---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 06 Jan 2001 14:51:32 -0500 (EST)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Fwd: Hitchens-Powell's Secret Coup
I guess I've already posted my daily allotment...damnit!
Do you feel like forwarding this on for a pal??
If not that's cool too.
Bill.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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http://www.thenation.com/docPrint.mhtml?i=20010122&s=hitchens
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Powell's Secret Coup: Minority Report
The coronation of Colin Powell will probably not be interrupted by any of the
specific questions about his mediocre and sometimes sinister past that were
so well phrased by David Corn ["Questions for Powell," January 8/15]. The
political correctness of the nomination, in both its "rainbow" and
"bipartisan" aspects, will see to that. Powell has often defined himself as
"a fiscal conservative and a social liberal," which also happens to be the
core identity of the Washington press corps. Set against this, what is the
odd war crime, or cover-up of same, or deception of a gullible Congress? Time
to move on.
To move on, to be exact, to the militarization of the State Department and
the triumph of the military over civilian control. The most important moment
in Powell's career as a Republican came in the first months of the first
Clinton Administration, when he organized and led a political mutiny against
the Commander in Chief and saw the mutiny succeed. It's "legacy" time, so
everybody feels entitled to be stupidly lenient, but no consideration of
Clinton as a President is complete until we take the full measure of his
surrender on this critical point.
He was elected, you may remember, having promised to lift the ban on
homosexuals serving in the military and having promised to lift the embargo
on the supply of arms to Bosnia. Nor were these mere "fine print" promises:
The first had been front and center in his fundraising and campaigning, and
the second had involved comparisons with the Final Solution, of the sort that
can't easily be taken back. Within a few months of his swearing the oath that
he was to break in so many ways, Clinton receded from both these pledges. In
both instances, he caved in to a political revolt orchestrated by the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Could I put you to the trouble of
rereading that brief last sentence? The first cold war presidency began with
Harry Truman putting the military in its constitutional place on matters
foreign and domestic, firing Gen. Douglas MacArthur for trying to run a
private war in Korea and telling the armed!
f!
!
orces to desegregate and to do it
right away. The first post-cold war presidency began with an abject surrender
to the brass, on the treatment of an unpopular minority and on an important
foreign policy question. The comparison is even more appalling when you
remember that Truman did not base his two best decisions on election pledges.
Colin Powell would not have been able to enjoy his long career as a
butt-kisser and timeserver had Truman not told the Joint Chiefs to obey
orders and desegregate. However, weeks after Clinton was elected and eight
days before he was inaugurated, Powell appeared before the Naval Academy and
enjoined his audience to consider resigning if they opposed an end to the ban
on gays in the military. Not long before that, he had written and signed an
Op-Ed in the New York Times flatly opposing military intervention in the
Balkans (at least on the Bosnian side; the existing arms embargo already
favored Milosevic and Tudjman).
Clinton, of course, could not buckle fast enough. He allowed himself--and his
pathetic Defense Secretary, Les Aspin--to be humiliated in public on visits
to United States warships [see "Minority Report," April 12, 1993]. He left
the Bosnians at the mercy of Milosevic for two crucial years. He allowed the
USS Harlan County to be scared away from Haiti by a handful of CIA-financed
goons. And he came up with the contemptible policy of "don't ask, don't
tell," where the police questioning and invigilation and intimidation still
went on--even increased--and where volunteer servicemen and -women were told
their only hope lay in lying.
Not even this was enough to satisfy Powell. On the day of his retirement as
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he was humbly asked by Clinton what he thought
of Aspin, and Powell replied that the poor sap had forfeited the confidence
of the armed forces. The President, Powell calmly said, might want to
consider replacing him. No sooner suggested than done. This would qualify as
gross insubordination in any self-respecting democracy (Powell should not
have been asked; neither should he have told), but remember who the President
was. It was a little afterward that Clinton decided to ignore all reports of
what was impending in Rwanda and to employ the US veto at the UN to forestall
any pre-emptive action. This, too, was done to gratify the reactionary and
military noninterventionists. (The disgrace was compounded by Clinton's
diplomatic support for the later French intervention, on the side of their
client Rwandan murderers.)
Now we enter upon a moment when a gigantic decision has to be made about the
building of a suicidally dangerous and stupid "National Missile Defense"
system. And the State Department, which has the job of overseeing the
numerous arms-control treaties to which the United States is a signatory, has
been annexed by a former professional military man with a long record of
shady politicization of the armed forces and their role. The selling of Star
Wars will be a great deal easier with such a man at Foggy Bottom and with the
press and Congress already predisposed to eat out of his "inclusive" palm and
lick his highly polished "inclusive" boots. This is actually the continuation
of Clintonism by other means, a banana republic garnished with identity
politics. (If Toni Morrison and Arthur Miller could be induced to fawn and
coo about "our first black President," what can they say about our first
black Caesar?)
This is the last column of mine that will appear in the Clinton era. Eight
years ago, I concluded that the man was a pathological liar, filthy about
women, corrupt about money, desperate to please authority, a serf alike to
powerful interests and to opinion polls. His legacy is "managed competition,"
"don't ask, don't tell" and "faith-based" care for the losers. He didn't mean
it about the era of big government being "over," as Powell and others are
about to demonstrate, using his same selective principles. It's been a nasty
interlude between the Bushes. The incurables among you can now set to work,
to make Bush seem a dismal interlude between two wonderful Clintons.
