY) that destroys our international prestige and from which there is no easy escape, certainly not in the near future and probably not for decades (you will note that America still has troops in Europe and the Far East, half a century after the end of World War II).

I am in a bad dream — or a pretty good movie (Robin Williams or Jim Carrey as the clueless Prez; Frank Langella as the vile, duplicitous Cheney; Nick Nolte as the disingenuous megalomaniac Rumsfeld;), maybe directed by Altman or dePalma.

But no. It’s reality.

Sometimes we can tell when history is turning a corner, as with 9/11, and
sometimes it is not obvious until after events unfold after a single, non-cataclysmic event.

Such was the case with Colin Powell’s shameless lying before the United Nations.

Where’s Colin?

Where is Colin? Has anybody seen anything of him since his departure from government? Is he still out there giving speeches?

I was in one of Colin Powell’s audiences when he was at the height of his prestige. An arrogant corporate executive invited General Powell to an employee gathering, just because he could. The gathering was staged because of Colin, and it was at Chicago’s scenic Ravinia Festival, where we all got free food and the General spoke.

I was disappointed to hear bromides and platitudes, but then reality set in. Colin was very likely a no talent, a go-along guy, a magnificent example of affirmative action run amok. I don’t know what he was like as a soldier, but as a politician, he clearly exemplified the Peter Principle. He was the ultimate Token Negro.

He was just the right grocery-bag shade of tan, and he called himself a Republican, and so he immediately was promoted to the desk near the door, so the Republicans could show what a big tent they had.

Meantime Colin would go around the country uttering patriotic bromides and platitudes, in his magnificent General’s uniform, a clear example for all of how high a Black person could rise in America — and in the Republican Party, yet.

Destined for great things

This is not to take away from Colin the man. He may have had some success in combat, and he may have been a magnificent, magnanimous person. He might have made a good military bureaucrat. He could’ve been one of those crisp, efficient guys that’s always running around attending to the General’s needs. But no. Colin was destined for great things.

For one thing, he was “well-spoken.” Chris Rock has a hilarious routine about this, as if white people expected Colin to sound like Louis Armstrong. But it’s true: having no traces of Black dialect made him acceptable, at a very subtle level, to white Republicans.

I don’t know why Colin gave the speeches he did; my experience, it’s because these, unsophisticated as they were, were the ideas he wanted to convey, and he simply wasn’t open to advice from a ghostwriter. But that’s only a guess.

One of my colleagues actually was his speechwriter, and by no means do I detract from the many contributions this very talented writer may have made to the General’s rhetoric. I’ll only say that the one example I heard was…bromides, truisms and America-feel-good stuff.

So Colin was articulate by white people’s standards, the right color, smart enough to succeed in the military, and very definitely smart enough to know what his white patrons expected of him.

What they expected

The expected him to abandon his integrity, sell out his country, and to go before the U.N. with a vial of who-knows-what as a show-and-tell, a prop, for his litany of half-truths and lies.

Maybe that’s why we haven’t seen much of Colin lately. I haven’t seen any interviews, profiles, or writings. I can’t remember any specific accomplishments.

Maybe the events that followed his U.N. appearance were indeed a turning point in history, one that pivoted on what Colin said, because when a figure of such prestige affirmed the truth of the government’s policy, America was irrevocably committed to its shameful and criminal path of unprovoked warfare and destruction.

I believe that Colin Powell did stand at a turning point of history. He could have openly refused to accept and propagate the administration’s lies.

He could’ve declared, as a military expert, that there was no reason to go to war in Iraq and, knowing anything about the history of the place, you would have no reason to think that America could create peace and democracy there. It would be an expensive and wasteful quagmire.

People would have listened. The chickenshit, lickspittle media would have listened. Colin could’ve used his prestige at that moment to change history. But he chose to do what he had done all along — to be the ultimate team player.

Burden of shame

Though my life has been insignificant compared to his, I will never have to deal with the kind of guilt that must weigh upon Colin’s shoulders. I too consider myself an American patriot. And I will never let my country down the way he did on that shameful day.

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Alan M. Perlman is a secular humanist speaker and author — most recently, of An Atheist Reads the Torah: Secular Humanistic Perspectives on the Five Books of Moses. For information, go to www.trafford.com/06-0056.