[Prefatory Note: The post below is a slightly modified text of an interview published under a different title in CounterPunch on October 22, 2021. The interview was conducted by an increasingly influential independent journalist, Daniel Falcone.]
OCTOBER 22, 2021
Photograph Source: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – CC BY 2.0
Colin Powell died on Monday at the age of 84. Born in New York City in 1937, he attended City College where he studied geology. Over the course of his high-ranking military and government career he formulated the Powell Doctrine and later became known for justifying the illegal Iraq War in 2003. In this interview, international relations scholar Richard Falk reflects on Powell’s life and the US reaction to his passing: including the relevance of identity politics, the question of moderation, his contribution to the horrors of Vietnam and Iraq, and US governmental hypocrisy in the wake of its January 2020 assassination of the comparable Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani.
Daniel Falcone: As the US media mourns the death of Colin Powell and regrets the passing of a “memorable and principled statesman,” can you comment on how the actual history competes with this memory and knowledge construction of this notable figure?
Richard Falk: The legacy of Colin Powell is a complex one that will take time to sort out. There is no doubt that he projected the public image of an African American who was moderate and genuine in his commitment to national military and diplomatic service, and a patriot in the traditional sense of supporting his country, ‘right or wrong.’ He had a notable career in both the armed forces and diplomacy, becoming the first African American to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State. These achievements set Powell on a high pedestal, a role model for persons of color, long excluded from the pinnacles of power and influence.
At the same time, for an African American in the last half of the 20th Century to identify with the Republican Party seemed to many problematic, even taking account of Powell’s chosen professional identity as a rising military officer. Born and growing up in liberal New York City makes this embrace of American conservatism even stranger and made one wonder whether he was a career opportunist, or someone alienated from his racial identity.
Such negative suspicions were generally overcome of his post-political life when Powell exhibited a different posture. He abandoned his Republicanism, and endorsed successive Democratic presidential candidates: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden. Powell called Trump ‘a national disgrace’ and openly supported his
impeachment. This turn toward the Democrats strengthens the view that Powell’s essential identity was linked to a sense of what he believed it meant to be an American of moderate persuasion and maybe some feeling late in his life that led him to emphasize racial solidarity with Obama, who had strong credentials as an anti-racist moderate. Then with the advent of Trump and Trumpism Powell seemed unhesitant about denouncing Republican extremism, I suspect as viewing it a deviation from his idea of what the Republican Party stood for, as well as his conception of ‘the American way.’ Powell also added to his positive image by engaging actively in charitable work for disadvantaged persons after his retirement.
At the same time, throughout his professional career stayed in his lane so far as anti-racism, national politics, and a globally aggressive U.S. foreign policy was concerned. It is not surprising that with such a profile, extravagant bipartisan praise was immediately forthcoming from stalwarts of both political parties with the announcement of his death. It was important for the American establishment to show the country and the world, especially at this time, that whatever the accusations of Black Lives Matter or the fallout from the police murder of George Floyd, that the American political class was not racist and would celebrate an individual of color for what he accomplished.
Yet, from the perspective of his role as a major international figure in the implementation of American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, where he lent prominent justification for, and leadership of the policies enacted in Iraq after 1990. Powell’s low point came when he provided the highest profile justification of the invasion and occupation of Iraq by way of testimony before the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003. Powell later admitted that his presentation had been misleading and mistaken as to its allegations that Iraq possessed prohibited biological weapons and was intent on developing nuclear weapons. Powell made the official case for the Bush presidency for the Iraq War on a large global stage. The Iraq War commenced six weeks later and proved a humanitarian disaster for the Iraqi people and an expensive and revealing political failure for the United States, which had the unwanted effect of shifting regional influence towards Iran when its main geopolitical goal was to minimize and at worst, contain it.
Powell had been admired in the post-Vietnam period for his insistence that the U.S. should not engage in international uses of force unless its national interests were significantly involved, and it was prepared to devote sufficient military forces to ensure success without enduring major American casualties. What was dubbed ‘the Powell Doctrine’ earned Powell the moniker of ‘reluctant warrior,’ but in retrospect he was not nearly reluctant enough. Although he was reportedly skeptical about the case for invading Iraq in 2003, he went along with the Bush/Cheney resolve to remove Saddam Hussein from power and afterwards to engage in state-building and democracy promotion in the course of a prolonged occupation.
Although Powell accepted responsibility for arguing a false case as to weapons of destruction before the UN Security Council during which he described Saddam Hussein as posing ‘an imminent danger to the world,’ he refrained from opposing the war. In fact, Powell would later comment, “I think we had a lot of successes in Iraq. Iraq’s terrible dictator is gone.” But so are hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians gone, and the country plunged into ongoing chaos. This reality is rarely acknowledged, and when Madelaine Albright notoriously did so in a ‘60 Minutes’ interview, she tried hard to walk it back with all sorts of evasive explanations that showed no disposition to accept responsibility for the criminal character of the sanctions imposed during the 1990s or the devastation and chaos after 2003.
A second stain on Powell’s record came earlier, when as a major in the U.S. Army serving in Vietnam, he was assigned to investigate the My Lai massacre of March 16, 1968. This was a terrible war crime when at least 300 Vietnamese civilians who lived in a small rural village were shot dead in cold blood by U.S. military personnel acting on orders. In his report, Powell seemed to be exonerating the culprits of this atrocity, incredibly concluding that “relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent.” The report did admit that unfortunate incidents of this kind occur in wars, but there was no attribution of guilt for what was viewed around the world as a grotesque atrocity.
With Powell, it will be up to respected historians to draw a line between Powell as adhering to the ethics of a professional soldier and diplomat and Powell as faithful executor of the criminal aspects of American foreign policy in the period that he served as Chairman of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1989-1993, and as Secretary of State, 2001-2005. In this regard, it should not be forgotten that the Nuremberg Judgment concluded that carrying out ‘superior orders’ or acting in the line of duty was no defense in the war crimes prosecutions of surviving high ranking military and civilian Nazi officials.
Provisionally, what stands out in the aftermath of his death is that Colin Powell was a breakthrough national political figure who undoubtedly helped create new opportunities for black leadership and prominence, and subsequently refused to go along with the Republican Party’s embrace of reactionary extremism after 2016. A more balanced and nuanced evaluation of his role and degree of responsibility will have to wait. Powell was comfortable as a lead member of the American political class during the heyday of neoconservatism, which encouraged a diplomacy of intervention and overseas militarism in the years after the Soviet collapse. At the same time, Powell was never himself perceived as a neocon, and during his time as Secretary of Defense was seen as an opponent of the rashest neocon policies.
Daniel Falcone: Do you think that the US, from the Democrats’ perspective, see this as a special loss regarding their consistent efforts to rebrand their party and their credibility within the concept of “law and order?”
Richard Falk: I think by the time of his death Colin Powell had lost most of his relevance to the politics of the country. He might have seemed to some the perfect embodiment of the Biden determination to restore an atmosphere of bipartisan consensus that prevailed during the Cold War and the early years of reaction to the 9/11 attacks. To some extent the Biden approach has succeeded in mobilizing the country for confrontational geopolitics directed at China. Internally however it does not seem as though bipartisanship could be restored, despite reflecting Powell’s preferences for moderation along the entire political spectrum.
Quite the contrary, with Trunp’s cheerleading from the sidelines, toxic polarization remains prevalent within national context.
Daniel Falcone: Can you talk about the career of Powell and the Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani (a person killed by the US) and draw any comparisons to the reactions and contextual framing of each?
Richard Falk: It is in many ways an apt, intriguing, and revealing comparison. Both military figures were admired professionally within their countries and enjoyed respect and the affection within their respective societies. As reflects the national style and the global power hierarchy, Soleimani was assassinated through a CIA-led operation while Powell died a natural death. Powell was undoubtedly perceived by U.S. governmental adversaries as complicit in the implementation of American foreign policy, including its aspects that seemed to violate international law, including the UN Charter, but geopolitical primacy ensures de facto impunity for its principal political and military figures.
In this sense, Powell was an efficient military commander who was closely associated with post-colonial American foreign policy, which had a particularly destructive impact on the Middle East. Soleimani, similarly, was portrayed as responsible for leading Iran’s armed resistance to the American occupation of Iraq and the extension of its influence elsewhere in the region (in addition to Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Gaza, and Lebanon). Soleimani was described by U.S. Government as engaged in ‘terrorism’ while Powell was viewed in many foreign circles as an agent of unlawful American interventions and encroachments on national sovereignty. It remains for us to think about the implications of geopolitical realities resulting in the assassination of sub-altern leading figures while impunity unto natural death is enjoyed by their hegemonic opponents. The people of Iran and of the United States looked upon these two quite different military figures as fallen heroes.
Will history and historians judged them differently?
Daniel Falcone: What does it say about the organized left, that progressives and Democratic Socialists within the US government are waxing nostalgic about Powell? Has the spectrum shifted so far right in your view?
Richard Falk: Powell is a somewhat ambiguous political figure from a progressive perspective (and to some extent, for opposite reasons, from a current Republican perspective). He seems to have ascended the heights of American life as a person of color, deriving from a humble background. In My American Journey Powell describes his ascent in these words, “Mine is the story of a black kid of no early promise from an immigrant family of limited means who was raised in the South Bronx.”
That such a personal narrative should evoke widespread meta-political approval should no surprise, indeed it is the fulfillment of the American dream, extended to a representative of a racial category that had been generally excluded from dreams that included ascending to the upper reaches of leadership in the armed forces and foreign policy. Celebration of these achievements were solidified by Powell’s non-abrasive personality and style, as well as by his record of professional competence.
I think that Powell would have received great praise in any era, but perhaps his non-confrontational manner and overall moderation are especially appreciated by a broad spectrum of public opinion when Trumpism has taken over control of the Republican Party. To affirm Powell is partly to exhibit nostalgia for the pre-Trump politics of comparative moderation, although the excesses of the Reagan and two Bush presidencies make this affirmation of the American past somewhat sentimental, and a matter of degree.
In sum, I believe, American liberals, and even many progressives, want to present themselves as part of the anti-Communist, pro-Israeli, and pro-law and order mainstream. Of course, thankfully there were some notable exceptions, although too few, including Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Edward Said, Daniel Berrigan, Medea Benjamin, and Daniel Ellsberg. Like Colin Powell, these exceptions are mostly male, and unlike him, are all white. So it goes!
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Global Justice in the 21st Century 
Viewing American Sniper
26 JanViewing American Sniper
[American Sniper was released on Christmas Day, 2014. It is a movie version of Chris Kyle’s memoir, American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History, with 255 kills, 160 officially confirmed by the Department of Defense. The movie set in Iraq is directed by Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper plays the part of Chris Kyle, and Sienna Miller is brilliantly cast in the role of his wife, Taya]
American Sniper is a fictionalized movie version of the war stories associated with Chris Kyle’s experience as a Navy SEAL in the Iraq War as recounted in his best-selling memoir. The film can be viewed from a variety of angles, including even as one more indictment of war as hell. A second line of interpretation focuses on the intense psychological tensions experienced by this single American soldier and his comrades caught up in the horrors of urban warfare in Iraq. A connected theme are the adverse impacts of Kyle’s war service on his family that is made to cope with the complex and contradictory traumas of his absence (confronting his potential death on a distant battlefield) and his alienated presence whenever he returns, a scarred individual who longs to go back to Iraq to resume his assigned role as ‘legendary sniper.’ Multiple scenes in the movie portray Kyle as haunted by his service. In his book, Kyle consistently treats his victims as “savage, despicable.” At one point he makes such statements as “I only wish I had killed more,” “I loved what I did. I still do. If circumstances were different – if my family didn’t need me – I’d be back in a heartbeat. I’m not lying or exaggerating to say it was fun. I had the time of my life being a SEAL.” The film avoids giving emphasis such to extreme statements, but it does portray this sniper as convinced he was cut out for the combat role given to him, and that he seems more alive and content when active in the killing fields of Iraq than when back home.
Kyle’s own violent death is also metaphorically significant—actual events disclosed by text in the film but not depicted, Kyle was killed by an American soldier wounded in Iraq whom he had helped at a nearby veterans’ hospital where he worked at the advice of a psychiatrist to overcome his own version of PTSD. Such an ending of his life conveys the irony that for Kyle the more dangerous battlefield turned out to be in the neighborhood of his family residence, his assailant not the evil ‘savages’ he mowed down in Iraq but a fellow American veteran who had experienced those very same encounters. Kyle had survived four tours of duty as a sniper in the midst of the most bloody military operations in Iraq, but these survival skills proved irrelevant to the minefields of innocence that now made the American countryside a dangerous war zone.
From box office success and right-wing praise, American Sniper, is obviously most commonly regarded as a celebration of Chris Kyle as war hero who deserves the thankful praise of the country. From this outlook, Kyle killed enemies of America at great risk and cost to himself, and spared the country a repetition of the 9/11 attacks. It is this self-serving and essentially distorted vindication of the Iraq War that the film presupposes, even to the extent of having Kyle watch on TV as the plane strikes the World Trade Center, with a quick scene shift in the movie to waging war against those presupposed to be the foot soldiers of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Embedded in this view was a double false narrative that the American mission in Iraq was to carry out a necessary counter-terrorism operation linked to the 9/11 attacks and that the Iraqis being killed in Falluja and elsewhere should be perceived as ‘terrorists’ rather than as fighters against an invasion and occupation of their country by a foreign power that disrespects their religion, culture, and sovereignty.
These narratives dominated my perception of the movie, although those associated with its production deny such lines of interpretation. Clint Eastwood (the director and producer) and Bradley Cooper (who plays Kyle in the film) have publicly questioned employing a political optic in commentary on the film. They insist, in contrast, that the movie was ‘a character study’ of Kyle and ‘apolitical’ in the sense of not taking a position pro or con the Iraq War. Eastwood has tried to lend credibility to his claim by pointing out that he opposed the Iraq War, and was even skeptical about Afghanistan. Yet whatever he privately feels this not how most viewers most viewers would experience the film, either being enthralled by Kyle’s exploits or appalled by them. Eastwood may have aspired to tell an apolitical story, but if so, he has failed badly.
The Iraq War was a war of aggression undertaken in 2003 despite the rejection of a well-orchestrated (and misleading) American plea to the UN Security Council for authorization. Against such a background, the attack on Iraq and subsequent occupation were widely regarded as international crimes bearing resemblance to the category of aggressive warfare for which German and Japanese leaders were punished for waging after World War II. In this light, the Iraqi violence associated with the hostile American occupation needs to be portrayed as a unilateral repudiation of the limits set by international law and the UN Charter on recourse to war by the world’s most powerful country. Additionally, American Sniper depicts the doomed efforts of an outgunned society to resist a militarily dominant foreign invader that is imposing its will on the country’s future by force of arms. Such a viewing is not meant to imply that we need to endorse some of the horrific Iraqi tactics relied upon, but it should remind us that presenting the Iraqis as ‘evil’ and as ‘savages’ functions in the film as an unchallenged display of Islamophobic propaganda, and cannot be credibly explained away as a realistic exploration of a war hero’s temperament and struggle for sanity and survival. American Sniper also presents Kyle’s story in such a way as to avoid any self-criticism directed at the American mission in Iraq.
The movie also lacks redeeming artistic merit. It is relentless and repetitive in portraying battle scenes of intensity intertwined with Kyle’s tormented relationship with his wife and efforts to become a father to their two children during his brief interludes of home leave between military assignments. We learn nothing about the realities of our world beyond a tired rendering of the embedded post-9/11 polemic on the necessity of foreign wars to keep America safe from evil forces lurking in the Islamic world. This orthodoxy is not even interrogated, much less rejected. And no where in the film is there any acknowledgement that the United States in Iraq was acting in defiance of international law and causing great devastation and suffering to a totally vulnerable foreign country, as well as producing a massive displacement of the civilian population. Leaving behind a devastated country and widespread chaos. The Iraqi experience of such carnage in their own country is treated as irrelevant, and is reminiscent of Vietnam War films that were mostly devoted to explorations of the victimization of the young Americans caught up in an experience of war that they could neither understand nor win, while overlooking almost altogether the massive suffering being inflicted on a foreign people in a distant land. That is, even most anti-war portrayals of these American wars accept the dehumanization of the foreign others.
For me the most significant impressions resulting from American Sniper’s narrative of the Iraq War are as follows:
–the striking imbalance between the sophisticated military technology at the disposal of the United States versus the primitive weaponry in the possession of the Iraqi adversaries, creating an overwhelming impression that the Iraq War was more ‘a hunt’ than ‘a war;’ such an impression is somehow deepened by a scene in the film in which Kyle is teaching his very young son to hunt for deer;
–the failure to make any effort at all to understand the experience of this war from the perspective of the Iraqis, creating the absurd impression that the only victims deserving empathy were Americans like Kyle who had endured the torments of warfare and suffered its admittedly disorienting consequences; the emotions of remorse as associated with the harm done to Iraq and Iraqis is no where to be found in the film.
What may be disturbing is the radical subjectivity of likely audience responses. In America, great popularity of mostly uncritical commentary on American Sniper, reinforcing the regressive national mood of glamorizing bloody military exploits as the most admirable expression of true patriotism. Elsewhere in the world the perception is likely to be quite opposite: American Sniper inducing anti-American attitudes either out of fear or resentment or both, solidifying the global image of the United States as a cruel geopolitical bully. That is, American Sniper is wildly pro-American for most domestic viewers, and severely anti-American for most foreign viewers. This gap in subjectivities exhibits the degree to which Americans are living in a bubble of their own devising.
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It is highly unlikely that many Americans will appreciate this disparity of perception, and even fewer will pause long enough to assess its significance. If more of us could see ourselves as we are seen in the mirror of foreign reactions it might help end this unhealthy national romance with permanent war that started after World War II with the Cold War and continues now in the form of the ‘War on Terror.’ Such a pattern of delusional geopolitics will never produce peace and security in the 21st century, and will fatally divert attention from meeting the challenges of humanity associated with climate change, nuclear weapons, poverty, and extremism. To question this American domination project is to antagonize the entrenched bureaucratic, media, and neoliberal forces that benefit from endless war making and its associated expenditures of trillions. In the end it is this grand project of late capitalism that American Sniper indirectly vindicates, thereby burdening the nation and the world, perhaps fatally.
Tags: American Sniper, Chris Kyle, delusional geopolitics, international law, Iraq War, Iraqi people