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    Colin Powell: a life served as fodder for US imperialism | Cynthia A Young

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    OpinionColin PowellColin Powell: a life served as fodder for US imperialismCynthia A YoungUnlike many Black military men before him, Powell behaved just as the white leaders had: waging war when and where he was told to do so Thu 21 Oct 2021 06.32 EDTLast modified on Thu 21 Oct 2021 14.45 EDTI cannot think of Colin Powell without thinking of my own father, who, like Powell, served in the US military. My dad was only a generation older than Powell, but that gap was the difference between serving in a segregated or integrated military. A second world war veteran, my midwestern father was stationed at a southern military base in a segregated marine corps.Colin Powell: the man who might have been America’s first Black presidentRead moreIn those days, a Black man could be demoted for failing to show “proper deference” to white officers, a fate that befell my father, who I never saw defer to anyone. My father never spoke of his time in the military, seemingly indifferent to it, not ashamed exactly, but not proud either. I suspect that he, like many Jim Crow era Black men, enlisted because of the GI Bill, which paid for college and then law school, degrees that would have otherwise been out of reach for my father.Yes, the federal government paid for my father’s education, but at the same time, it enforced restrictive covenants that barred him and other Black people from federally subsidized suburban housing. Nonetheless, my father’s enlistment was a ticket into the middle class, even as it was a Faustian bargain my father made to get a tiny sliver of the American pie. But he never forgot, was never allowed to forget, that the benefits he reaped derived from and reinforced the racist apartheid system in which he lived. He knew as do many Black people that serving in the military meant becoming disposable fodder, useful to the military as cooks, janitors or human shields. It meant fighting for a country that does not value Black life.Powell, too, made his own Faustian bargains, and in the end, he also served as fodder for US imperial ambitions destined to fail. He did this, most famously, in his 2003 speech to the UN security council in which he claimed that Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass destruction.Powell’s televised testimony is widely credited with turning US public opinion in favor of invading Iraq, though when polled at the time, a majority of Black people continued to question the war’s necessity and morality. Powell’s position, the result of a civil rights movement in which he did not participate, lent cover to the Bush administration, as it was intended to do, a fact Powell would later lament. He squandered his political capital and popularity to shroud a pointless, endless war in the cloak of moral certitude.However, 2003 was not the first time that Powell justified US imperial ambitions. In fact, he rose to prominence in 1968 when, as a young major, he investigated the My Lai massacre, a mass murder of hundreds of unarmed South Vietnamese suspected of aiding the Vietcong. As his superiors no doubt hoped, Powell could not substantiate eyewitness accounts, concluding in his report that relations between the US military and the South Vietnamese people were “excellent”.Later, as he would with his US testimony, Powell would regret his part in covering up My Lai, which was widely condemned as a war crime. In 1989, Powell was again at the center of an imperial adventure. This time the setting was Panama, and the pretext was deposing that country’s leader, Manuel Noriega, who was wanted in the US on drug trafficking charges. Powell, then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, used the invasion, which he named “Just Cause”, as a laboratory for developing the Powell Doctrine, which dictated that the US only go to war to protect strategic interests and once engaged, must have a decisive plan for winning and a clear exit strategy. Ironically, the second Iraq war, the war for which Powell will long be remembered, followed none of these principles.By the time the first Iraq war occurred, Powell had perfected his doctrine. As the war’s chief military strategist, Powell spoke at a televised press conference before the war began to explain how US military would prosecute the war swiftly and decisively, avoiding a bloody and extended defeat like the one in Vietnam.As he would 12 years later at the UN, Powell explained in his calm, authoritative tone why the war was both necessary and ethical. Like the invasion of Panama, US involvement in the first Iraq war lasted less than two months. Bombarding Iraq from the air and on the ground, the US military killed thousands of Iraqis while suffering only 300 casualties. This was the fulfillment of Powell’s boast: “First, we’re going to cut [the Iraqi army] off, and then we’re going to kill it.” The war’s swift and successful conclusion made Powell so popular with both Democrats and Republicans that he briefly considered a run for the 1996 presidency.Again and again throughout his storied rise, Powell made Faustian bargains, publicly endorsing military excursions, including both Iraq wars, that he privately admitted were risky enterprises. Whether Powell knew the falseness of the intel on which his security council testimony rested, whether he genuinely failed to find evidence of the My Lai massacre or whether he regretted the first Iraq war’s toll in blood and treasure, Powell, like the military man he was, never broke ranks.The price for inclusion and advancement in the military and the country it represents required of Powell that he follow orders, even when they were illegal, unethical, or simply strategically wrongheaded. Unlike many Black military men before him who resisted in big and small ways, Powell behaved just as the white leaders before him had, waging war when and where he was told to do so.Though his trajectory made him a man of many firsts, his Blackness never seemed to influence the military or professional decisions Powell made. The price of admission to the “American dream” was conformity and obedience. It was deference to a country and a white supremacist society that made of him an exception, if not the rule of racial equality.
    Cynthia A Young is associate professor of African American studies, English and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Pennsylvania State University
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      Colin Powell: the man who might have been America’s first Black president

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      Colin PowellColin Powell: the man who might have been America’s first Black president The ex-general seriously considered running in 1995 but later felt himself increasingly out of step with the Republican partyDavid Smith in Washington@smithinamericaTue 19 Oct 2021 05.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 19 Oct 2021 05.01 EDTColin Powell wrote a speech in November 1995 announcing a run for US president. He wrote another speech announcing a decision not to run.When he faced reporters in a hotel in Alexandria, Virginia, Powell delivered the second speech.Colin Powell’s UN speech: a decisive moment in undermining US credibilityRead morePolitical life “requires a calling that I do not yet hear”, he said, explaining why he would not take on the White House incumbent, Bill Clinton.So Powell was not to be America’s first Black president. Instead he was, “perhaps, one of the finest Americans never to be president”, John Major, the former British prime minister, reflected on Monday after Powell’s death at the age of 84 due to complications from Covid-19.America’s loss was arguably also the Republican party’s tragedy. In his remarks, Powell said he would help the party in “broadening its appeal”, suggesting that he could “help the party of Lincoln move once again close to the spirit of Lincoln” and find ways to “heal racial divides” in society.But by the end of his life, Powell, who previously voted Republican in seven presidential elections in a row, had endorsed Democrats in the last four. He finally quit the party that surrendered to Donald Trump and his mendacious, racially divisive brand of populism.“Like many Republicans, he felt that the party was leaving him, that the party was taking a rightward turn and he felt increasingly unwelcome,” said Joe Cirincione, who as president of the Ploughshares Fund, a foundation focused on nuclear non-proliferation and conflict resolution, worked closely with Powell.“He never joined the Democratic party. He preferred the moderate policies of the Republicans, even as he watched the party go, but it was Trump and Trumpism that pushed him out of the party.”Powell was the son of a seamstress and a shipping-room foreman in Manhattan’s garment district, both immigrants from Jamaica. He wrote in his 1995 autobiography My American Journey: “Mine is the story of a black kid of no early promise from an immigrant family of limited means who was raised in the South Bronx.”A veteran of the Vietnam war, Powell spent 35 years in the army and rose to the rank of four-star general. He served as national security adviser to Ronald Reagan and was chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under another Republican president, George HW Bush, during the 1991 Gulf war.He had been a political independent during his military career but, after retirement in 1993 and a bestselling memoir, was wooed by both Democrats and Republicans as potential presidential material. He sided with the latter, explaining that he aligned with Republicans on fiscal responsibility, small government and low taxes, even though he disagreed with some illiberal positions.Cirincione, now a fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft thinktank in Washington, recalled: “If he had decided, I think he would have been the Republican candidate. At that time he was one of the most widely respected people in the country. He would have been the candidate to beat if he had decided to go for it.”But after much agonising, Powell ruled out a White House bid. He publicly acknowledged the potential impact on his family as a factor. His wife, Alma, reportedly feared that he would be assassinated because of his skin colour. Journalist Bob Woodward’s book Bush at War quoted her as saying: “If you run, I’m gone. You will have to do it alone.”Cirincione added: “He would often say things like, ‘It was the campaigns.’ He wouldn’t mind being president but it was the campaigns that would have killed him. He was comfortable being in leadership roles, including as chairman of the joint chiefs in charge of millions of our troops.“It was very personal for him because of the health of his wife and he just didn’t want to engage in the kind of gruelling, time-consuming effort it takes to become president at the sacrifice of what he thought would be his family. He wasn’t willing to do it.”Powell did return to public service when he was named secretary of state to President George W Bush, becoming the first African American to serve as the country’s top diplomat. He publicly presented mistaken intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, which he later called it a “a blot” that will “always be a part of my record”.Powell also came to personify a certain section of the moderate Republican old guard increasingly horrified by the direction of the party. Although he donated to the campaign of the party’s nominee, John McCain, in 2008, he did not support his running mate, Sarah Palin, a smashmouth neophyte whose stoking of white rage represented the opening of a Pandora’s box.In a major blow to McCain’s campaign, Powell endorsed Barack Obama, a Democrat whom he hailed as a “transformational figure”. He told the NBC politics show Meet the Press: “I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, ‘Well, you know that Mr Obama is a Muslim.’“Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president?”Underlining his misgivings about the Republican party’s populist-nativist drift, Powell endorsed Obama again in 2012, then Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and Joe Biden last year. He described Trump as a liar who presented a fundamental danger to the US.Cirincione noted: “He thought Trump was insane. He thought the risk of the president of the United States using nuclear weapons was greater under Trump than any time in his career. It was that global security risk, plus the threat to democracy, that alienated him from the Republican party.”The deadly insurrection by a pro-Trump mob at the US Capitol on 6 January was the final straw: Powell declared that he no longer considered himself a Republican. The party that he had grown up with, which espoused the American dream and promoted him to senior roles in government, no longer existed.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Colin Powell came from a working-class background and he never forgot that. The party moved away from the blue-collar Reagan Democrats, which is probably closer to where Colin Powell was, and it became much more of a corporate party, a party that would win elections by stoking racial resentment.“It became much less inclusive on social issues that Powell was more moderate on. I think the reason he didn’t run for president is he looked at the Republican party and he didn’t see a place for himself. From a practical point of view, he made the assessment he probably couldn’t win the nomination without a lot of conflict and perhaps his reputation being tarnished.”TopicsColin PowellUS politicsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Colin Powell, former US secretary of state, dies at 84 of Covid complications

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      Colin PowellColin Powell, former US secretary of state, dies at 84 of Covid complicationsPowell helped to build case for 2003 invasion of IraqJoe Biden hails ‘a patriot of unmatched honor and dignity’02:36Ed Pilkington in New York@edpilkingtonMon 18 Oct 2021 17.53 EDTFirst published on Mon 18 Oct 2021 08.17 EDTColin Powell, the former US secretary of state who played a pivotal role in attempting to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, has died from complications from Covid-19 aged 84, it was announced on Monday.Washington mourns death of Colin Powell as first tributes come in – liveRead morePowell, a retired four-star general who served as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in the early 1990s, had been treated for Covid at Walter Reed national medical center in Bethesda, Maryland, where he died. He was fully vaccinated against coronavirus but had a compromised immune system having been treated for blood cancer.Announcing his death, his family said they had lost a “remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American”.Powell was America’s first Black secretary of state, serving in that role under George W Bush from 2001 to 2005. He rose to the heights of military and diplomatic service from relatively disadvantaged beginnings, having been born in New York City to Jamaican parents and raised in the South Bronx where he was educated through public schools before he entered the army via a college officer training program.A statement from Joe Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden, said they were “deeply saddened by the passing of our dear friend and a patriot of unmatched honor and dignity” and referred to Powell having “repeatedly broken racial barriers [and] blazing a trail for others”.Biden further said of Powell: “Over our many years working together – even in disagreement – Colin was always someone who gave you his best and treated you with respect. Colin embodied the highest ideals of both warrior and diplomat … having fought in wars, he understood better than anyone that military might alone was not enough to maintain our peace and prosperity … Colin led with his personal commitment to the democratic values that make our country strong.”Kamala Harris, the first female and first Black and south Asian US vice-president, said Powell was “an incredible American” who “served with dignity and grace” and she praised Powell as a trailblazing inspiration in “what he did and how he did it”.He rose to occupy the top military position in the US government as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff between 1989 and 1993. In that role he presided over military crises including the invasion of Panama in 1989 and the first Gulf war in 1990-91.But it was in the buildup to the contentious invasion of Iraq in 2003 that Powell became a household name. He was the face of the Bush administration’s aggressive attempt to get the world community to back the invasion, based on false claims of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.In February 2003, as secretary of state, Powell appeared before the UN security council and made categoric claims that the then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had biological weapons and was developing nuclear weapons. He said his intelligence was based in part on accounts of unidentified Iraqi defectors.The invasion went ahead without UN authorisation. The following year the CIA’s own Iraq Study Group released a report that concluded that Hussein had destroyed the last of the country’s weapons of mass destruction a decade previously.Powell stepped down as secretary of state in November 2004, following Bush’s re-election. He later insisted to reporters that he had tried to warn Bush of the consequences of invading Iraq, but had supported the president when the decision to proceed was taken.In a statement on Monday, Bush called Powell “a great public servant. He was such a favorite of presidents that he earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom – twice. He was highly respected at home and abroad.”Dick Cheney, Bush’s vice-president who was a leading hawk on Iraq, simply said that working with Powell during the first Gulf war had shown him “Powell’s dedication to the United States and his commitment to the brave and selfless men and women who serve our country in uniform. Colin was a trailblazer and role model for so many.”Tony Blair, who as British prime minister also backed the Iraq invasion, called Powell a “towering figure in American military and political leadership over many years. He inspired loyalty and respect … his life stands as a testament not only to dedicated public service but also a strong belief in willingness to work across partisan division in the interests of his country.”01:45After his time in government Powell remained a hugely influential commentator on US politics and public life. He grew increasingly disillusioned by the Republican party’s rightward drift.In 2008, despite party rivalries, he endorsed Barack Obama for president and later became one of Donald Trump’s leading critics.On Monday, Obama said Powell “never denied the role that race played in his own life and in our society more broadly. But he also refused to accept that race would limit his dreams,” adding that he was “deeply appreciative” that Powell had endorsed him.Trump pushed a lie that Obama had not been born in the US and, at a time when conspiracy theorists were suggesting Obama was a Muslim, Powell spoke out and said: “The correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. But the really right answer is, ‘What if he is?’”Powell voted against Trump in 2016 and 2020 and was scathing about Republicans who remained silent or actively embraced Trump’s lies. In January he said he was so disgusted by the insurrection of Trump supporters at the US Capitol that he no longer considered himself a Republican.Powell, a prostate cancer survivor, was undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells, when he contracted Covid-19. He was scheduled to receive his Covid booster last week when he first got sick. “He couldn’t go to his appointment,” Peggy Cifrino, his longtime chief of staff, told the Washington Post. “He thought he was just not feeling quite right, and he went to the hospital.”The FDA authorized boosters of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for the immune-compromised and others in September, but the regulatory agency has not yet officially authorized boosters from Moderna or Johnson & Johnson. FDA advisors recommended Moderna boosters for vulnerable groups on Thursday and Johnson & Johnson boosters for those above the age of 18 on Friday.This blood cancer makes it hard to fight infections, putting patients at increased risk for coronavirus, and less likely to respond to vaccines. Dr Derry Segev, a transplant surgeon and professor of surgery and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins, told the Guardian earlier this month that severely immune-compromised patients sometimes don’t respond to additional mRNA vaccines adequately.“About 50% of [transplant] patients have no detectable antibody after two doses, and the ones who do have very low levels of antibody. You add a third dose, you get another few percent ultimately back in – but still even after three doses, and we’ve published even after four doses, there are a lot of transplant patients who don’t have good antibody responses.”“There are extremely rare cases of deaths or hospitalizations among fully vaccinated individuals,” the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said in a press briefing on Monday. But she emphasized that “an unvaccinated person has a more than 10 times greater risk of dying from Covid-19 compared to a fully vaccinated person”.Peggy Cifrino, Powell’s chief of staff, told CNN he also had Parkinson’s disease.Freshman progressive Democratic New York congressman Jamaal Bowman tweeted that Powell was an inspiration to him “as a Black man just trying to figure out the world”.Melody Schreiber contributed reportingTopicsColin PowellUS militaryUS foreign policyUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Washington mourns death of ‘trailblazer’ Colin Powell as tributes pour in – live

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      Key events

      Show

      4.31pm EDT
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      Today so far

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      Obama praises Powell as ‘an exemplary patriot’

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      Biden to host two meetings with House Democrats tomorrow

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      Biden offers condolences following former secretary of state Colin Powell’s death

      12.11pm EDT
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      Congress in session for vital two weeks of talks on Build Back Better bills

      9.36am EDT
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      Washington mourns the loss of Colin Powell

      Live feed

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      5.52pm EDT
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      Zalmay Khalilzad, the top US envoy to Afghanistan is stepping down from his role today, almost two months after the US chaotic withdrawal from the country. Khalilzad is originally from Afghanistan and served as an envoy in George W. Bush’s White House. He was tapped by Donald Trump to pursue peace negotiations with the Taliban in 2018.
      Khalilzad was expected to leave the White House after Joe Biden was elected but stayed on at the behest of Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of State.
      The now-former envoy has yet to comment on his resignation on his official Twitter page, but earlier today Khalilzad shared a tribute and photo of himself and Colin Powell.

      U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad
      (@US4AfghanPeace)
      I am saddened by the death of Colin Powell, a great American. It was an honor to work with him in the State and Defense Departments. May his soul rest in peace. pic.twitter.com/I8OvviseET

      October 18, 2021

      5.24pm EDT
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      Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the 6 January select committee and the National Archives. His goal is to block the release of White House documents pertaining to the January riot. His lawyers are seeking a number of things:

      They want a federal judge to invalidate the select committee’s request for documents
      Attorneys also want to avoid turning over any documents that Trump declare to be covered by executive privilege
      And to allow Trump’s lawyers to review all documents selected by the National Archive before they turn them over to the 6 January select committee

      This legal challenge comes as the select committee calls more individuals from the Trump White House to testify and provide documents related to the Capitol riot.
      To read an in-depth piece on Trump’s latest lawsuit, check out Politico’s coverage here.

      4.50pm EDT
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      Hi readers, I’m Abené Clayton blogging from the west coast.
      It’s a busy day in Washington as Congress returns from recess, Joe Biden paid an unexpected visit to an event honoring teachers and former and current share kind words about Colin Powell, who died today at the age of 84.
      I’ll keep the blog updated with more out of the Capitol and other stories of the day.

      Updated
      at 5.09pm EDT

      4.31pm EDT
      16:31

      Today so far

      That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Abené Clayton, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
      Here’s where the day stands so far:

      Former secretary of state Colin Powell died at 84 from complications of Covid-19. Powell was fully vaccinated against coronavirus, but he had previously been diagnosed with a type of blood cancer, likely putting him at increased risk of becoming severely ill from the virus.
      Joe Biden described Powell as “a patriot of unmatched honor and dignity”. The president has ordered flags at the White House and other federal government buildings to be flown at half-staff for the next few days, in honor of Powell’s life.
      Powell was remembered for his barrier-breaking career and for his involvement in the invasion of Iraq. The former general was the first Black man to serve as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and as secretary of state. But for many, Powell will be remembered for promoting incorrect claims about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction prior to the 2003 invasion. Barack Obama said of Powell, “Although he’d be the first to acknowledge that he didn’t get every call right, his actions reflected what he believed was best for America and the people he served.”
      Biden will have two meetings with House Democrats tomorrow to discuss the reconciliation package and the infrastructure bill. The meetings come as negotiations over the two bills have stalled, with moderates like senator Joe Manchin demanding a smaller reconciliation package while progressives continue to insist that $3.5tn is the bare minimum price tag they will accept.

      Abené will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

      4.16pm EDT
      16:16

      Joe Biden took a few questions from reporters after delivering remarks at the White House event honoring teachers this afternoon.
      Asked how he was going to get senator Joe Manchin to agree to passing the reconciliation package, Biden said, “That’s where I’m going now.”
      The president is also expected to hold two meetings with House Democrats tomorrow to discuss the negotiations over the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation package.
      Manchin has insisted upon a lower price tag for the reconciliation package, while progressives believe the current cost of $3.5tn is the bare minimum needed to address the climate crisis and improve access to affordable healthcare and childcare.

      3.58pm EDT
      15:58

      Joe Biden made a surprise appearance at a White House event honoring the 2020 and 2021 recipients of the National Teacher of the Year award.
      The event was hosted by Dr Jill Biden, who is a teacher herself at a Virginia community college, and education secretary Miguel Cardona also attended. More

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      Colin Powell, former US secretary of state, dies aged 84 – video obituary

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      Colin Powell, the first Black US secretary of state, has died at the age of 84 from Covid complications. Powell was a retired four-star general who served as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in the early 1990s, before joining the George W Bush administration as secretary of state. Before the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Powell made the case to the United Nations security council that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had biological weapons and was developing nuclear weapons. He later said that this represented ‘a blot’ that will ‘always be a part of my record’. Although he was a Republican, in 2008 he endorsed Barack Obama for president. In the years that followed, he felt increasingly detached from the party, ultimately leaving it in the wake of the 6 January insurrection on the Capitol

      Colin Powell, former US secretary of state, dies at 84 of Covid complications
      Joe Biden leads tributes to ‘dear friend’ and ‘patriot’ Colin Powell More

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      Colin Powell: key facts from his life

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      Colin PowellColin Powell: key facts from his lifeFormer military leader and the first Black US secretary of state has died of complications from Covid-19 Gloria Oladipo@gaoladipoMon 18 Oct 2021 11.48 EDTLast modified on Mon 18 Oct 2021 11.51 EDTColin Powell, former military leader and the first Black US secretary of state, has died of complications from Covid-19 at the age of 84. Here is a look back at some key facts from Powell’s life, reported by CNN:
      Powell was born on 5 April 1937 in Harlem, New York. His parents were Jamaican immigrants, his dad, a shipping clerk, and his mom, a seamstress.
      In college, Powell participated in ROTC, a military training program, and was leader of the precision drill team, earning a top rank.
      While serving two tours during the Vietnam war, Powell was injured in a helicopter crash and rescued by two fellow soldiers.
      Powell earned several military and civilian awards in his lifetime including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, twice.
      Powell was the youngest person, as well as the first Black person, to serve as chairman of the joint chief of staff during the George HW Bush administration.
      In 1993, Powell was named an honorary Knight Commander of the Most Honorable Order of the Bath by Queen Elizabeth II.
      Powell helped negotiate the return of the former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, in 1994.
      In 2001, Powell was sworn in as the first Black US secretary of state.
      Powell published two memoirs, My American Journey and It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership.
      After being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2003, Powell underwent surgery at the Walter Reed army medical center.
      Powell pushed for a swift military response to 9/11 in 2001, and Iraq intervention in 2003. He was criticized for presenting questionable intelligence to the United Nations in a 75-minute speech, which he later called a blot on his record.
      During the summer of 2007, Powell began criticizing the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq, the increasing military presence in the country, and Guantánamo Bay.
      Powell served as one of the honorary co-chairs for Barack Obama’s inauguration, endorsing Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign.
      Following the 6 January insurrection, Powell said he no longer considered himself a Republican.
      Powell suffered from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, which can lead to a severely compromised immune response.
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      Colin Powell discusses the most important element of leadership in 2011 speech – video

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      Colin Powell, the former US secretary of state who played a pivotal role in attempting to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, has died from complications from Covid-19 aged 84, it was announced on Monday. After his time in government, Powell remained a hugely influential commentator on US politics and public life. During a 2011 speech, he spoke about what he considered the most important element of leadership

      Washington mourns death of Colin Powell as first tributes come in – live More