Powell's resignation widely expected

1.00pm - By RUPERT CORNWELL in Washington

He might have been on the losing end of most of the policy battles that mattered. His going, moreover, was widely expected. Nonetheless, the resignation of Colin Powell, when it actually became fact, was one of those events which for a moment at least stop the capital and the world, in their tracks.

At one level, the event is a matter of history, perhaps the last milestone in one of the most remarkable stories in 20th century US public life.

Born in the Bronx, the 67-year-old General Powell was the son of humble Jamaican immigrants, who transcended his origins and his race to become a four star general and then national security adviser to the President.

Later, as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, he was the most senior uniformed military officer in the land, and an architect of the first Gulf War waged by the first President George Bush. Under the second President Bush, he rose higher still, to serve as the country's first African-American Secretary of State.

He has consistently been the most popular member of Cabinet, with ratings that far outstripped those of the President himself.

Gen. Powell might have been a Republican. But he was a Republican of a vanishing breed, a moderate who appealed across party lines. Abroad he was held in equal regard, perceived as the human face of an administration that otherwise entirely seemed to lack one. As a role model, modern America has had few to match him.

Of late, there has been talk of him taking over as chairman of the World Bank, or as a special envoy for Mr Bush, perhaps for the Middle East. But almost certainly, the career of Colin Luther Powell at the summit of American public life is over - amid a lingering feeling that a glittering career could have been even more gleaming still.

The disappointment is twofold. Those with longer memories will wonder whether he could have become America's first black President, had he decided to run against Bill Clinton in 1996, when the Republican nomination was his for the taking and the polls made him a favourite to win.

But after much heart-searching he declined the chance - not least because of the objections of his wife, Alma. But the second disappointment for Gen. Powell's legions of admirers is more recent and more painful.

When he was named Secretary of State, the sky seemed the limit. Morale surged at a department that had been trampled on by Congress, and had previously been led by comparative lightweights in Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright.

The General's first press conference at the Department in January 2001 was an occasion more befitting a rock star than a diplomat. He took over as a figure of massive charisma, prestige and authority, and an acknowledged master of bureaucratic manoeuvre.


Unlike his two predecessors, he could be counted upon to prevail in Washington's power struggles.

In retrospect however, it was downhill all the way thereafter. Even before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it was clear that neo-conservatives and hard-liners were winning the battle for President Bush's ear.

More often than not, Gen. Powell - moderate, gradualist and internationalist - found himself in a minority against Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence and Dick Cheney, the most powerful vice-President of modern times, with his own influential foreign policy staffers.

Iraq only laid the divisions even barer. Running battles between the Pentagon and the State Department are nothing new (as anyone who remembers the Reagan-era feuding between Caspar Weinberger and George Shultz can attest).
But the arguments between the Powellites at State and Mr Rumsfeld's office at the Defence Department turned rivalry into open mutual contempt.

It was said that one reason Gen. Powell travelled less than his predecessors was because he feared that if he left town, Messrs Rumsfeld and Cheney would take advantage to stage policy coups against him. But even when Gen. Powell was in Washington, that tended to happen.

The evidence is strong that deep down, he opposed the March 2003 invasion (though loyal trooper that he is, Gen. Powell would never admit it). Unquestionably however, his approach to the conflict was more cautious. Alas, it was unavailing.

The "Powell Doctrine" of overwhelming force to secure the invasion was jettisoned in favour of Donald Rumsfeld's 21st century version of Blitzkrieg - leading directly to the lack of forces that has plagued US commanders ever since.

Disastrously, and over Gen. Powell's objections, the Pentagon, not State, was put in charge of the occupation. At one point, it seemed, any diplomat with real knowledge of Iraq and the Arab world was automatically disqualified from being sent to Baghdad.

Should he have resigned? Yes, European and American opponents of the Iraq invasion would say. But that is to ignore the conventions of US government. Resignations on principled issues of policy are not the norm here.

Cy Vance, who quit in 1980 over his opposition to President Jimmy Carter's bid to mount a military raid to rescue the US hostages in Iran, is the only Secretary of State in modern times to have done so.

Colin Powell, the good soldier and team player par excellence, was never likely to follow that example.

Famously, shortly before the war began, he cited the so-called 'Pottery Barn' rule - "You break it, you own it" - to remind the President that by overthrowing Saddam Hussein, the US would become responsible for putting the country together again. But that was as far as resistance went.

With some reluctance, he agreed to go to the United Nations six weeks before the war to make the Bush administration's case to the Security Council that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. Beforehand, the Secretary of State spent an entire weekend cloistered at the CIA, poring over the evidence.

In New York, Gen. Powell delivered as powerful and convincing a performance as even he could muster, complete with satellite photos, audio tapes and transcripts of US intelligence intercepts - even the brandishing of a vial of white powder that might have been anthrax spores. Alas for the retired General, it was rubbish.

As the months passed with not a trace of an illicit weapon, or even of programmes to produce them, Gen. Powell's discomfort grew. To friends, he admitted his distress at the episode. In retrospect February 5 2003 marked the nadir of his reputation, and it has not truly recovered since.

His letter of resignation predictably gave no hint of disappointment or inner turmoil. He thanked the President for "the honour of serving in his administration," and of being "part of the team that launched the global war on terror and liberated the people of Iraq and Afghanistan."

But many suspected that for all his weariness at the lost battles with the Pentagon and the vice-President's office, Gen. Powell was increasingly inclined to stay on for a while at least into a second Bush term, in a bid to reburnish his reputation.

The death of Yasser Arafat, and the possible new opening in the search for a Middle East settlement, could only have strengthened such hankerings. But in the end Gen. Powell decided that enough was enough.

- INDEPENDENT