{"id":12623,"date":"2021-10-19T08:03:49","date_gmt":"2021-10-19T15:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=12623"},"modified":"2021-10-19T08:08:09","modified_gmt":"2021-10-19T15:08:09","slug":"colin-powell-who-shaped-u-s-national-security-dies-at-84-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=12623","title":{"rendered":"“Colin Powell, Who Shaped U.S. National Security, Dies at 84”, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

By <\/span>Eric Schmitt, Obituary, front page lead, October 19, 2021<\/span><\/p>\n

A former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, secretary of state and national security adviser, Mr. Powell <\/a>died of complications of Covid-19, his family said.<\/em><\/p>\n\"Secretary<\/picture>\n

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Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in February 2001. Months later he was grappling with the terrorist attacks on American soil.\u00a0<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Kenneth Lambert\/Associated Press<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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[Follow the latest coverage of the death of <\/em>Colin Powell<\/em><\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Colin L. Powell, who in four decades of public life served as the nation\u2019s top soldier, diplomat and national security adviser, and whose speech at the United Nations in 2003 helped pave the way for the United States to go to war in Iraq, died on Monday. He was 84.<\/p>\n

The cause was complications of Covid-19, his family said in a statement, adding that he had been vaccinated and was being treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, in Bethesda, Md., when he died there.<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman said his immune system had been compromised by multiple myeloma, for which he had been undergoing treatment. He had been due to receive a booster shot for his vaccine last week, she said, but had to postpone it when he fell ill. He had also been treated for early stages of Parkinson\u2019s disease, she said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Powell was a pathbreaker, serving as the country\u2019s first Black national security adviser, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state. Beginning with his 35 years in the Army, Mr. Powell was emblematic of the ability of minorities to use the military as a ladder of opportunity.<\/p>\n

His was a classic American success story. Born in Harlem of Jamaican parents, he grew up in the South Bronx and graduated from City College of New York, joining the Army through the R.O.T.C. Starting as a young second lieutenant commissioned in the dawn of a newly desegregated Army, Mr. Powell served two decorated combat tours in Vietnam. He was later national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan at the end of the Cold War, helping to negotiate arms treaties and an era of cooperation with the Soviet president, Mikhail S. Gorbachev.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mr. Powell was the architect of the invasion of Panama in 1989 and of the Persian Gulf war in 1991, which ousted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait but left him in power in Iraq. Along with Dick Cheney, the defense secretary at the time, Mr. Powell reshaped the American Cold War military that had stood ready at the Iron Curtain for half a century. In doing so he stamped the Powell Doctrine on military operations: Identify clear political objectives, gain public support and use decisive and overwhelming force to defeat enemy forces.<\/p>\n

When briefing reporters at the Pentagon at the beginning of the gulf war, Mr. Powell summed up the military\u2019s approach: \u201cOur strategy in going after this army is very simple,\u201d he said. \u201cFirst, we\u2019re going to cut it off, and then we\u2019re going to kill it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a concept that seemed less well-suited to the messy conflicts in the Balkans that came later in the 1990s and in combating terrorism in a world transformed after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.<\/p>\n

\"President<\/picture><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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President Ronald Reagan in a White House ceremony in 1987 announcing that Mr. Powell, right, would succeed Frank Carlucci, second from right, as the administration\u2019s national security adviser. Mr. Carlucci was succeeding Caspar Weinberger, far left, as secretary of defense.\u00a0<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Mike Sargent\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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By the time he retired from the military in 1993, Mr. Powell was the most popular public figure in America, owing to his straightforwardness, his leadership qualities and his ability to speak in blunt tones that Americans appreciated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In an interview with The New York Times in 2007, he analyzed himself in the third person: \u201cPowell is a problem-solver. He was taught as a soldier to solve problems. So he has views, but he\u2019s not an ideologue. He has passion, but he\u2019s not a fanatic. He\u2019s first and foremost a problem-solver.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Once retired, Mr. Powell, a lifelong independent while in uniform, was courted as a presidential contender by both Republicans and Democrats, becoming America\u2019s most political general since Dwight D. Eisenhower. He wrote a best-selling memoir, \u201cMy American Journey,\u201d and flirted with a run for the presidency before deciding in 1995 that campaigning for office wasn\u2019t for him.<\/p>\n

He returned to public service in 2001 as secretary of state to President George W. Bush, whose father Mr. Powell had served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs a decade earlier.<\/p>\n

But in the Bush administration Mr. Powell was the odd man out, fighting internally with Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for the ear of President Bush and for foreign policy dominance.<\/p>\n

He left at the end of Mr. Bush\u2019s first term under the cloud of the ever-worsening war in Iraq begun after Sept. 11 and growing questions about whether he could, and should, have done more to object to it. Those questions swirled in part around his U.N. speech, which was based on false intelligence, and which became the source of lifelong regret.<\/p>\n

He kept a low profile for the next few years, but with just over two weeks left in the 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Powell, by now a declared Republican, gave a forceful endorsement to Senator Barack Obama, a Democrat, calling him a \u201ctransformational figure.\u201d Mr. Powell\u2019s backing was criticized by conservative Republicans. But it eased the doubts among some independents, moderates and even some moderates in his own party, and largely neutralized concerns about Mr. Obama\u2019s lack of experience to be commander in chief.<\/p>\n

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Mr. Powell met with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the Oval Office in 2010. Mr. Powell, who had endorsed Mr. Obama\u2019s presidential candidacy, was an informal adviser to the Obama White House.\u00a0<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Drew Angerer\/The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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When it came time to elect Mr. Obama\u2019s successor, Mr. Powell continued his support of Democrats, saying he would vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald J. Trump. Before the election, he expressed disgust for Mr. Trump in a batch of leaked emails that a Powell spokesman confirmed as authentic.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump is a national disgrace and an international pariah,\u201d Mr. Powell wrote in one email. Mr. Trump\u2019s attacks on whether Mr. Obama had been born in the United States also troubled him, the emails made clear. \u201cYup, the whole birther movement was racist,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In the next election, he backed Joseph R. Biden Jr., delivering a message of support for him at the 2020 Democratic National Convention.<\/p>\n