Colin Powell- The Last of the Moderates

Colin Powell has resigned as Secretary of State and will be replaced by Condi Rice. This is scary, folks. Powell was the only moderate in the administration, the only sane one in a room full of hawks who wanted to invade Iraq ever since Bush found himself in the White House. They used 9/11 as an excuse to finally do so. Remember when Powell made that fantastic presentation to the United Nations showing our “slam-dunk” evidence that Saddam had WMD’s. He was used by the hawks to justify their upcoming invasion.

I like Powell. The only gripe I have with him is that he joined the Bush administration in the first place, signifying that he thought Bush had legitimately won the 2000 election. He was a good man in an untenable situation. However, now the inmates are in complete charge of the asylum.

John Podhoretz, a fire-breathing conservative, wrote in this morning’s NY Post that “Powell is supremely competent and effective. But he is not imaginative, and it's not surprising that his constant expressions of caution did not hold sway during the first Bush term. Caution is not a foreign policy.” He goes on to say “The great irony is this: He would have been a terrible failure as secretary of state if the president had listened to him more.”

Bush pretended to listen to this man, this beacon of caution and sanity in his administration. Now he’s gone, and that is very, very scary.