The WEEK ending 7 April 2002
UNLIKELY SAVIOUR
US Secretary of State Colin Powell's mission to the Middle East was welcomed unconditionally by the Palestinian Authority as a positive contribution to peace in the region. How short their memories are.
A political soldier, Powell had served two terms in Vietnam before becoming Secretary of Defence Caspar Weinbergers' military advisor. General Norman Schwarzkopf remembers Powell as his ally in persuading the US military to reorient its post-Cold War strategy to prepare a war against Iraq (It Doesn't Take a Hero, 1992, p288). You worry about your theatre, I'll worry about Washington' Powell told Schwarzkopf, promising to deliver the politicos to the General's War Plan.
Gulf War reporter Maggie O'Kane remembers that Powell lied about satellite pictures taken before Desert Storm saying they showed a quarter of a million Iraqis poised to invade Saudi Arabia, when in fact they showed a withdrawal from Kuwait in progress (Guardian, 16 December 1995) - too late to save the conscript army from a slaughter described as a 'turkey shoot' by the army. After destroying Iraq, a cynical General Colin Powell, then head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: 'I'm running out of demons...I'm down to Fidel Castro and Kim Il-Sung.' (Quoted in W Bello, People and Power in the Pacific, p28)
Touting for a political role in 1995, Powell kept his options open insisting 'I am neither' Republican or Democrat. 'I was never a very threatening kind of black man...I was a good negro to have around', he added. Though touted for both parties, it was as George W Bush's 'good negro' that Powell played his key political role.
Powell's nominating speech at the Republican Conference was important for posing the party - against its reputation - as sympathetic to black America. But Powell also outlined the theory that America would defend its monopoly of power against any challenge, warning "sick nations that still pursue the 'fools gold' of tyranny and weapons of mass destruction will soon find themselves left behind in the dust bin of history". Stripped of its rhetorical flourishes, the meaning of the passage was that any power outside of US control would not be allowed to arm.
That Powell could be received as a saviour of the Middle East only indicates how low the Palestine Liberation Organisation has sunk, in welcoming the personification of imperial domination to the region. The myth that Israel has been acting independently in making war on the Palestinians is enhanced by radicals' demands that America should engage - as if its funding and military support for Israel were not an engagement.
European critics of America in particular find it difficult to believe that the US sees Ariel Sharon's campaign on the now re-occupied West Bank as an extension of the War Against Terror, and dream that Powell will restrain Israel. But they have failed to understand the intrinsically conservative character of US engagement. -- James Heartfield The 'Death of the Subject' Explained is available at GBP11.00, plus GBP1.00 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'