Colin Powell, a Black man who “sunk to the depths” of not only being a major war criminal in the service of the U.S. ruling class but of using his shameful career as proof that even if you are Black in America, “you can make it if you try,” died last week. Last week everyone from Rachel Maddow to Tucker Carlson sang his praises—and even some people who should and often do know better did as well, in one form or another.

So what is the truth of the matter?

Major truth number one: Colin Powell was a war criminal, up to his neck in the blood of people from around the world, whose special claim to fame was his usefulness as an “upwardly mobile” lackey. 

In Asia, Powell admitted to slaughtering civilians and other horrors—in other words, war crimes—during his tour in Vietnam, justifying this in his memoir that “it all made sense in those days.” During his time there, a soldier alerted him to other massacres, similar to the infamous My Lai massacre, in which U.S. troops slaughtered over 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians, largely women and children. Powell never interviewed the soldier and tried to cover it up.

Off these crimes in Vietnam, Powell rose through the ranks and not only played a prominent role in the first U.S. invasion of Iraq, he played a key role in justifying the horrendous crime of the horrendous 2003 invasion and war. Waving a phony stage prop of vials of what were supposed to be chemical weapons, he went before the UN to justify what he knew were lies to “sell” that war. The excuse being made by some liberals for Powell that “like a good soldier, he was only following orders” stinks of the justification used by the Nazi war criminals guilty of everything from the invasion of the then-socialist Soviet Union (today Russia) that took the lives of nearly 30 million people to the death camp horrors that murdered over six million Jews, Roma, gay people, disabled people, and political prisoners. 

And don’t forget Latin America. Powell served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, which unjustly and utterly needlessly slaughtered 3,000 to 6,000 Panamanians. And as George W. Bush’s Secretary of State, he oversaw and covered over the U.S. removal of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from Haiti to exile in the Central African Republic, and Aristide’s replacement by a more pliant servant of U.S. interests.

A challenge to anyone who wants to justify any part of Colin Powell’s life: How does this record of horrific slaughter and pernicious lies represent anything that anyone decent should want to uphold?

Major Truth Number Two: Powell did terrible damage to Black people and a great service to the main oppressor of Black people—the rulers of America—by serving and promoting himself as a role model for rising in the ranks of that ruling class by slaughtering other oppressed people.  

Through his books, TV appearances and thousands of other ways, Powell put himself forward as a “role model.” And it is a disgusting commentary on the state of things that very few noteworthy commentators, Black or otherwise, have dared to point this out and some people who at other times have opposed U.S. imperialism have even “commemorated” his death. 

Role model? For what? This is someone who devoted his entire life to slaughtering oppressed people around the world and who, because he excelled at that and knew how to “market himself” to those who had use for a Black face, rose for a time to the top of the worst oppressors in the world. 

Bob Avakian, BA, the revolutionary leader and author of the new communism, has said what NEEDS to be said about this aspect of Colin Powell here and here, and goes deeply into the ramifications for oppressed people and the extreme dangers of the kind of thinking that Powell stood for and promoted. As BA points out, it is hardly coincidental that Powell revered and promoted the Buffalo soldiers—Black Civil War veterans who were manipulated and misled by the powers that be of the time into slaughtering Native American people who were trying to resist the genocidal onslaught of the U.S. military.

The lesson that Colin Powell drew from this is NOT that oppressed people should aim to end all oppression and not get manipulated into fighting each other; quite the opposite. For Powell, this murderously tragic use of these Black soldiers was something to be celebrated.

For those woke folk and militant nationalists who have stooped to honoring Powell in any way, shape or form, you have to ask yourself a question—am I just for “my people”? Or for humanity? You cannot both be for humanity and at the same time hold the slightest shred of respect for a lifelong war criminal against humanity.

For those claiming to oppose unjust U.S. aggression, but who still grope and grasp for some reason to excuse or “honor” him—how long will you hold onto the myth that America is the “good guy” in the world, a well-meaning force that somehow blunders into mistakes—instead of coming to grips with what even a brief review of Colin Powell’s life makes clear is really true: that America is the most monstrous and dangerous oppressor on the planet and its “fighting men and women” are the enforcers of that oppression?

A FINAL, FURTHER POINT:

Colin Powell dies at a time when two major forces in the U.S. ruling class are locked in a deadly conflict over how this empire should be ruled. As Bob Avakian has written,

These divisions have already become deeply rooted in the major institutions of this country, including the military, and they will increasingly become sharper and burst out into the open, as things continue to sharpen up in society overall and within the ruling class.

These deep divisions, this intensifying conflict, cannot be overcome—all this cannot be “put back together”—on the terms, and in the way, that the country has, up to now, been held together under the rule of a more or less unified capitalist class. (From THIS IS A RARE TIME WHEN REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE—WHY THIS IS SO, AND HOW TO SEIZE ON THIS RARE OPPORTUNITY)

Today both sides are trying to use Powell’s legacy to serve their own agendas. But something could develop or come to light that would change this and turn Powell’s funeral into an occasion for sharp contention between these two sides. Should that happen, it would be a time when everyone who yearns for a future not hemmed in by the choice between the outright fascist dictatorship being fought for by the Republicans on the one hand, and the more familiar form of that violent bloody rule that has characterized America for 150 years and that nurtured and promoted the likes of Powell, should strive to break through the “confining and degrading terms of this system,” and fight for what humanity really needs: revolution, and a whole new future.