Good for Powell

Colin Powell says that he spent more than 2 hours, in the run-up to the Iraq war, trying to talk Bush out of it. Good for him, but it obviously didn't do much good. The reason that he was chosen to make the administration's case for war in front of the UN, way back in 2003, was precisely because there was wide speculation that he was against it. A war like this one just doesn't coincide with a traditional Realist's sort of thinking.

Now that the war is an unmitigated failure, and Republican sentaors, among others, are speaking out against it, Powell has apparently decided to join in. He said in Aspen that he was against the war from the beginning, as we all suspected or knew that he was.

People like Don Surber and Glenn Reynolds and Ross Douthat think this inconsistency - between Powell's private beliefs and his public statements in 2003 - tarnishes his credibility. It seems to me that as Secretary of State it was Powell's job to defend the President's policies, whether he agreed with them or not. He was being loyal, just as he should have been.

By remaining in the administration he was in a far better position to try and influence policy - unsuccessful as he was - than if he had left his post. Imagine, if you will, in our run-up to the War, in the post-9/11 fervor, Powell suddenly announcing that he was against Bush's FoPo and resigned. Would he retain influence over the administration? Would Surber and Reynolds think more or less of him in that scenario than now?

Powell would've been accused of trying to undermine the war effort! He would have been blasted as a traitor if he had gone public with his anti- Iraq war views whether he had stayed in the administration or left it in disgust.

I can't tell you how many people work for the State Dept. who are liberal Democrats, who must surely intensely dislike the Bush administration's views of the world, but they continually publicly defend the Bush administration. Because it is their job.

Wasn't this what part of the Plame nonsense was about anyway? She was a CIA analyst. Was it her job to actively work against the White House? Or should she have worked basically in support of the Executive Branch as per her job description?

[Don Surber]
[Ross Douthat]