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The son of Jamaican immigrants to New York City, Colin Powell is best known as the first black secretary of state, a post he held under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. Prior to that, he served for thirty-five years in the U.S. military, a career that began in the Reserve Officer Training Corps at City College of New York and led to two tours of duty in Vietnam--a war that would shape his views of military objectives decades later. He climbed the ranks to become the nation's third black four-star general in 1989, following two years as national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. He became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H. W. Bush, a post he held from 1989 to 1993. His tenure included the first Gulf War, also known as Operation Desert Storm, and the mission that led to the war, Operation Desert Shield. Powell's pragmatism and reputation as a reluctant warrior made him one of America's most admired public officials, and he was even mentioned as a potential candidate for the U.S. presidency in the 1990s.

Colin Powell spent much of his adult life under fire. The firing began with his tours of duty in Vietnam and continued in the political arena when he arrived in Washington, D.C., to serve Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Particularly during the two Bush presidencies, Powell was at the center of geopolitical events that would, for better or worse, reshape the Middle East and redefine American foreign policy in these regions. The mission assigned to him was to lead wars--as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the elder Bush during the Gulf War and then as secretary of state under the younger Bush during the invasion of Iraq.

Powell, however, was by no means a military hawk. His experience in Vietnam made him something of a reluctant warrior, and consequently he found himself at odds with administration officials about the need for war and, after the conflicts were launched, how to prosecute them. Some of his most significant documents reflect this reluctance, or at least a moderate, cautious approach to the use of American military might. The three documents reproduced here trace the arc of Powell's career, from a highly regarded and trusted shaper of military policy, to a key architect of the 2003 Iraq war, to a chastened public official seeking to correct the intelligence mistakes of the administration under which he served.

Beginning under the Reagan administration, Powell was credited with developing the "Powell doctrine." The military principles Powell called for, articulated in an influential article in Foreign Affairs, included the use of decisive force, the need for clear objectives, and a thorough understanding of risks. But many say that Powell's legacy was tarnished by his February 2003 speech before the United Nations, making the case for a U.S.-led war against Iraq. Soon afterward, most of the speech's key assertions were publicly discredited as based on faulty intelligence information. Nonetheless, the speech had succeeded in galvanizing public opinion in support of a March 2003 invasion of Iraq that led to a conflict not entirely resolved by the time of the 2008 presidential election. Powell offered his resignation in 2004, but not before proposing reform in the intelligence community to prevent the type of mistakes made in the framing of his own speech.

References:

1. DeYoung, Karen. Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell. New York: Knopf, 2006.

2. Harari, Oren. The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.

3. Means, Howard B. Colin Powell: Soldier/Statesman-- Statesman/Soldier. New York: D. I. Fine, 1992.

4. Roth, David. Sacred Honor: A Biography of Colin Powell. San Francisco, Calif.: HarperSan Francisco, 1993.

5. Steins, Richard. Colin Powell: A Biography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2003.

6. Weinberger, Caspar. Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon. New York: Warner Books, 1990.

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