In defense of Colin Powell

Taufiq Rahim's racially tinged attack on Secretary of State Colin Powell assaults a distinguished public servant whose life embodies the American Dream in the fullest sense of the phrase.

Born to Jamaican immigrants in the Bronx, Powell attended New York City public schools and the City College of New York, where he participated in R.O.T.C. and received a B.A. in geology in 1958. His commission as an Army second lieutenant marked the beginning of a distinguished 35-year career in our nation's service. Powell saw combat in Vietnam, served as a senior adviser to President Reagan at the end of the Cold War and retired triumphantly from the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after America's rapid victory in the Persian Gulf War.

Powell's public service extends beyond his time in the military and State Department. Prior to his appointment as secretary of state in 2000, Powell headed America's Promise, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to a wide range of skilland character-building activities for young people from all walks of life. He also leads the Bush administration's AIDS initiative, which in its current form will spend $15 billion over the next five years in a global campaign to combat the spread of HIV, treat those who are already infected and care for AIDS orphans.

Rahim discounts these great deeds, painting Powell as a disingenuous spokesman for a "dangerous and hegemonic" foreign policy. In doing so, he hides behind an ugly October 2002 statement by singer Harry Belafonte of "Banana Boat" fame to attack Powell's integrity: "There are those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master." The overtones of the statement toward the first African-American secretary of state in history are unsettling, to say the least.

Many of Powell's critics inhabit a utopian world where all governments are rational, blissfully respect U.N. human rights declarations, disarm when told, coexist happily and solve tougher problems through "dialogue." The real world just ain't that way, folks! Horrible atrocities are committed in the name of religion and ethnic identity. The United States is the enemy of choice for those who would violently drag humanity back to the seventh century. To disregard this is to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the ugly reality of the international situation.

Powell has a difficult mission to accomplish. The Sept. 11 attacks killed thousands of innocent Americans. Never before has such brutal and indiscriminate destruction reached our shores. President Bush acted as any sane leader would have and adopted a preemptive foreign policy against fanatics who cannot be deterred. Indeed, this new foreign policy was long overdue.

Contrary to what radical pundits would have you believe, America is not a unilateralist bully. Every post-9/11 military action has relied heavily upon our allies. As Secretary Powell made clear in a recent Foreign Affairs article, "A Strategy of Partnerships," there has been one basic change in our approach to dealing with other nations. Simply, "partnership is not about deferring to others, it's about working with them." In being a decisive leader who does not fear acting with moderation, Secretary Powell exemplifies Ambassador Kennan's finest traits. Owing to America's position in the world today, he is a truly global agent of progress and deserves to be recognized as such. Gabe Collins is a politics major from Artesia, N.M. You can reach him at gbcolli@princeton.edu.