The death of General Colin Powell has drawn an outpouring of sympathy and praise from politicians, but social media users made “war criminal” trend instead, having not forgiven Powell for his role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Powell died on Monday of complications from Covid-19, according to his family. He was eulogized in major media outlets as the first black secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. President Joe Biden said Powell embodied “the highest ideals of both warrior and diplomat,” while 43rd president George W. Bush called him a “great public servant.”
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Another image, however, dominated the social media reactions to his death: that of Powell holding up a vial of fake anthrax in the UN General Assembly in 2003, claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and making the case for the US invasion that followed.
RIP Colin Powell, a war criminal who lied to the UN and to Congress about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction; a lie that cost the lives of over 1 million Iraqis. pic.twitter.com/yGCRjXDk6Y
— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) October 18, 2021
Mass murderer and war criminal Colin Powell, who lied to the United Nations and the world about WMDs in Iraq, leading to the death and displacement of millions of Iraqis; who helped destroy the Middle East under George Bush’s neocon administration, has just died. pic.twitter.com/IbEvleHEKT
— Richard Medhurst (@richimedhurst) October 18, 2021
Others noted that Powell’s connection to US atrocities goes back to the Vietnam War.
Colin Powell is dead. COVID took him. ‘War Criminal’ is chiseled on his tombstone. Iraq is the name on our lips. But don’t forget the war crimes in A Shau Valley in Vietnam (near Laos); burnt Vietnamese ghosts will guide Powell to hell. pic.twitter.com/ikShQoDUiP
— Vijay Prashad (@vijayprashad) October 18, 2021
“Colin Powell was a liar and a war criminal,” said anti-war activists Code Pink.
Colin Powell was a liar and a war criminal.
— CODEPINK (@codepink) October 18, 2021
Others, like the Intercept’s Ken Klippenstein, opted for sarcasm, calling Powell “a man of unparalleled integrity and courage” – as caption to the infamous UN photo.
When Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) praised Powell as an inspiration to himself as “a Black man just trying to figure out the world,” one socialist publication accused him of praising a war criminal.
Meanwhile, Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal mocked MSNBC’s Joy Reid for saying Powell “had some tough moments around our wars, but was a fundamentally good and decent man and a great American we could all be proud of.”
The opprobrium over Powell seemed particularly in evidence on the political left.
Andray Domise, who describes himself as a “Marxist-Dessalinist,” said that not criticizing a black war criminal amounted to “benevolent racism,” and that atrocities don’t disappear “when it’s a Black person giving the green light.”
Burned-down villages, detainee torture, gang rapes, and depleted uranium rounds don’t simply evaporate into the mist of “representation” when it’s a Black person giving the green light.
— Brother Q (FKA Andray Domise) (@andraydomise) October 18, 2021
Noname Book Club, a “community dedicated to uplifting POC voices” with nearly 600,000 followers, criticized the treatment of Powell as “first black,” arguing that this was a feature of “white domination” that “reduces our desire for collective liberation and makes us hyper focus on white approval” and well as idolizes “the first black billionaire or war criminal.”
it also individualizes/romanticizes black success. it reduces our desire for collective liberation and makes us hyper focus on white approval. we should want more than the first black _______, especially if their success is used as a tool to strengthen our love of capitalism.
— 🌊 (@noname) October 18, 2021
Born in New York of Jamaican parents, Powell was in Vietnam on two occasions – first as a captain, advising the South Vietnamese Army, and later as a major investigating the unit behind the My Lai massacre. He rose to the top of the US military hierarchy by the late 1980s, serving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush during the 1991 war against Iraq over Kuwait. He would return to the Middle East as the younger Bush’s secretary of state a decade later.
Powell retired from the State Department in January 2005, and was replaced by Condoleezza Rice.
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