General Colin Powell, the first black secretary of state in the United States, died of complications from COVID-19. He is 84 years old. Powell gained fame as the architect of the 1989 invasion of Panama and the 1991 Persian Gulf War. CNN:
Powell is an outstanding and pioneering professional soldier. His career has enabled him from a combat mission in Vietnam to become the first black national security adviser at the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and under the leadership of President George HW. The youngest and first African-American chairman bushes at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After the victory of the coalition led by the United States during the Gulf War, his national popularity soared. For a period of time in the mid-1990s, he was considered a major contender to become the first black president of the United States.However, as George W. Bush’s first Secretary of State, his reputation will always be tarnished.[…]
Although Powell had never ran for the White House, when he was sworn in as Bush’s Secretary of State in 2001, he became the highest-ranking black public official in the country so far, ranking fourth among the successors to the president.
From New York Times:
He returned to public office in 2001 as Secretary of State for President George W. Bush, and his father, Mr. Powell, served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ten years ago.
But in the Bush administration, Mr. Powell was a strange person. He had an internal struggle with Mr. Cheney, the then Vice President and Secretary of Defense. Donald H. Rumsfeld For the dominance of President Bush and foreign policy.
He left at the end of Mr. Bush’s first term and was shrouded in the deteriorating Iraq War. More and more people questioned whether he could and should do more to oppose it.
In the next few years, he kept a low profile, but with only more than two weeks left before the 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Powell, who had become a Republican at the time, strongly supported Senator Barack Obama, calling him ” Transformative person”. “
picture: State Department of the United States of America – http://www.pristina.usmission.gov/ http://www.state.gov/ http://www.state.gov/ http://www.state.gov/ (Public area)
