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Colin Powell Resigns
Anarcho-Goth writes "It is all over the media now. Secretary of State Colin Powell has resigned 'effective at your pleasure.' He says that he only planned to hold the position for one term anyway, but I'm sure the rumor mill has other ideas. This makes 6 resignations since the election. My local TV news described it as the most important position to resign so far. Isn't Secretary of State the most important cabinet position, period? Articles from CNN, The UK Guardian, The Associated Press, and Fox News."
Would you vote for him? I would.
Powell's replacement will - I think - send a strong signal about the strategy a Bush 43B administration will pursue.
A moderate (like one of the current favourites for the job, John Danforth, the current US ambassador to the UN... though I don't know enough about him to know if the description is accurate) will imply that there will continue to be a level of debate between the neoconservative and less revolutionary wings of the administration.
On the other hand, appointing someone like Paul Wolfowitz to the job (another name bandied about, along with that of Condoleezza Rice*), will signal a continuation and even escalation of a unilateralist, force-based foreign policy that was pretty much dictated by the Pentagon for the last four years anyway.
(*Not sure how I feel about Rice. I suspect she's not quite as extremist as she's often painted as being. She is - I think - on record as saying she's not interested in remaining in her NSA position and that she's considering a return to academia. She's also a favourite to replace Powell but appears to prefer to take over Defence rather than State. She's a doer, not a talker, and doesn't like all the pomp and ceremony associated with the foreign affairs position.)
a world in progress...
I wonder if many republicans are thinking that maybe they shouldn't have voted for Bush, due to what appears to be lack of confidence even within his cabinet...
- dshaw
It means that it was a lot more fun to take over and run a country with a huge budget surplus and a military that is not slogging through a protracted insurgency in a foreign country. Remember the good old days of 2000?
With the treasury plundering complete, and insufficient resources to invade any more countries for the forseeable future, the next 4 years just aren't going to be nearly as much fun as the first 4. So, it's a good time to ditch any responsibility for trying to fix the mess and cash in with some lucrative private sector job, perhaps in lobbying or something else that allows you to convert your legacy government connections to cash.
Mod me -1, Troll, Insightful.
The Republican Party today is an uneasy coalition of the personal freedom economic laissez faire folks and the biblical literalists. They need each other to win but both pretend the other is not there.
Perhaps Secretary Powell was tired of pretending that the biblical literalist elephant was not under the table. His memoirs will be a great read.
Seriously. I saw the webcast of a speech he gave at Princeton University. It was part of a conference honoring the author of a policy called "Containment", the concept which had guided the United States against the Soviet Union during the cold war... and also the strategy used by Bush and Clinton against Saddam Hussein. Basically, it's less risky to contain the threat than to engage it head-on. It was Orwellian to see him lauding this idea, after (rather defensively) saying that the invasion of Iraq was justified because Saddam Hussein had the "intention" to produce WMD... steadfastly defending the idiocy of Bush's policies to the end. Kinda pathetic. But it seems he's got a military man's idea of honor: do what you're told, as well as you can, and don't question orders, no matter how idiotic and insane.
Not that much. There are people downthread speculating on what the cabinet departures mean, whether it's a show of lack of confidence in the administration, etc. I am going to repost a comment of mine from another board which has to do with it. Sorry for recycle of a post, but since it is the same subject being discussed I felt it would be silly to write a new post saying the same thing.
I was listening to Powell's departing press conf (well he's not really
departing for some weeks/months) and he stated that he had always
intended to do one term only.
I quickly found a link from over a year ago that said as much.
I was trying to get into the shoes of people like Powell and
Ashcroft. If I had done so many different things and accomplished so
much in life, would I want to do the same exhausting thing for 8 years?
I don't think I would, unless the position had been my life's goal.
Since Powell came through the military, I doubt being Secretary of
State was super-important to him. Same for Ashcroft, who was, IIRC a
state politician up to four years ago and had nothing to do with the
Justice dept.
So maybe it's not so shocking that people are looking to change
careers or retire after 4 years of doing this sort of thing, which must
be extremely draining. The beginning of a new term sounds like a
reasonable time to do so while giving your resignation as little
significance as possible, whereas retiring in the middle of a term
would be viewed as more of a protest.
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