There’s word today from numerous sources that Colin Powell will go on Meet the Press this Sunday and endorse Barack Obama. The Obama campaign certainly isn’t doing anything to discourage the speculation:

Today Obama spokesperson Linda Douglas said she has no news on the Powell front, but the campaign would obviously love an endorsement.  ”We would welcome the support of somebody with such a distinguished and honorable career as General Powell,” she told me this morning, as Obama’s plane flew to Virginia for a rally.  Obama has previously cited Powell as a potential member of his administration, and the two have been in touch before. “I know they talk from time to time about foreign policy matters,” Douglas said, though she did not know the last time they spoke.  Powell is widely viewed as a thoughtful public servant who carries credibility (and experience) in both parties.

Quite a few folks in the progosphere think Powell endorsing Obama would be a great thing.  I’m not so sure.

Like many others, I had a great deal of respect for Powell before he joined the Bush Administration.  His story was a compelling one and his service was largely distinguished.  In 1996, Powell chose, for a variety of reasons, not to run for President.  Had he done so, he very well might have defeated Clinton.  Instead, he remained on the sidelines until Dubya asked him to serve as Secretary of State.

These days, Powell is often viewed as a tragic figure, largely because of his 2003 presentation at the UN Security Council during the Administration’s push for war with Iraq.  According to Powell, he was duped by the CIA, who convinced Powell that the intelligence behind his presentation was unimpeachable.  Powell then went out and made the case for war.

Thirty months later, Powell told Tim Russert that the CIA had misled him, using intelligence based on discredited sources.   Since then, conventional wisdom has given Powell the benefit of the doubt.  Many commentators regard his statement that he had been misled as the same thing as an apology:

Private warnings cannot cancel out Powell’s hawkish presentation to the U.N., but unlike so many war cheerleaders in politics and the media, he owned up to his mistakes. On national television, Powell called the U.N. address a “blot” on his record.

Fair enough — everyone makes mistakes, and to his credit, Powell has acknowledged (or at least gave the appearance of acknowledging) that he was wrong.  Second chances are the American way, and certainly a Powell endorsement of Obama would represent an open repudiation not only of his friend John McCain, but also of the Administration for whom he worked.

There’s just one small problem.  Powell’s testimony before the UNSC was only the second biggest “blot” on his record.

The biggest was, and is, his tacit support for torture.  If, as the Nuremberg tribunals established, knowledge is complicity, then Colin Powell is guilty of war crimes.  And unlike Iraq, he’s never apologized for his role in helping to shred the Constitution, ignore the Convention against Torture, and trash the Geneva Conventions.

Think I’m exaggerating?  Here’s what Jane Mayer has to say in The Dark Side:

Bush also knew about, and approved of, White House meetings in which his top cabinet members were briefed by the CIA on its plan to use specific “enhanced” interrogation techniques on various high-value detainees.  The meetings were chaired by Rice. . . . The participants were members of the Principals Committee, the five Bush cabinet members  who handled national security matters:  Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Powell, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, CIA Director Tenet, and Attorney General Ashcroft.

Knowing how the Agency had been blamed for ostensible “rogue” actions in the past, Tenet was eager to spread the political risk of undertaking “enhanced interrogations.” However, some members of the group became irritated with Tenet’s insistence upon airing the grim details.  “The CIA already had legal clearance to do these things,” a knowledgable source said, “and so it was pointless for them to keep sharing the details.  No one was going to question their decisions. . . . It’s not as if any of the principals were debating the policy — that was already set.  They wanted to go to the limit that the law required. . . .”

There is no indication. . .that any Bush cabinet members objected to the policy. [emphasis added]

As Mayer acknowledges, Powell did object quite strongly to Bush’s decision to suspend the Geneva Conventions.  But he did not make those concerns public or threaten to resign.  He merely accepted the outcome and soldiered on.  It is only at the time of Abu Ghraib (and the first media reports of John Yoo’s infamous August 2002 “torture memo”), Mayer notes that Powell (along with Rice) began to express qualms:

After reading the torture memo  itself for the first time in the newspapers, Rice and Powell confronted Gonzales together and furiously insisted that there be “no more secret opinions on international and national security law.”  Their righteous anger seemed somewhat undercut by reports that Tenet had provided graphic details of specific coercive interrogations during the Principals Committee meetings while both were present.  And while they directed their frustration at Gonzales, neither had the temerity to confront Cheney, who clearly was the true source of these policies. [emphasis added]

Colin Powell passively assented to torture.  Although he occasionally raised concerns, there is no evidence that he threatened to resign — as Ashcroft and others did over the issue of domestic wiretapping.  He sat in meetings and listened as George Tenet offered graphic descriptions of torture committed by U.S. government officials — and never once objected, other than to complain that Tenet’s statements were unnecessary, given the fact that the President already had authorized torture.

As was the case with his presentation at the United Nations, he accepted what he heard and did as he was told.  Only later, after the Yoo memo and the Abu Ghraib scandal became public, did he begin to object — and then only to ask if there were any other memos he should know about.  At no time did he confront Cheney or Bush, threaten to go public, or quit in protest.

Later on, after he was once again a private citizen, Powell did raise concerns about the Administration’s policies, writing in 2006 to John McCain to express his opposition to proposed rules on Military Commissions:

In his letter to McCain, Powell said the effort to “redefine” the article was “inconsistent” with his previous opposition to the use of torture. “The world,” he wrote, “is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.” . . .

Powell declined yesterday to address Bush’s comments. “To say that we want to modify, clarify or redefine Common Article 3 [of the Geneva Conventions], which has not been modified for the 57 years of its history, I think adds to the doubt” about U.S. morality, he said. “Plus I believe that the legitimate concerns that the administration has can be dealt with in other ways.”

The problem, of course, is that there is no public record during Powell’s tenure as Secretary of State of his “previous opposition to the use of torture.”  In his letter to McCain, Powell makes it clear that his objection is not with the underlying policy, but rather the tactics around the military commission.  That is not exactly taking a stand in the face of evil or speaking truth to power.

Silence in the face of evil is assent.  In the eyes of the law, it’s called conspiracy.   At best, Powell’s  actions — both in regard to Iraq and to torture — show a lack of critical thinking.  At worst, they demonstrate profound moral cowardice.

So pardon me if I’m not thrilled at the notion of Powell endorsing Barack Obama.

Related posts

• Prosecuting Those Responsible for War Crimes
• Ambassador for All War Crimes except Our Own
• What’s Missing at DNC: Torture, Guantanamo. . .and Cheney
• State Department Watch: Fed up with Bush?
• Obama, Messaging, and Dean Wormer

Heh.

Hat tip:  Marginal Revolution

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From 2001:

All that’s missing is his “I ♥ Dick Cheney” t-shirt.  So much for his ads trying to run away from the Bush Administration.  If I were the Obama campaign, I’d run this clip into the ground.

Now flash forward seven-plus years.  Today, the White House issued the following statement:

Vice President Cheney will travel abroad beginning September 2, 2008. President Bush has asked the Vice President to travel to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine and Italy for discussions with these key partners on issues of mutual interest. The Vice President will meet with President Aliyev of Azerbaijan, President Saakashvili of Georgia, President Yushchenko of Ukraine, and President Napolitano and Prime Minister Berlusconi of Italy, as well as senior officials of their respective governments. In addition to meetings with foreign leaders, the Vice President will attend and address the Ambrosetti forum entitled, “Intelligence on the World, Europe and Italy” in Lake Como, Italy.

I presume Air Force Two will head to Baku straight from St. Paul, as the Dickster is scheduled to speak on Monday, September 1, followed by a brief ceremony where he shoots McCain’s VP pick in the face.

On a serious note, most of my fellow bloggers are viewing this as an effort to get Cheney out of town so as not to distract from McCain.  That’s plausible, but I fear a more sinister motive may also be at play.

Think about it:  Cheney will be meeting with Saakashvili right in the middle of the Convention.  And not meeting with the Russians.  Giving John McCain another opportunity to denounce Putin and praise the Georgians, thus making him look strong on national security.

I’d say that is far more provocative than anything Cheney could say or do in St. Paul.

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In my three years as a political appointee in the Clinton Administration, I often butted heads with foreign service officers over a variety of issues.  Let’s just say that desk officers didn’t necessarily share my Bureau’s belief that human rights should be a central tenet of U.S. foreign policy.  To be fair, they didn’t necessarily disdain such issues, they just thought other things like American economic interests should also be taken into account.

So I’m not completely uncritical of the foreign service.  There’s a lot that could be done to improve it.  But even when I disagreed with FSOs, I always felt that they were worthy of my respect.  Most Americans have no idea that our diplomats often work in harrowing conditions, risking their lives in order to advance American interests and serve their country.

In that context, I wanted to draw attention to a letter that will come out tomorrow from a group of former foreign service officers** known as Foreign Policy Professionals for Obama:

We are a diverse group of over 200 former Foreign Service officers. Each of us has had extensive experience in implementing the international affairs and national security policies of both Republican and Democratic administrations. We have first hand knowledge of the grave multiple challenges of the Cold War, a period of peril but one in which the United States wore with honor the mantle of leadership. In cooperation with other democracies, and dialog with countries that were not, our nation found solutions to problems which seemed intractable. Senator Obama can place our nation again in that position of trust, credibility and respect.

With him, we call for a return to the successful reliance on bipartisan cooperation at home and close coordination on the use of active diplomacy with our friends and allies abroad, to face the challenges posed by those who are neither. We have watched with profound regret the frequent, costly failures of the current administration to apply these fundamental principles.

We, the undersigned, are firmly convinced that new American leadership is critical at this juncture in world history. We urge Americans, regardless of party affiliation, to select as our next president Senator Barack Obama, a leader with courage, intelligence, energy, a fresh perspective and a focus on the future. We believe based on our long foreign policy experience that he has the qualities needed to restore American leadership, credibility and respect in the world, the persona to make bipartisanship a possibility once again, and the judgment and vision to set our nation on the path to a better future.

As far as I know, FSOs are not overwhelmingly Republican or Democratic (if anyone knows differently, please diabuse me).  As public servants, they understand that their job is to implement, not interpret, a given President’s foreign policy.  But if you asked most, they would tell you that they prefer Presidents who build consensus at home and abroad.  That is, after all, the nature of diplomacy.

With that in mind, take a second look at the following sentences:

[W]e call for a return to the successful reliance on bipartisan cooperation at home and close coordination on the use of active diplomacy with our friends and allies abroad, to face the challenges posed by those who are neither. We have watched with profound regret the frequent, costly failures of the current administration to apply these fundamental principles.

In the world of diplomacy, that’s about as close to a smackdown as you’re ever going to see.  To call out a current President for his foreign policy blunders is just not done.  Usually, people who want to do that resign first.

I want to emphasize again that these are former officers, so the analogy isn’t perfect.  But I wouldn’t be surprised if a large majority of current FSOs share the sentiments expressed in this letter.  Just as U.S. troops currently deployed abroad have donated more money to Obama than McCain by a 6:1 margin, I would bet good money that FSOs currently serving overseas have similar giving patterns.

If I’m right, that marks an enormous sea change in less than eight years.  Most folks have forgotten now, but when Colin Powell arrived at the State Department in 2001, he was welcomed as a hero:

When Colin L. Powell took charge in Foggy Bottom last month, the new secretary of state delivered a rousing speech to his staff, promising an ambitious and expensive agenda for modernizing a department that has long complained it is strapped for cash.  The hundreds of employees who were present applauded and cheered.

Madeleine Albright was not a popular figure at State.  Many FSOs viewed her as remote, unsympathetic to their plight, and uninterested in the nuts and bolts of Department management.  A number of security snafus during her time there — which in turn led to some draconian new security measures — didn’t help matters.  (Just to be clear, I served under Albright and did not share all of these concerns.  But then again, I wasn’t a foreign service officer)  So when Powell came on board, he inherited a building ready for and willing to change.

But in the aftermath of September 11 — and particularly after the invasion of Iraq — not much new money came State’s way.  Modernizing diplomacy took a back seat to going to war.  The near-blank check given to DOD didn’t help; neither did the money poured into the new Department of Homeland Security.  But perhaps the greatest problem was that Powell ended up outside the decisionmaking process, frozen out by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other key decisionmakers.

Few presidencies have ever demonstrated the contempt for the State Department, its employees, and its role that the Bush Administration does.  Only Nixon was worse.  Ironically, since the Eisenhower years, only two Secretaries of State have had a genuinely close working relationship with their President: Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice.

Powell (and Rice, to be fair) did devote some time to management issues, and as a result, the building has become a better place to work.  The Department has solved some of its computer issues; adjusted staffing at key posts to reflect the realities of the post-Cold War era (fewer FSOs in Germany and more in India, for example); and changed some of the outdated guidelines concerning FSO advancement.

But morale continues to sag, in large part because these largely cosmetic reforms cannot paper over Foggy Bottom’s profound unhappiness with the direction of U.S. foreign policy.  And as I have noted elsewhere, the post-Kenya/Tanzania/9-11 security-first mentality has made it far more difficult for FSOs stationed overseas to do their jobs.

The fundamental question, then, is will a President Obama (and his Secretary of State) pay enough attention (and devote the necessary resources) to fixing what ails Foggy Bottom?  Because if he doesn’t, he’s going to find it almost impossible to achieve his ambitious foreign policy goals.

Big honkin’ Tip of the Hat to Gerald Loftus at Avuncular American for pointing me to this story.  If don’t yet read his blog, check it out.

**Full disclosure:  I am not a signatory to the letter, as I’m not a former foreign service officer.  That said, I strongly agree with its sentiments and would be happy to sign it.

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