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NEWS & LETTERS, APRIL 2003
Black/Red View
Colin Powell, creature of imperialism
by John Alan When President George W. Bush arrogantly told the UN
that he would go to war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, with or without its
approval, he was telling the world that the U.S. was the greatest military power
in the world today, that it would get rid of the evil autocrat Saddam Hussein
and create a new, democratic Iraq. The world has not heard this kind of sham
since European powers, centuries ago, occupied Africa and Asia to
"civilize" and "christianize" the people there. 'GOD'S GIFT' TO THE RIGHT Bush's Secretary of State, Colin Powell, had the task of
convincing a majority of members of the UN to join the war against Hussein. One
liberal newscaster thought it was a great idea, since Powell had originally
opposed the war, and he called Powell "god's gift to this country." If Powell is indeed a gift, he is a great political gift
to Bush. Powell is an African American and thus he is a shield that can protect
the Bush administration from being called racist. Powell is closely connected to the structure of the
military bureaucracy. After serving as an officer in Vietnam, and commanding a
battalion in South Korea, he attended the National War College and worked in the
Department of Defense. From there Powell's military career shifted from being a
line officer into functioning in the internal bureaucratic politics of the army.
He became an assistant to Caspar Weinberger, President Ronald Reagan's first
secretary of defense. Weinberger liked his management and political skills,
which led to his appointment as Reagan's national security advisor. When the Reagan administration ended, Powell moved up in
rank to four star general, was nominated by President George Bush to chair the
Joint Chiefs of Staff and played a major role in the Persian Gulf War in '91. As
a rising star of the military bureaucracy, Colin Powell was helpful to the most
right-wing elements of the Republican Party. Though mass unrest caused the military establishment to
open up, President Truman's executive order, which integrated the armed forces
FROM ABOVE, cannot compare to Rosa Parks' simple act of refusing to give up her
seat on a bus, which opened the civil rights revolution FROM BELOW. The U.S.'s
imperialist wars, even when fought under a banner of freedom, are not concerned
about African-American freedom. Only African Americans and their allies have
engaged in struggles to gain and secure freedom and civil rights in this
country. The main aim of the Civil War, for example, was not to
free slaves, but to save the Union and the capitalist form of exploited labor.
Nor was there a plan to treat the ex-slaves as equal and kindred human beings.
By 1877 the military abandoned the South to the racists, ending the
Reconstruction period during which African Americans brought that area the only
real democracy it had known. This was the new state of racist terror, when on the eve
of the 20th century the U.S. entered onto the world stage as an imperial power.
It defeated the decrepit military forces of the Spanish Empire and was in the
process of annexing Cuba and the Philippines, Spain's colonies. Theodore
Roosevelt's justification for this imperialist venture was that Anglo-Saxon
superiority would bring civilization and end barbarism in the world. He paid no
attention to the barbarism committed against African Americans in the South. AFRICAN-AMERICAN ANTI-IMPERIALISM African Americans did make this connection and actively
supported the Anti-Imperialist League, who in their "Address to the People
of the U.S." in 1898 said: "We are in full sympathy with the heroic struggles
for liberty of the people in Cuba and the Philippines, and therefore we protest
against depriving them of their rights by an exchange of masters [annexation by
the U.S.]. Only by recognizing their rights as free men are all their interests
protected.…A beaten foe has no right to transfer a people whose consent has
not been asked, and a free republic has no right to hold in subjection a people
so transferred." On the very day in September 1901 when President
McKinley was assassinated, Theodore Roosevelt asked Booker T. Washington for his
advice on appointments. Roosevelt needed Washington to allay African-American
opposition to racist U.S. policies. An African-American face in the right wing does not advance African-American freedom. It did not a century ago, even if Booker T. Washington was the first African American to dine at the White House with the president on Oct. 16, 1901. It does not today, with Powell as the first African-American Secretary of State. |
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