{"id":481,"date":"2003-08-04T12:13:30","date_gmt":"2003-08-04T17:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/481.html"},"modified":"2003-08-04T12:13:30","modified_gmt":"2003-08-04T17:13:30","slug":"powells-absence-would-create-a-scary-scenario-for-bushs-second-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/powells-absence-would-create-a-scary-scenario-for-bushs-second-term\/","title":{"rendered":"Powell’s absence would create a scary scenario for Bush’s second term"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of the major dailies are leading with word that Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, would leave their posts<\/a> if Bush wins a second term. While rumors to this effect have been common for months, it is nevertheless disturbing news when one considers the consequences of their absence.<\/p>\n

To be sure, no one is saying that Powell and Armitage are planning to leave because they’re unhappy with the administration’s right-wing approach to foreign policy. The official line is the obligatory “family commitments” explanation.<\/p>\n

While I’m certainly not privy to the inner workings of Foggy Bottom, it would be terribly surprising if the current ideological environment in this administration didn’t contribute to this announcement. After all, there is and has been a stark divide within the Bush administration between hawks vs. doves, unilateralists vs. multilateralists, Defense Department vs. State Department, Rumsfeld\/Cheney vs. Powell. Regrettably, Powell has been on the losing end of nearly all the important fights and the White House’s foreign policy has drifted closer and closer to neo-con nirvana.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, it doesn’t surprise anyone that Powell and Armitage would want to leave. The problem is, however, their absence would create a vacuum should Bush win next year. Any chance that Cheney\/Rumsfeld would let Bush choose another moderate multilateralist to head the State Department once Powell is gone? Of course not.
\n
\nIn fact, the Washington Post reported<\/a> today that one of the “leading candidates” to replace Powell would be Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the nation’s leading neo-con and a critic of Powell’s moderation. If any two people are on the same page when it comes to a conservative foreign policy ideology, it’s Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. With Wolfowitz at State and Rumsfeld at Defense, we’d see a neo-con axis in which the voice of reason would fall silent.<\/p>\n

I noticed on TomPaine.com<\/a> that our allies in Europe are particularly concerned about what American foreign policy would look like in Powell’s absence, “since they figure the Bush administration’s scant attention to international consensus-building can only go downhill from here.”<\/p>\n

This is not a pleasant prospect to consider. Bill Keller at the New York Times explained in April that “the Bush administration would be a much scarier outfit without Colin Powell” and acknowledged that the Secretary of State is seen around the globe “as the lone grown-up in an administration with a teenager’s twitchy metabolism and self-centered view of the world.”<\/p>\n

Now imagine this same administration — unchained by the burdens of worrying about re-election — without any “grown-ups” in the foreign policy decision-making apparatus. Kind of scary? You bet it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of the major dailies are leading with word that Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, would leave their posts if Bush wins a second term. While rumors to this effect have been common for months, it is nevertheless disturbing news when one considers the consequences of their absence. To be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}