Powell146;s lonely war

When he was still a military man, Colin Powell drew up a list of 13 rules to live by. Most have come in useful in his four years in the Bush administration but none more so than number three: 8220;Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls your ego goes with it.8221;

Powell8217;s positions on US foreign policy fell with such thudding regularity that a secretary of state with less philosophical detachment might have resigned long ago. A lone internationalist in an administration full of neo-conservatives heady with American power, he was publicly contradicted by the White House over North Korea, and had his negotiating position taken from under him while in the midst of Middle East talks. Powell was barred from talking to the press about vital diplomatic issues, and in February 2003, he was sent to the UN to argue for a war he did not believe was necessary with evidence which later turned out to be almost entirely bogus8230;The question constantly hovering over Powell8217;s head over the past four years of isolation has been: 8220;Why does he stay?8221; One answer put forward by his colleagues was that he was a good soldier, and would never desert his post. That was no doubt all the more important a consideration after the 9/11 attacks. The other side of that coin is that he believed his struggle to rein in the radical militarist instincts of the president and his coterie of advisers was a battle that could not be shirked for the sake of the country and for the soldiers who would be sent to die as a consequence of Washington8217;s decisions .

That was Powell8217;s lonely war. Asked why he travelled so little8230;his aides would point out that all power lay in Washington, and that is where the action was. It often seemed he was not so much America8217;s representative working for US interests abroad, but the world8217;s sole voice in the American capital. The neo-conservatives saw his role that way and despised him for it. He never established a close relationship with the president. Prompted by the journalist Bob Woodward to say something nice about him, Bush could only come up with: 8220;Powell is a diplomat8230;and you8217;ve got to have a diplomat.8221;

Excerpted from 8216;The Guardian8217;, November 16