The former US secretary of state, Colin Luther Powell, who recently passed away from COVID-19 complications at the age of 84, was one of the main architects of the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq that destroyed an entire sovereign state and killed tens of thousands of innocent people.What does it really mean for a man to be born in the South Bronx to immigrant parents and grow up to become a joint chief of staff chairman of an imperial army and then the first Black secretary of state of the same empire – and yet end up terrorising humanity with the power of the military might he commanded? “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36).The news of Powell’s passing invoked different thoughts in different people. Americans are no longer, if they ever were, the sole narrators of their imperial adventurism. The legacy of any politician, particularly at the highest levels of power, who passes is measured by the global consequences of the power they commanded while alive. There are terrorising consequences to the wanton cruelty exercised by the military machinery of an empire. Powell cut a gentle and kind figure but wielded a military might that has been the terror of this earth.
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