Remembering the Colin Powell Satire in “Mars Attacks!”

It’s a cruel satire. But it may be how he’s remembered.

Colin Powell, the nation’s first Black Secretary of State, died Monday morning, at the age of 84. His death, because it came in part from Covid-19 complications even though he was fully vaccinated (but of course had suffered from many health problems, from multiple myeloma to being 84 years old), led to the usual sort of bad-faith political debates we’ve all gritted our teeth through for more than a year now. But of course anyone alive during the Iraq War, and the run-up to it, will think of Gen. Powell as far more connected to his unfortunately credulous acceptance of the “weapons of mass destruction” rationale that led to that disaster of a war. So respected was Gen. Powell then that the nation trusted him implicitly: If he said it was worth going to war for, then well, we guess it was then.

Gen. Powell could have stopped the war. But he didn’t.

And he confessed that it haunted him the rest of his life.