"There's an old saying," Belafonte said, "In the days of slavery, there were those slaves who lived on the plantation and there were those slaves that lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master...exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him." |
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My Master's House
Posted May 5, 2004
thepeoplesvoice.org
By: Sheila Samples
“I was never kinder to the old
man than during the whole week before I killed him”~~Edgar Allen Poe, The
Tell-Tale Heart
He has always been there, barely visible—his comforting presence more felt
than seen. From ROTC to Vietnam, from Iran-Contra to Desert Storm, from the
Joint Chiefs to Foggy Bottom, he has been quietly steady, honest,
trustworthy and obedient. Both in and out of uniform, Secretary of State
Colin Powell has served brilliantly.
Powell is the creme da la creme of the media’s ability to create heroic
caraciatures, exceeded only by their carefully constructed image of George
W. Bush. Although Powell’s military career dates back to Vietnam, he first
appeared fullblown in America’s line of vision during the first Persian
Gulf War where, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he is credited
with orchestrating that wild and bloody foray that ended in a Feb. 1991
crescendo of bullets in the backs of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians
promised safe passage back to Baghdad along what was to become the Highway
of Death.
The Good Soldier
Colin Luther Powell is a good soldier. Few know just how good, because
Powell is a walking dichotomy—very adept at showing only his illuminated
side to moonstruck supporters. Americans who so generously bestow political
capital upon Powell are either unaware of, or do not believe, the deadly
murkiness of his dark side. They see Powell striding confidently across the
international landscape—compassionate, moderate, diplomatic—issuing
gentle, tongue-clucking “warnings” to those who resist the gift of U.S.
hegemony. They fail to note the chaos and the tangle of bodies that
inevitably pile up behind Powell in whatever country he approaches with
outstretched hand...
Americans are not only blind, they appear to be deaf to those who chronicle
Powell’s evolution from a cunning eager-to-please young officer on a
military fast track to a cold-blooded unrepentant shock-and-awe executioner.
What Powell has done—is doing—for those he serves is public record. Why
he would do these things was put into powerful perspective last year by
singer Harry Belafonte, who pointed out http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/10/15/belafonte.powell/
that Powell, whose initial stance on policies is to be admired, always
“sells out” when pressured.
“There’s an old saying,” Belafonte said, “In the days of slavery,
there were those slaves who lived on the plantation and there were those
slaves that lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house
if you served the master...exactly the way the master intended to have you
serve him.”
In the ensuing media furor, Belafonte, an avid United Nations supporter,
refused to back down. In fact, he was eager to put his remarks into
perspective—“The idea that you work in the house of the master is almost
in itself its own opportunity to do some mischief and make a difference, but
when you are in that place and you help perpetuate the master’s policy
that perpetuates oppression and pain for many others, then something has to
be said about it,” Belefonte said. “And the master in this instance, of
course, was the president of the United States.”
Powell harrumphed that Belafonte’s slave reference was an
“unfortunate” throwback to another place and another time and he was
proud to be serving his nation and his president. Unfortunately for the
nation, George W. Bush is president, and it appears that Powell is
increasingly unable to separate the two, making “honor” as well as
“truth” an early casualty of war...
Other Places, Other Times
In 1996, investigative journalists Robert Parry and Norman Solomon teamed up
to produce a penetrating and meticuously researched account of Powell’s
sometimes frenzied activity in the corridors and tunnels of his master’s
house for most of his military life. Even in a tight, “just the facts,
ma’am” format, the finished product, published in Consortium News, was
so voluminous it comprised a five-part series.
That critical series was republished in December 2000 http://www.consortiumnews.com
after Powell—once compelled by a straight-shootin’ sense of integrity to
defy the Uniform Code of Military Justice http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com88.html
and publicly blast his commander-in-chief about gays in the military—stood
by silently at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, while 90-percent of
Florida’s African-American “Gore” voters were disenfranchised. A scant
four days later, Powell was rewarded for his silence with the coveted
Secretary of State slot.
Read the Parry/Solomon series. Slog through the steaming fetid excrement
that comprises Powell’s smarmy sense of honor as he makes easy choices in
covering up Vietnam atrocities, including the hundreds of unarmed civilians
slaughtered in the My Lai massacre. Recoil at his involvement in funding
Nicaraguan contra terrorists by illegally routing missiles through Israel to
Iran. Chuckle at how he covers his own ass by first setting up Oliver North
to take the fall for the Iran-Contra mess, and even his boss and mentor,
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, if it came to that. Count the lies
with which this soldier padded his career—in letters, reports, interviews
and testimony before Congress. How many, you ask? Well, it depends upon how
many times he opened his mouth—and he isn’t through talking yet.
Our descent into Vietnam more than three decades ago left an indelible mark
on this country, and the mere mention of the “V” word even today evokes
a kaliedeoscope of emotions about the brutal, needless slaughter of 57,000
U.S. soldiers and 2,000,000 Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. I cannot
speak to Powell’s emotions, but as a minimum, it appears that his
experiences in Vietnam allowed him to dehumanize his enemy and to use
overwhelming force to destroy anything in his path—civilians and
combatants alike. His experiences allowed him to adopt the murderous
Weinberger Doctrine; his ego compelled him to co-opt it and to refine it
into what is widely touted today as the “Powell Doctrine.”
In his autobiography, My American Journey, http://www.amazon.com
Powell coldly describes the deliberate destruction of “the enemy,” or
villagers who might sympathize with the Viet Cong: “We burned the thatched
huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo lighters . . . Why were we
torching houses and destroying crops? Ho Chi Minh had said people were like
the sea in which his guerillas swam. We tried to solve the problem by making
the whole sea uninhabitable. In the hard logic of war, what difference does
it make if you shot your enemy or starved him to death?”
In April 2002, shortly after the Jenin refugee camp massacre http://news.bbc.co.uk
in Palestine’s West Bank, Powell took a turn around the site and returned
to testify to Congress—“I’ve seen no evidence of mass graves...no
evidence that would suggest a massacre took place...Clearly people died in
Jenin—people who were terrorists (emphasis added)died in Jenin - and in
the prosecution of that battle innocent lives may well have been lost.”
Powell was not asked why not one single home in Jenin was left standing; he
did not address the problems he must have had maneuvering through the
rubble, nor did he give any indication that the pungent, stifling smell of
rotting corpses bothered him at all. Anyway, that was then and this is
now...
Although Powell says Vietnam is “another place, another time,” his
unrepentant callous disregard for the lives of innocent civilians is legend,
and continues in this place and in this time. When a reporter asked him in
April 1991 about Iraqi military and civilian deaths—Powell shrugged with
stunning indifference—“That’s not really a number I’m terribly
interested in...” Now, 12 years later, we are back in Iraq where bodies of
the dehumanized stack up on city streets—litter the desert landscape. But
their number is not too terribly interesting because—as you know—we
don’t do body counts.
Don’t Go There!
When tasked by his master in February 2003 to go before the United Nations
and convince the world that Saddam Hussein was armed and poised to destroy
every living thing on the planet unless we immediately took preemptive
action, Powell obediently expended his considerable cache of political
capital—and threw in his sterling reputation for good measure.
“What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid
intelligence,” Powell assured the UN Security Council. Never mind that
most of Powell’s “proof” of Iraq’s intentions to wreck world havoc
was lifted from an article written by a postgraduate student from Monterey,
California. It didn’t matter because Powell’s “bells-and-whistles”
presentation, which included aerial photographs of trailers designed for
producing biological weapons, wild warnings of secret arsenals of weapons of
mass destruction and hiliarous Republican Guard telephone intercepts was
aimed directly at the American people.
Of course it worked, but at great cost in American money and in American and
Iraqi lives. Not to mention the damage to Powell’s ability to function on
the world stage as an effective diplomat. Casting aside his carefully
nurtured role of “reluctant warrior,” Powell soldiers on, reduced to
defending his master’s “vision” of a new world order and to warning
other nations such as Syria, Palestine, Libya, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi
Arabia to get in line behind U.S. policies or find themselves “on the
wrong side of history.”
But nothing reveals Powell’s brutish dark side so clearly or exposes his
utter disdain for all creatures brown or black as his recent orchestration
of the coup d‘etat in Haiti and the forced ouster of its democratically
elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Quietly, quietly, Powell stood by for three years as Haitian rebels were
trained and armed in the Dominican Republic for the overthrow of
Aristide’s government. In early February, just prior to the planned coup,
Powell assured the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “It is the policy
of the government that it is not for regime change.”
Quietly, the administration cut off aid to Haiti, and Powell administered a
“hands-off” policy during the ensuring violence and bloodshed. Rebel
forces spread over the provinces, toting U.S.-made M-16s and
rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Finally, Aristide, who refused to leave
for fear that all who supported him would be killed, pled for U.S.
assistance.
The assistance Powell sent was armed Marines who forced Aristide and his
wife aboard a plane under threat of death, and whisked them out of the
country. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus courageously attempted to
penetrate the public consciousness, but to no avail. Randall Robinson, close
associate of Aristide and founder of TransAfrica, said http://www.boston.com
“Colin Powell is the most powerful and damaging black to rise to influence
in the world in my lifetime.”
While America yawned, Powell quietly pulled the media curtain on the Haiti
regime change—Cheshire-cat smile in place as Florida television talk-show
host Gerard Latortue was installed as prime minister. The killing of all who
supported Aristide began. Bodies continue to be dumped on a Haitian
hillside, where dogs and pigs feast on them. Caribbean countries seeking a
UN probe of Aristide’s ouster have been intimidated into inaction.
Roll out the banner—Another bloody mission accomplished.
Haiti is indeed another place and another time where Powell and his masters
would rather we not go. In Haiti last week to show support for the new
U.S.-backed regime, Powell echoed his master’s voice—“I urge the proud
people of Haiti to come together in peace, to seize this new chance to put
your country firmly on the path to democracy.”
Sound familiar? Before you get too comfortable, remember that the blood of
the innocent—from Vietnam to Haiti—not only stains every warmonger in
this administration, but cries out for justice. Lest you are moonstruck by
the gentle warrior beckoning to you from the shadows of his master’s
house, remember that few things are more frightening than fascism in
disarray when time is running out.
And -- Don't Go There!
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Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma freelance writer and a former US Army Public Information Officer. She will accept praise and
atta-boys at:
rsamples@sirinet.net. Complaints and death threats should be directed to her cousin, Junior Samples, at BR-549
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