Memoirists From The United States

"The people had fled at our approach, except for an old woman too feeble to move... We burned down the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo cigarette lighters... [because] Ho Chi Minh had said the people were like the sea in which his guerrillas swam... We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable."

"Powell became a reliably Democrat-voting Republican, the kind CNN would wheel out every election cycle to explain how actual Republicans are terrible. He was beloved in Washington as one of the wisemen because of this; it certainly helped wash off some of the stink of being caught up in the mustard gas fraud. Grimly, at the end, his passing exemplified the worst of the people he thought were the best and enjoyed being one of, with focus on his race and his taking of the vaxx sacrament and a soft-pedaling of his flaws."

"But let’s be very clear about Powell’s total failure once he became one of the Washington wise men. He accepted the false WMD narrative and put his prestige behind it. Now, to be fair, I believed it too – I worked in that field during Gulf War 1.0 and understood the capabilities Saddam had then. But it turned out to be baloney a decade later, sparking the disaster that was Gulf War 2.0. From his public actions afterwards, Powell seemed outraged not so much by the war itself than the fact that being caught falsely pushing the meme damaged his credibility."

"The Black American struggle for civil rights gave us some of the most magnificent political fighters, thinkers, public speakers, and writers of our times. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, James Baldwin, and of course the marvelous, magical, mythical Muhammad Ali. Who has inherited their mantle? Could it be the likes of Colin Powell? Condoleezza Rice? Michael Powell? They're the exact opposite of icons or role models. They appear to be the embodiment of Black people's dreams of material success, but in actual fact they represent the Great Betrayal. They are the liveried doormen guarding the portals of the glittering ballroom against the press and swirl of the darker races. Their role and purpose is to be trotted out by the Bush administration looking for brownie points in its racist wars and African safaris."

"they are acceptable. The Colin Powells of America. It was such a phenomenon to me, that Colin Powell was so deeply loved by the American media and actually tabbed as becoming president. And when you look back at the man, you sort of understood what could be more American than someone who was willing to die for this country. You know, then then a man who was a general, then a man who was that conservative, you know, a man who was also fair skinned, which was extremely important and who had Republican leanings."

"Powell resigned from the Bush administration in 2004 and never really owned up to what he had done. He recognized that his U.N. speech was inaccurate and described it, in an interview with celebrity journalist Barbara Walters, as “painful” and a “blot” on his career. Those comments, not long after he left office, were pretty much as far as he would ever go in terms of introspection or criticism. He was unable to admit the truth that his chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson now acknowledges. “I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community, and the United Nations Security Council,” Wilkerson has said. The “blot” did not matter that much to Powell’s reputation in the U.S., because after the Iraq disaster, he continued to blaze a lucrative path in the corporate world, joining the board of directors of Salesforce and Bloom Energy and becoming a “strategic adviser” to the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. (He was already very rich — he had received a $6 million advance for his 1995 memoir “My American Journey.”) He was a trailblazer, in this way, for a generation of retired generals who have coasted into 1 percent status thanks to the flattering reviews they receive in cultural and political circles no matter the actual consequences of their government service."

"Powell’s friends in America tend to briefly note, in the soft glaze of his own regret, the most consequential act of his life. On February 5, 2003, Powell made a 76-minute speech to the United Nations Security Council in which he argued the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq. He insisted that Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, was overseeing a secret program to make weapons of mass destruction. Powell brandished satellite photos of what he confidently said were decontamination trucks, aluminum tubes, and other WMD paraphernalia. He even held up a vial that he said could contain anthrax. There was, of course, a big problem with all of his assertions: They were lies. The intelligence behind his speech was the opposite of emphatic — it was false, manipulated, and fabricated. The trucks were just trucks. The tubes were just tubes. There was no anthrax. There was, more fundamentally, no reason to invade Iraq. Nonetheless, thanks to Powell’s presentation, the Bush administration went ahead with its plans, and in the ensuing catastrophe, at least several hundred thousand Iraqis lost their lives, as well as more than 4,000 U.S. soldiers."

"So, the thing to remember about that period is that the entire global community was against the invasion. So, when Colin Powell and the Bush administration says that they were vetting this information, they were not listening not only to their allies, they were not listening to what the United Nations itself was actually doing and had essentially proven that there were no weapons of mass destruction. But the administration was determined to go, and Colin Powell basically acceded to that, as he would do both prior to that speech, as he did with the World Conference Against Racism, when the United States and Israel were the only two countries that pulled out... So, there does have to be an accounting for that record. There’s no way to kind of pretty it up. It was atrocious. And again, hundreds of thousands — in some estimates, up to a million — people died as a result of that war."

"Powell was one of the Reagan administration’s point people in Central America and, as the point person, helped to tee up and then legitimate, when necessary, the Salvadoran military dictatorships and the Guatemalan and other militaries in the region that were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents — and so, in the case of Guatemala, like 200,000 or more mostly Mayan Indigenous people. And so, like, in 1983, for example, Powell was part of a fact-finding kind of mission, that included Jeane Kirkpatrick and Weinberger...to go confirm the Salvadoran military and government were doing the right thing under Duarte. And, you know, they found that they were doing the right thing and that the U.S. should continue heavily funding and training these murderous militaries. He never said anything about...the massacre of El Sumpul, where about 600 people were killed, was perpetrated by the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government; the massacre of El Mozote, where a thousand people were killed, an entire town wiped out, half of the victims under age 12.. Powell seemed to have amnesia about that...and other massacres were completely ignored.... Now, some historians will call Powell a peacenik almost, a liberal, which, I mean, if you’re comparing him to like Alexander Haig or some just uber fascist like that, then, yeah, but in the larger scheme of empire and militarism, Colin Powell has been, you know, was always, a loyal cadre to mass-murdering empire."

"At the personal level, Colin Powell was a nice man. He was also a trailblazer. But he was also a military leader and key strategist of an empire that killed countless people and undermined the sovereignty of multiple nations. In our memorials, we must be honest about all of this."

"President Biden ordered flags at the White House to be flown at half-staff in honor of General Colin Powell, who died Monday at the age of 84. Powell was the first Black secretary of state, the first Black and youngest chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first Black national security adviser. On Monday, tributes poured in from both Republican and Democratic leaders. President Biden called Powell a, quote, “patriot of unmatched honor and dignity.” But in other parts of the world, Powell is remembered very differently. In Iraq, the journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi, who famously threw a shoe at President George W. Bush, tweeted that he was sad Powell had died before being tried for his crimes in Iraq. While serving as secretary of state under Bush, General Powell played a pivotal role in paving the way for the U.S. invasion. It was February 5th, 2003, that Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council and made the case for a first strike on Iraq. Powell’s message was clear: Iraq possessed extremely dangerous weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam Hussein was systematically trying to deceive U.N. inspectors by hiding the prohibited weapons....All of Colin Powell’s main claims about weapons of mass destruction turned out to be false."

"Powell was used. Bush, Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, who was then the Secretary of Defense, cynically enlisted him and his enormous credibility to make the flimsy, and ultimately faulty, case for war. As Powell recounted to one of his aides, according to Robert Draper, the author of “To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq,’’ Cheney had said to him, “You’re the most popular man in America. Do something with that popularity.” And so Powell did. Draper makes clear that Powell harbored doubts about the invasion of Iraq from the get-go. Powell might have resigned before the March 2003 invasion; if he had done that, he would have almost certainly have delayed the invasion, or scuttled it entirely. But, in the most fateful decision of his career, Powell chose to remain what he always aspired to be: the good soldier."

"It’s a terrible paradox in the life of Colin Powell, who died Monday, that the most important moment of his celebrated career came not when he led troops under fire in Vietnam, or when he orchestrated the successful expulsion of Iraqi invaders from Kuwait in 1991, or when he became the nation’s first African American national-security adviser and Secretary of State. It came, instead, on the dais of the United Nations Security Council, in 2003, when Powell, who was then Secretary of State, made the case for the invasion of Iraq, based on the conclusion that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and thus had to be removed by force. The enduring image from that moment is Powell holding up a tiny vial of white powder, which stood for what was supposed to be Saddam’s anthrax, and, mortgaging his esteemed reputation and all the credibility of the U.S. government, telling the world that the U.S. had no choice but to go to war."

"Colin Powell had a long career in which he implemented key imperialist policies — from Vietnam in his youth, to working with Ronald Reagan and both Bush presidencies. His imperialist record is too long for this article, but here are some highlights: Colin Powell was a senior tactical adviser during the Vietnam War, where he committed numerous brutal war crimes. In his [2003] memoir My American Journey, Powell explains that he led South Vietnamese soldiers in an attack on a village full of families, elderly people, and other non-combatants: The people had fled at our approach, except for an old woman too feeble to move... We burned down the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo cigarette lighters... [because] Ho Chi Minh had said the people were like the sea in which his guerrillas swam... We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable. Powell also stated that If a [helicopter] spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM, the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him. These were not violent tactics that Powell himself invented, of course; it was the strategy of the United States in the war. And of course, Powell executed that strategy well, rising through the ranks of power."

"Colin Powell is a damn war criminal, and to a great many progressive voters, his endorsement of anything is a red-flag warning to run the other way. His inclusion last night was egregiously unnecessary and possibly damaging."

"Some of [Clinton’s] anger was privately aimed at Colin Powell in a personal pique. Talking with reporters in later years, Clinton would often harp on Powell’s role in Somalia, that he had signed on to the partial escalation and yet had accepted none of the blame."

"*Powell, like so many other Republican “Never Trumpers,” doesn’t criticize Trump for his policies, which are mostly in line with what has been mainstream Republican thinking since Barry Goldwater’s time. Powell doesn’t like Trump because he is bad for the Republican brand, period. Colin Powell has been living in a glass house since 1968. It’s high time someone shattered it, if only to spare the rest of us the image of yet another Republican war criminal being treated like a Respected Man on television. One Henry Kissinger is enough."

"Powell’s penchant for playing footsie with atrocity dates back more than 50 years. His ability to look the other way when doing otherwise might hamper his career began with the massacre at My Lai, when he whistled past reports of civilians being slaughtered by U.S. forces in Vietnam without tarnishing his own brass-to-be. Powell was up to his eyeballs in the Iran/Contra scandal but again emerged unscathed, despite having served as top deputy to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who was indicted for his role in the scandal but later pardoned by George H.W. Bush... While serving as chairman of the joint chiefs, Powell’s endorsement of a more active U.S. military engagement in Somalia toward the end of the first Bush’s lone term led directly to the shootdown of two Blackhawk helicopters in Mogadishu in the summer of 1993... As chairman of the joint chiefs under the first President Bush, Powell first gained public gravitas as a military man during the 1990 invasion of Panama, which took the lives of thousands of civilians. He went on to famously preside over the first Gulf War, which we are still fighting in various forms some 28 years later. After spending the Clinton administration on the shelf, Powell was welcomed back into the circles of Republican power when he became secretary of state under George W. Bush."

"I can tell you that having been intimately involved in the preparation of Secretary Powell for his five February 2003 presentation at the UN Security Council, neither of those dissents in any fashion or form were registered with me or the Secretary by the DCI, George Tenent, by the DDCI, John McLaughlin, or by any of their many analysts who were in the room with us for those five, six days and nights at the Central Intelligence Agency... In fact it was presented in the firmest language possible that the mobile biological labs and the sketches we had drawn of them for the Secretary's presentation were based on the iron clad evidence of multiple sources."

"(Do you distrust Black politicians?) Morrison: Nothing is to be expected from politicians like Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell. They only have the power to negotiate, not to influence. They are a part of the great mass, they're not interested in those who do not belong to the mainstream. They believe people who have money can help, since only with money can one change things, can one achieve social improvements."

"Why didn't the doubts reach Powell? Perhaps because then he wouldn't have given the speech at all? "That's right," Wilkerson says, shooting a hard, solemn stare across the restaurant table. "That's right." He also says, "I am prepared to entertain the idea that they used him.""

"what the civil rights movement did, it seems to me, was to create a new terrain for asking new questions and moving in new directions. It's not a betrayal that people like Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice and the Black conservatives who are the heart of government are where they are. As a matter of fact, the civil rights movement demanded access, right? But I don't think that we can assume that what was done in the 1950s and 1960s is going to do the work of the 1980s and 1990s."

"After touring the South, General Colin Powell concluded that there was no impediment to a black being elected president in America, noting that he received his strongest support from white Southerners."

"There was a brief moment after 9/11 when Colin Powell said “we should not rush to satisfy the desire for revenge.” It was a great moment, an extraordinary moment, because what he was actually asking people to do was to stay with a sense of grief, mournfulness, and vulnerability."

"During the transition to the new Clinton administration, Madeleine Albright famously asked Gen. Colin Powell, then chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?""

"I didn’t have any choice... What choice did I have? He’s the president."

"It’s just like in the military — you argue, you debate something, but once the president has made a decision, that becomes a decision for the Cabinet."

"Our strategy in going after this army is very simple. First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it."

"The people in my life made me what I am."

"As successes come your way, remember that you didn't do it alone. It is always we."

"My aim then was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. 'Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.' I did not want them to cast in our teeth what General Hood had once done at Atlanta, that we had to call on their slaves to help us to subdue them. But, as regards kindness to the race ..., I assert that no army ever did more for that race than the one I commanded at Savannah."

"Hurrah! Hurrah! we bring the Jubilee! Hurrah! Hurrah! the flag that makes you free!" So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea, While we were marching through Georgia."

"So we made a thoroughfare For Freedom and her train Sixty miles in latitude Three hundred to the main Treason fled before us For resistance was in vain While we were marching through Georgia"

"Bring the good old bugle, boys We’ll sing another song Sing it with a spirit that will Start the world along Sing it as we used to sing it Fifty thousand strong While we were marching through Georgia"

"Returning home on leave following my second year at West Point, I called on a great-uncle who had joined the Confederate Army at the age of sixteen and had fought in a number of major Civil War battles, including Gettysburg, and had been with Robert E. Lee at Appamatox. My Uncle White was the younger brother of my grandfather. He hated Yankees and Republicans, not necessarily in that order, and talked derisively about both. When I visited, he was seated in a wheel chair, in grudging acquiescence to the infirmities of age. Tobacco juice decorated his shirt and stains around a spittoon on the floor testified to the inaccuracy of his aim. Flies buzzed through screenless windows. "What are you doing with yourself, son?" Uncle White asked. I answered the old veteran with trepidation. "I'm going to that same school that Grant and Sherman went to, the Military Academy at West Point, New York." Uncle White was silent for what seemed like a long time. "That's all right, son," he said at last. "Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson went there too.""

"I think Stone Mountain is amusing, but then again I find most representations of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson outside of Virginia, and, in Jackson's case, West Virginia, to be amusing. Aside from a short period in 1861-62, when Lee was placed in charge of the coastal defense of South Carolina and Georgia, neither general stepped foot in Georgia during the war. Lee cut off furloughs to Georgia's soldiers later in the war because he was convinced that once home they'd never come back. He resisted the dispatch of James Longstreet's two divisions westward to defend northern Georgia, and he had no answer when Sherman operated in the state."

"The Appomattox surrender document still had wet ink when Lee gave General Orders No. 9, his farewell address, to the Army of Northern Virginia on April 10, 1865. Lee's address was the first salvo in what would become a written battle to define the meaning of the war. He argued that his army surrendered only because it had been "compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources." Not only did the United States have more of everything, it had Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. Mitchell writes, "Grant was a butcher who did not care how many men he slaughtered for a victory, but a victory he would have." As for Sherman, Mitchell mentioned him seventy-two times, as though he carried a sulfurous pitchfork, leaving Sherman sentinels, the burned chimneys of plantation houses, in his wake. Only someone who fought without mercy and with unlimited resources of men and materiel could have defeated the virtuous Confederates. In reality, Grant and Sherman exhibited extraordinary generalship in a righteous cause."

"For most of my life, I viewed plantations exclusively through the lens of the white planter class. Growing up, I learned the great sin of the Civil War was General William Tecumseh Sherman's infamous March to the Sea and his supposed indiscriminate, illegal, and immoral burning of private property. Actually, Sherman's hard-war policy was purposeful and directed, causing few civilian casualties. After reading about the enslaved experience, I find it hard to feel sorry for the planters."

"Sherman remained widely popular after the war. Since his initial terms to Johnston were exceedingly generous, the South respected Sherman and looked to him for support during reconstruction. Sherman was an opponent of the Radical Republican Party and thought it was “Corrupt as Hell.” He helped his friends in the South and was vital in getting former Louisiana governor Thomas O. Moore’s plantation returned after it was confiscated. David French Boyd, founder of Louisiana State University, wrote to Sherman on September 22, 1865 and stated, “You were mainly instrumental in our discomfiture; yet the very liberal terms you proposed to grant us thro’ Joe Johnston and your course since have led the people of the South to expect more from you than any of the high northern officials.” Following the war, Sherman was given command of the newly created Military Division of Missouri, which included the entire army west of the Mississippi River. Sherman was the commanding officer of the Indian Wars and carried over the strategy of total war. The Indians were faced with the decision of moving to the reservation or extermination. When Grant became General of the Army on July 25, 1866, Sherman was promoted to lieutenant general. After Grant became President of the United States in 1869, Sherman became commanding general of the United States Army. Sherman served as the commanding general until he retired on November 1, 1883. In 1875 he published a Memoirs (2 volumes) recounting his life and military career. When talk began of electing Sherman as president, Sherman, disgusted with politics, responded, “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.” He spent the last few years of his life in New York City and died on February 14, 1891."

"In Tennessee, Sherman’s views on warfare changed. Originally he believed noncombatant populations and private property should be respected. However, guerrilla activity, civilian resistance, and the Confederate Army’s reliance on civilian supplies made Sherman realize civilian populations were vital to success in war. Wanting to find the fastest solution to end the war, he adopted the belief of total war. Sherman tried to demoralize the South by targeting economic support structures that enabled the war to continue. He wanted to destroy the South’s will to fight but maintained he would support the South when it laid down its arms; a claim validated by his actions after the war."

"So it was in the civil war. Farragut's father was born in Spain and Sheridan's father in Ireland; Sherman and Thomas were of English and Custer of German descent; and Grant came of a long line of American ancestors whose original home had been Scotland. But the Admiral was not a Spanish-American; and the Generals were not Scotch-Americans or Irish-Americans or English-Americans or German-Americans. They were all Americans and nothing else. This was just as true of Lee and of Stonewall Jackson and of Beauregard."

"He's too important to forget."

"He played a significant role in defining us- dimensionally, in the nature and spirit of our fighting forces, and our ethics, or at least the celebrity version of it. Historically, he was one of the ingredients for what we became. A continent for the taking brought forth people like Sherman, and they in turn produced us. Their energy, ambition, optimism, and pragmatism serves to explain our own, but so does their self-righteousness and proclivity for violence. Sherman was all of these things, a mixture of good and bad, but still a familiar and comfortable presence. It's hard to imagine a more American man than Sherman. Although he died over 120 years ago, it's a safe bet that should Uncle Billy be brought back to life tomorrow, after a short orientation with the requisite hardware and software, he'd find himself right at home."

"General Sherman, who had lived in the South, liked Southerners and did not at all sympathize with Northern racial views, yet became the most hated and feared destroyer of the South and its whole civilization. And I think he did so because he saw that as necessary to win the war. And I think Lincoln made some of his decisions—issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, for example, or turning Sherman loose — because he saw that as necessary to win the war."

"In his fast-moving campaigns in the Civil War, Union General William T. Sherman habitually sought to threaten two objectives before he attacked. This forced the Confederate generals to split their forces, giving Sherman a decisive edge when he made his lunge."

"Some Confederate soldiers switched sides, beginning as early as 1862. When Sherman made his famous march to the sea from Atlanta to Savannah, his army actually grew in number, because thousands of white southerners volunteered along the way. Meanwhile, almost two-thirds of the Confederate army disappeared through desertion. Eighteen thousand slaves joined Sherman, so many that the army had to turn some away. Compare these facts with the portrait common in our textbooks of Sherman's marauders looting their way through a united south. The increasing ideological confusion in the Confederate states, coupled with the increasing strength of the United States, helps explains the Union victory... Many nations and people have continued to fight with far inferior means and weapons... The Confederacy's ideological contradictions were its gravest liabilities, ultimately causing its defeat."

"These members of the audience could point with pride to the Lincoln Zouaves, a colored military unit from Baltimore, resplendent in their tasseled fezzes, baggy red pants, white leggings, and red-trimmed black jackets. Colored spectators sang along when musicians struck up 'Marching Through Georgia', the Civil War ditty celebrating General William Tecumseh Sherman's drive from Atlanta to the sea."

"Historians identify General Sherman as its main architect, and the army principally responsible for the demise of the buffalo. Even Congress stepped in to try to curb the carnage; despite its attempt to pass legislation in 1874 to limit the buffalo slaughter, Sherman's malicious genius proved triumphant when army veteran and president Ulysses S. Grant vetoed the legislation."

"The southern slave's eagerness to be free and willingness not just to leave but to fight, the Union army's embrace of their plight, the physical destruction of the plantation, and the psychological humiliation of the plantation class, all this illustrated that an apartheid state, once cracked, shatters and can never be reconstituted again. From the freeing of the slaves Sherman's men gained the moral imperative... In turn, from Sherman's men the slaves at last could prove they too were human, even more humane than their masters."

"It is difficult to determine whether Georgians hated Sherman and his army as much as the Spartans despised Epaminondas and the Thebans. Both men had wrecked their centuries-old practice of apartheid in a matter of weeks. It is a dangerous and foolhardy thing for a slaveholding society to arouse a democracy of such men."