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{Good evening.}
Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has died at the age of 84.
He's credited with shaping America's foreign policy in the last years of the 20th century, and blazing a trail in the America Dream journey as the first Black U.S. Secretary of State, which won him international acclaim and trust.
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"Colin Powell" - the person who served America with this name, was synonymous with a patriot and statesman.
A child of working-class Jamaican immigrants in the Bronx, Colin Powell wasn't just a member of the populace. His trailblazing journey in the American government began when he rose from being a neighbourhood store clerk and a warehouse floor-mopper to the highest echelons of the U.S. government.
Powell served two tours in Vietnam and rose through the ranks with a number of stints before President Ronald Reagan tapped him as his national security adviser.
Subsequent to becoming the youngest and first African American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the George H.W. Bush administration, he was the first Black U.S. Secretary of State under the George W. Bush administration during the September 11 attacks and the Iraq War. Having been sworn in as Bush's Secretary of State in 2001, he ended up becoming the highest-ranking Black public official to date in the country.
It was in the mid-90s when his popularity nationwide soared inexorably, thanks to the U.S.-led coalition victory during the Gulf War. He was so adept and adroit at dealing with formidable obstacles, he, at that time, was widely considered a leading contender to become the first Black President of the United States.
He was also the first to deliver a philippic against Osama Bin Laden, who was notorious for orchestrating the 9/11 attacks. In addition, he threw his weight behind avenging the 9/11 attacks, saying his support was non-negotiable.
Nevertheless, the finitude of pleasing things constituted a blot on his character back in 2003, when the Iraq War took a turn for the worse and became a bloodshed. Making the case for war against Iraq before the United Nations as America's then-Secretary of State, Powell hadn't a clue as to whether the Iraq War would culminate in a bloodshed.
And so it was. When it turned out that the rationale behind starting the war was based on erroneous evidence, it was already too late. The Iraqi invasion culminated in the deaths of approximately 11,000 to 15,000 Iraqis, including more than 3,000 civilian non-combatants.
On the heels of the Iraq War: A protracted U.S. military occupation of the country that many believe resulted in a boarder destabilisation of the Middle East that persists to this day.
A result many described as an inevitable corollary.
Be that as it may, his reputation wasn't permanently destroyed. After leaving the U.S. government, he became an elder statesman on the global stage, also the founder of an organisation with a view to helping young and disadvantaged Americans.
Meantime, having been ill-disposed towards the Republicans' rightward lurch, Powell ended up endorsing the last three Democratic Presidential candidates in the 21st century.
He's not deemed an unaccomplished diplomat though. Not only did he oversee the resolution of the Bush administration's first foreign policy crisis, he also deprecated his success in resolving a spat with Moscow over a Russian ban on U.S. chicken imports, as well as that in an armed dispute between Morocco and Spain over a small Mediterranean island.
Suffice it to say, Powell will be associated with that aforesaid 2003 speech and the bloodshed in the Iraq War that followed.
President Biden hailed him as a patriot and called him a dear friend.
Biden: He's not only a dear friend and a patriot, one of our great military leaders, and a man of overwhelming decency. And he rose to the highest ranks not only in the military, but also in areas of foreign policy and statecraft.
After all, with Powell's demise on Monday at the age of 84 of COVID-19 complications, despite having been inoculated, he will assuredly be credited with his contribution to the American society, and go down in history as an historic figure, as well as a trailblazer in the American Dream journey.
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