The Only Man Who Could Have Stopped the Iraq War Is Dead

My key takeaway from the article:

Colin Powell made himself a patsy. He knew that what was about to unfold was wrong, disastrously confused complicity with resistance, and facilitated the end of an estimated 300,000 human beings. Powell, at the apex of his influence, destroyed what had been his career’s central purpose: preventing a repetition of Vietnam.

Draper, who spoke with Powell recently, outlined the likely course if Powell had resigned instead. (Draper framed it in terms of the U.N. speech, but never mind that.)

What if that same voice that publicly proclaimed the necessity of invading Iraq had instead told Bush privately that it was not merely an invitation to unintended consequences but a mistake, as he personally believed it to be? What if he had said no to Bush when he asked him to speak before the U.N.? Powell would almost certainly have been obligated to resign, and many if not all of his top staff members involved in the Iraq issue would also have quit; several had already considered doing so the previous summer.

If the State Department’s top team had emptied out their desks, what would Powell’s close friend [British Foreign Minister Jack] Straw have done? “If Powell had decided to resign in advance of the Iraq war,” Straw told me, “I would almost certainly have done so, too.” Blair’s support in the Labour Party would have cratered — and had Blair withdrawn his support for war under pressure from Parliament or simply failed to win an authorization vote, the narrative of collapsed momentum would have dominated the news coverage for weeks. Doubters in the upper ranks of the American military — there were several — would have been empowered to speak out; intelligence would have been re-examined; Democrats, now liberated from the political pressures of the midterm elections, would most likely have joined the chorus.

We can never know a counterfactual. The Iraq war was a product of multiple systemic failures and the alignment of multiple interests. We can never truly know if a refusal by Powell to be part of them would have prevented the invasion. But we do truly know that if anyone’s refusal could have prevented it, it was Powell’s, and Powell made the opposite decision.

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Links from the article that might be of interest.

On Iran Contra involvement:

https://twitter.com/GregGrandin/status/1450100327160688646

On the My Lai massacre in Vietnam:

https://www.historynet.com/colin-powell-the-vietnam-war-year...

There were a number of people that could have stopped the war. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Saddam Hussein to name a few. Powell played a large role to be sure, but imagine Condi Rice in that role. It would have been a harder sell, but given the drum beat it would have happened. Even if Powell resigned, the spin would have labeled him a political hack or out-of-touch with the situation.