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By Ben Wear
Retired Gen. Colin Powell grasped a University of Texas audience Wednesday night and for more than an hour held them with an autobiographical plea for an American family of givers and achievers. A campus group critical of military actions supervised by Powell in the 1991 Gulf War confined its protest to the front patio of Bass Concert Hall, and a spirited but civil exchange between Powell and a doctoral student occurred at an earlier gathering elsewhere on the UT campus. About 30 to 40 protesters held signs and chanted outside Bass. But concerns that they might take their demonstration inside and disrupt the speech -- fears that led to the cancellation of a Henry Kissinger speech earlier this year -- turned out to be unfounded, and Powell spoke without interruption. The 35-year soldier did drop one bomb while on campus, announcing during his Bass speech that he will donate his $70,000 speaker's fee to America's Promise, the 3-year-old organization dedicated to volunteerism that Powell chairs. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents Bush and, for a short time, Clinton, came to campus at the invitation of the Student Endowed Centennial Lectureship, a student group funded by voluntary fees and matching money from the university. Powell's hefty honorarium had generated a degree of tut-tutting, given his advertised topic of volunteerism. Powell's remarks, often funny and sometimes moving, ultimately were indeed about redirecting the energy of America's youth into helping those in need. But Powell, 63, befitting someone who has made a living on the speaker's circuit since his 1993 retirement, took a circuitous and entertaining path to that conclusion. Powell began at the end, with his retirement at age 56 and his own search for meaningful work after he turned his back on an intense Powell-for-President draft movement in 1995. He found that purpose, Powell said, in his past as a youth who could could have gone off track but for his community and, later, the military. "I was at-risk," Powell said. "I was a black kid living in a country that considered me a 10th-class citizen." But his South Bronx neighborhood, with artificial "aunts" in every tenement building keeping stern if irritating watch, good schools and caring parents kept him straight, he said. "Those women hung out the windows all day long to catch me doing something wrong," Powell said to a huge laugh. "They never went to the bathroom." Then, he found meaning in the Army, spending decades as an officer training young men and women to prepare to defeat the nation's enemies in Moscow, Beijing and their satellites. But that mission and those enemies disappeared with the fall of the Berlin Wall, a point in history Powell illustrated with a story about sitting across a negotiating table from Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and realizing that the man was unilaterally ending the Cold War. Young people today who are fortunate to have support systems, Powell said, must take on a new mission of volunteer work at home. "A real job in life comes from giving to people," he said. "What's important is that you live lives of quality." Powell also talked about the Gulf War, veering into edgy territory by joking about watching the war begin on CNN. He found himself daydreaming about bombing the hotel where American reporters were broadcasting events in real time to the world, Powell said. "That was a joke, that was a joke," he said over the laughter. "I don't want any more protesters." Powell's tone was more somber earlier, when he spoke briefly to a small audience at Rainey Hall on campus. That group of 250 or so, picked by raffle, included at least two students who in the question-and-answer session brought up an independent group's conclusion shortly after the Gulf War that Powell and other American leaders were "war criminals" for actions taken in the conflict. The allegations, Powell said after doctoral student Marika Ripke asked him about them, came from an unofficial tribunal. No sanctioned international body has ever accused the United States of violating international law during the clash with Iraq. War leaders took pains to avoid civilian casualties, he said, and stopped the ground war within hours when it became clear that bombing the fleeing Republican Guard was "a turkey shoot." "We didn't ask for the war. The war was brought upon us," Powell said during an exchange with Ripke. "I looked at every target. I looked at every photo. We did everything we could to avoid attacking anything not crucial to the war effort." Referring to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, he said: "As long as there are people like him, we have to have people like me to defend the right of people like you to state your views." You may contact Ben Wear at bwear@statesman.com or 445-3627. |
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