Going To The Mattresses

Bill Keller believes that Colin Powell should resign because Bush and his cronies are slightly mad and dangerously ambitious and he is the only sane one of the bunch.

For a time he managed to keep a lid on the new American exuberance. Our relations with Russia and China weathered the early roughhousing over missile defense and other disputes, in large part because Mr. Powell was such a calming figure. Old-fashioned diplomacy helped line up the world’s support for our war in Afghanistan and the broader war on terror. Thanks to Mr. Powell we (belatedly) framed our grievance against Iraq as a United Nations grievance; that 15 to nothing vote on Resolution 1441 was probably the high-water mark of his diplomacy. Mr. Powell also, I am told, helped beat back the idea of fighting the war in Iraq on the cheap — with fewer troops, more high-tech dazzle, a little experiment with American lives. So he has won some big ones.

But that is exactly the problem. His formidable skills have been too much engaged in a kind of guerrilla war for the soul of the president, and it has shown. Critics in the administration and colleagues on this page have unfavorably compared his performance in the buildup to war with James Baker’s whirlwind of global coalition-building before the gulf war in 1991. But Mr. Baker was operating as his president’s right arm; Mr. Powell was busy protecting his right flank

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The most important reason the secretary of state should go is that the president has chosen a course that repudiates much of what Mr. Powell has stood for — notably his deep suspicion of arrogant idealism. I don’t mean that Mr. Bush is bent on a series of pre-emptive wars — surely the president would like to take the country into the election year at peace — but this is about how we throw our weight around in peacetime, too.

Critics of the Bush administration talk about the breach in the Atlantic alliance and the division at the United Nations as “collateral damage,” as if, in the rush to get Iraq, the administration has blundered. That assumes it was an accident. It seems more plausible that this was not an attempt to put spine in the United Nations and NATO, but to discredit them. The global engineers talk with such contempt of these organizations, it is difficult to believe they want to salvage them as anything but appendages of American power.

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Gosh Bill. Are you seriously suggesting that we would be better off if Bush hires another crazyass Cheney crony like the rest of his cuckoo’s nest?

The non-borg war supporters are having quite a difficult time figuring out what to do about all this. They sincerely believed in the concept of freeing the Iraqi people and changing the repressive dynamic in the middle east, but they also have been slapped by the realization that Bush is so outrageously reckless that it is a mistake to hand him the means to unleash hell. This is a big lesson for some people, apparently. Yes, it’s satisfying when somebody defies all the naysayers and growls, “Just Do It.” Unfortunately, these same people are usually hot headed idiots who create far more problems than they solve. Sonny Corleone may be filled with righteous indignation and thoroughly justified in his outrage, but he’s a dumbshit. He gets himself killed and makes everything worse, not better.

But, Keller’s answer to the problem that Bush is out of control is bizarre. He seems to believe that Powell is the only one trying (and yes, mostly failing) to keep these guys from spinning out of control. But, he should resign in favor of someone who the President “trusts” and therefore, will help him to spin out of control.

Taken at face value, that’s either deeply cynical or completely incoherent. But, there is the possibility that this is some kind of shot across the bow by Powell, who would cause a huge problem for Bush if he resigns. The word is that the Bush loyalists are pulling out the long knives and blaming him — which Keller does too but only by saying that he is too good for such cretins, hardly a ringing indictment.

And he gets Powell on the record saying that he disagrees with the administration’s view of America’s role in the world. That’s a big disagreement and he’s gone public with it:

When I put the question of resigning to Mr. Powell yesterday, he was, characteristically, showing no signs of surrender. He has no intention of leaving, he said. He has the president’s full confidence. He has been written off before. And Iraq is just Iraq — not the first in a series of military adventures.

“I think it’s a bit of an overstatement to say that now this one’s pocketed, on to the next place,” Mr. Powell said. The larger question of America’s role in the world, he said, “isn’t answered yet.”

Such a loyal and optimistic man would make some president a great secretary of state. Just not this president.

Who does he have in mind? Tony Blair?

Powell’s not resigning. He’s going to try to repair his tattered reputation (and maybe hold the line, if we’re lucky.) And considering that his replacement would likely be some nut like John Bolton, it’s just as well. An ineffectual Powell is still better than a wild-eyed neocon insisting on going to the mattresses. But, if this is Powell’s way of making that statement, Keller sure did write it in the strangest form possible.