His life made the world worse.

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.editorialboard.com/his-life-made-the-world-worse/


No paywall
https://archive.is/OCNPb

Colin Powell has died of COVID-19. One of the most unjustly lauded individuals in early twenty-first century America, an honest portrayal of Powell’s legacy turns out starkly negative. From his cover up of the My Lai Massacre to his lies about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, Powell holds a great deal of responsibility for many of America’s worst crimes in the last 60 years.

Born in 1937 in Harlem, Powell’s parents were immigrants from Jamaica. He started working as a young boy in Jewish-owned stores around his house and learned Yiddish well enough to speak it for the rest of his life, sometimes speaking to Israeli reporters in the language.

Powell worked hard and went to City College to study geology. He wasn’t much of a student at that point. He graduated but certainly with no honors or any particular direction. This made him perfect for the Army. Powell joined the ROTC at City College. He liked it a lot more than college so he made it a career. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant and assigned to Georgia, where he faced discrimination in a state still committed to Jim Crow. He rose fairly quickly in the military brass. He first went to Vietnam in 1962 for a tour and was wounded after stepping on a punji stake. He returned to Vietnam in 1968 as assistant chief of staff of operations for the 23rd Infantry Division. By this time, he was already a major.

What first made Powell newsworthy was his whitewashing of My Lai. It’s hard to overestimate the horror of this. So many people in the US Army did so many things so horribly wrong both on that day when William Calley and his troops massacred 500 or so Vietnamese civilians who were not even fighting back, and then in the aftermath of it during the gigantic cover up. Given that, it’s easy to excuse many of the people involved, saying that they did what anyone else would do, unfortunate as it may be. But this of course is a lie to make ourselves feel better about the whole thing.

*snip*

[hlthe2b]

1. Editorial Board? From what little I can see, this is a one-person publication.

Not saying I disagree with the point they are trying to make and I mean no offense, but that's one heck of a misleading name for an online publication.

Perhaps someone knows this individual and can cite why they should receive the credibility of an entire newspaper editorial board?

[EYESORE 9001]

2. I am glad to see the spell is broken

and we can finally start talking about Colin Powell regarding his role in normalizing the My Lai massacre and the lies leading to invasion of Iraq. It’s fine to laud his role in opening opportunities in the military, but no true assessment can ignore his role in dishonorable operations.

[UTUSN]

3. K&R yip - his career advancement consisted of doing the bidding of Old White Male bosses

[dalton99a]

4. His U.N. speech was not an isolated instance.