Former Secretary of State Colin Powell dead at 84 from COVID-19 complications

[Valin]

The Washington Examiner

Virginia Aabram, Breaking News Reporter

October 18, 2021

Former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell has died at age 84 of COVID-19 complications.

Powell was fully vaccinated and being cared for at Walter Reed National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., at the time of his death on Monday morning. After decades of military experience, including tours in Vietnam, Powell served as secretary of state under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005 and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993.

According to an announcement on his Facebook page, "General Colin L. Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, passed away this morning due to complications from Covid 19. He was fully vaccinated."

"We want to thank the medical staff at Walter Reed National Medical Center for their caring treatment. We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American," the announcement added.

Powell was born in April 1937 and grew up in South Bronx, New York. He joined the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps while at City College of New York.

(Snip)

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2 quotes From Colin Powell

"There is nothing in American experience or in American political life or in our culture that suggests we want to use hard power. But what we have found over the decades is that unless you do have hard power a ”and here I think you're referring to military power” then sometimes you are faced with situations that you can't deal with.

I mean, it was not soft power that freed Europe. It was hard power. And what followed immediately after hard power? Did the United States ask for dominion over a single nation in Europe? No. Soft power came in the Marshall Plan. Soft power came with American GIs who put their weapons down once the war was over and helped all those nations rebuild. We did the same thing in Japan.

So our record of living our values and letting our values be an inspiration to others I think is clear. And I don't think I have anything to be ashamed of or apologize for with respect to what America has done for the world.

We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we've done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home to seek our own, you know, to seek our own lives in peace, to live our own lives in peace. But there comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works."

________________________________________________________________

"Far from being the Great Satan, I would say that we are the Great Protector. We have sent men and women from the armed forces of the United States to other parts of the world throughout the past century to put down oppression. We defeated Fascism. We defeated Communism. We saved Europe in World War I and World War II. We were willing to do it, glad to do it. We went to Korea. We went to Vietnam. All in the interest of preserving the rights of people.
And when all those conflicts were over, what did we do? Did we stay and conquer? Did we say, "Okay, we defeated Germany. Now Germany belongs to us? We defeated Japan, so Japan belongs to us"? No. What did we do? We built them up. We gave them democratic systems which they have embraced totally to their soul. And did we ask for any land? No, the only land we ever asked for was enough land to bury our dead. And that is the kind of nation we are."

 

[Geee]

10 minutes ago, Valin said:

Powell was fully vaccinated

[Valin]

@Geee

 

And he was Eighty Four As I have pointed out many times before. There are 2 groups of people who die from/with Covid. 1. People older than I (73). 2. People with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. Colin May have been in good health, but at Eighty Four Good Health is a relative term.

I haven't looked at TOS, but I can imagine the comments.

[SDwaters]

One of my favorite Powell quotes was in an interview (60 Minutes I believe):

The interviewer recapped that even though Powell was a "C" level student, he'd managed to ascend to the top of the U.S. Military.  What did Powell have to say about it?

"Is this a great country, or what?"

Always liked him, although in later years I lost a fair amount of the respect I had for him when I was on active duty.

RIP.

[Valin]

2 minutes ago, SDwaters said:

One of my favorite Powell quotes was in an interview (60 Minutes I believe):

The interviewer recapped that even though Powell was a "C" level student, he'd managed to ascend to the top of the U.S. Military.  What did Powell have to say about it?

"Is this a great country, or what?"

Always liked him, although in later years I lost a fair amount of the respect I had for him when I was on active duty.

RIP.

Something I read many years ago "C students run the world."

Many will only remember the Never Trump Powell. Although I'd wager some of them wanted him to be President at one time.