WASHINGTON — Colin Powell, the trailblazing military commander and first Black secretary of state whose career was defined in part by America’s two wars with Iraq, died Monday of COVID-19 related complications.
Powell, 84, was born in New York City to Jamaican immigrants, served four U.S. presidents and rose to become the first African American and the youngest chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer. He died Monday at Walter Reed National Medical Center. His family said he was fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
“We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American,” Powell’s family said in its statement.
The news of his death rippled across the country, sparking an outpouring of grief and praise for his decades of public service.
“He was a tremendous personal friend and mentor to me, and there’s a hole in my heart right now as I think about his loss,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Monday. “I will miss him dearly.”
Former President Jimmy Carter called him a “true patriot and public servant,” and noted that Powell worked on many issues outside the limelight, including pro-democracy efforts in Haiti and Jamaica.
Powell served two combat tours in Vietnam before climbing the ranks and overseeing the first Gulf War in 1990-1991, when American and allied forces drove Iraq’s military from Kuwait. Powell’s distinguished military career was later tarnished by his tenure as the nation’s chief diplomat, when then-President George W. Bush’s led the U.S. into the second Iraq war in 2003, based on faulty assertions that Saddam Hussein’s government had weapons of mass destruction.
Powell later called that a “blot” on his career.
Military service
Powell was born in 1937 in Harlem and grew up in the South Bronx. At sixteen, he enrolled at the City College of New York and joined the Army ROTC.
When he put on his first uniform, “I liked what I saw,” he wrote in his 1995 autobiography “My American Journey.”
Powell served in Vietnam in 1962 as an adviser to a South Vietnamese infantry battalion and then again in 1968 as a battalion executive officer and assistant chief of staff of operations. During his second tour, Powell received the Soldier’s Medal for rescuing fellow soldiers from a burning helicopter despite being injured himself.
He steadily rose through the ranks over his decades-long career, becoming national security adviser to then-President Ronald Reagan and a four-star general. In 1989, then-President George H. W. Bush selected Powell to be the 12th chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Powell was then 52 years old, making him the youngest officer to serve as the nation’s highest ranking military appointee.
“Mine is the story of a black kid of no early promise from an immigrant family of limited means who was raised in the South Bronx,” he wrote in his autobiography.
Secretary of State during Iraq War
Powell retired from the military in 1993 but returned to public service in 2001, this time as the nation’s top diplomat, tapped for the post by then-President George W. Bush.
It was perhaps the most difficult test of his professional life. As the country grappled with the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Powell often found himself at odds with more hawkish members of the Bush administration, chiefly Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
He initially resisted the push to invade Iraq, hoping to keep the U.S. focused on its military campaign in Afghanistan, which harbored the al-Qaeda terrorist network behind 9/11. But Powell eventually lent his considerable clout to the decision, delivering a lengthy speech to the United Nations in which he laid out U.S. claims that Saddam Hussein’s government had chemical and biological weapons and an active nuclear program.
No weapons were found, and the Iraq War cost billions of U.S. dollars and thousands of Iraqi and American lives.
“I’m the one who presented it to the world, and (it) will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It is painful now,” Powell said in a 2005 interview with ABC News.
Changing politics
Bush lamented Powell’s passing and praised his career.
“He was a great public servant, starting with his time as a soldier during Vietnam,” Bush said in a prepared statement on Monday. “He was such a favorite of presidents that he earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom – twice. He was highly respected at home and abroad. And most important, Colin was a family man and a friend.”
In 2008, Powell, who previously served in Republican administrations, endorsed Barack Obama for president ahead of his historic victory. Powell later became disenchanted with the Republican Party under former President Donald Trump.
In 2019, he argued the party needed to “get a grip” of itself and change course. He said last year he would vote for Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
Powell is survived by three children, two grandchildren and his wife, Alma.
Contributing: The Associated Press
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