I wrote to Colin Powell (then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) for a middle school journalism assignment. The 1991 US-Iraq war was about to escalate, and I was thrilled to experience it from my protective suburban American bubble. Big stories require big sources, so I aimed high and unexpectedly succeeded.
“I have no good feelings about war,” he wrote. “It’s unpredictable, brutish, deadly, and diverts resources that could be used for other things. But that said, there are some things that can only be resolved by war.”
It’s difficult to imagine him retaining those feelings in 2003, when, as Secretary of State, he presented the case to return to Iraq under flimsy pretenses—a war that ultimately wasted vast amounts of money and lives and created more problems than the fruitless one it intended to resolve.
Despite my disappointment in his leadership, I remain eternally grateful that someone so instrumental in managing global affairs had taken the time to reply to an inquisitive kid. If anything, General Powell taught me to distrust calls for war, even when they come from a seemingly reluctant warrior.
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