General Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, has spent 35 years in the US military, but seemed to relish his civilian standing yesterday during a speech to over 2,500 in the Gantcher Center. Powell was this year's featured speaker in the Issam Fares Lecture Series , a forum "intended to bring top decision-makers... to focus their expertise and attention on the problems of the Middle East," but the architect of Desert Storm dedicated most of his address to domestic concerns and a personal retrospective of the Cold War.
Powell began his lecture informally, thanking the audience for its "warm Tufts welcome." He then turned to President John DiBiaggio and launched into a lighthearted attack criticizing his introduction.
"I was in the military for 35 years. I got more than the four medals he mentioned," he said jokingly. "He runs off like I'm some visiting academic."
But there were serious moments, most coming after pointed questions relating to the US alliance with Israel. The first question came from outside the Tufts community, as a member of Veterans for Peace accused Israel of producing nuclear weapons and using them "as a shield to advance into Palestinian territory." Powell disagreed.
"Israel has been a proud ally of the United States since its inception in 1948," he answered. "[It] will always use its strength to defend itself and its interests," he said, adding that Israel never acknowledged having nuclear weapons. "That is speculative."
In his prepared remarks, which he recited by memory, Powell provided a history of his involvement in the Cold War.
"For most of my career, we were terrified that some conflict would spark in the Middle East," Powell said. Powell spent 28 years fighting to "contain the Evil Empire," and he saw firsthand the conclusion of US policy of containment.
In 1987, Powell said, he and then-Secretary of State George Shultz visited Mikhail Gorbachev, then Russian president, and were greeted with an astonishing pronouncement. "Mr. Secretary," Gorbachev told Shultz, "I'm ending the Cold War." Although yesterday Powell was characteristically affable, speaking animatedly and without notes, the general said he met Gorbachev's stare without a smile. After a pause, Russia's president understood Powell's trepidation. "General, you will have to find a new enemy." Four years later, the USSR dissolved.
In the crowd, however, Powell did find a handful of adversaries. Late in the address, a section of attendees interrupted the speaker with protest shouts condemning US sanctions against Iraq. Chants of "Generals can't bring peace," drowned out the lecture and forced Powell to stop mid-sentence.
"Colin Powell's activities in the Middle East have been killing people, and that needs to be brought to light," said Roger Winn, a sophomore who led the chants.
"I think Desert Storm was a noble cause," Powell said, blaming Iraq's president Sadaam Hussein for the misery of the Iraqi people. But he tried to quiet the hecklers and told them, "I respect [your] right to protest."
The issue of Iraqi sanctions resurfaced during the question-answer period, which was dominated by Middle-East specific inquiries. Senior Douglass Hanson cited a UNICEF statistic that blames the sanctions for half a million post-war Iraqi deaths and called the US policy "genocidal."
Here again, Powell pointed to Hussein's continued tyranny as justification for the sanctions. "The solution is very, very clear, and very, very simple," he said. Hussein is producing "weapons that will put millions of children at risk. The fundamental problem exists in Baghdad."
Rania Jamal interned for the Campaign for the Iraqi People (CIP) last summer and made a sign to protest Powell. "The sanctions that Colin Powell supports are killing hundreds of thousands of people," she said. Jamal is Syrian, but has family in Iraq. The CIP encouraged Tufts students to demonstrate their anti-sanctions sentiments, but was not responsible for the shouting outburst.
"We just want to make sure that, if Powell is going to be introduced as some kind of hero from the Gulf War, that the audience can see that there is a marked difference in opinion that says his policies are responsible for causing this huge humanitarian catastrophe today ? and it's certainly nothing to celebrate," said Wells Wilkinson, the executive director of the Boston Mobilization for Survival, the umbrella organization that employed Rania.
Senior Arwa Abulhasan, a Kuwaiti, thanked Powell for liberating her homeland but asked why the US did not extend the war in order to depose Hussein. Hers is a common criticism of then-President George Bush, and his military staff. "If Desert Storm had been extended a little while longer, we would have killed more Iraqi youngsters, after we knew we had accomplished our objective," Powell said.
That objective, to remove Iraqi forces from neighboring Kuwait, was supported by the US Congress, the United Nations, and a fragile international coalition. But, Powell did seem frustrated that Hussein survived the conflict, and called him an annoyance, an anachronism, and a "poor despotic ruler... who will soon pass from the scene."
Powell avoided discussion of specific Middle East policy as well as partisan political talk. Gary Crone, a Desert Storm veteran who said he last saw Powell "in the sand," accused Governor George W. Bush of "going AWOL" during Vietnam and squandering his expensive air force training. Powell defended his political ally. "My confidence in the governor reflects the fact that he is a man of honor," he said in an echo of Bush's denials of the charges.
He referred to the vice president as "Mr. Gore," and joked that he had grown up in a log cabin in New York City, "right next to the log cabin that Gore was raised in." But other than those instances, the possible future Republican secretary of defense or state focused on universally popular themes, such as supporting children through America's Promise, his non-profit organization.
Tufts trustee Isaam Fares, the deputy prime minister of Lebanon, sponsors the annual lecture series. Prior to Powell's speech, DiBiaggio and Chairman of the Board of Trustees Nathan Gantcher awarded Fares an honorary doctorate of International Public Affairs. "I shall cherish this honor throughout my life," Fares said in his thickly-accented English.
Fares reflected on the most recent Middle East conflagration, and called for an end to fighting. "Peace may be slipping into a state of violence and war," Fares said. In an allusion to the Israeli military, he called on America to "further the cause of peace and the foundation of justice."
In these situations, he said, "the strong is tempted to dictate, and the weak is tempted to act violently."
