WASHINGTON - “It’s a great pleasure to be here today,” former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told a standing-room-only crowd at CUNA’s GAC. “But I have to be honest, at this point in my career, it’s a great pleasure to be anywhere.”
With that, a man who was formerly among the most powerful in the nation–if not the world–kicked off a rollicking session in which Powell made as much fun of himself as he did of some of the world leaders he worked with during his 50 years of public service.
Powell said one of the questions he is most frequently dogged with is what he does to fill his days–days that used to be jam packed with global crises–now that he is retired. He said he usually starts off by pointing out that he’s been retired before, in hope of putting off such questions, but people rarely accept that as his answer. He finally had to come up with a better answer.
“There is an emptiness that comes upon you,” Powell intoned. “And I asked myself, ‘How will I make up for this empty space inside of me, how will I fill this void?’ But friends, I figured out how to fill that void. I went out, and I bought a Corvette.”
When even that response doesn’t work, and people continue to press him on what it is he misses most about his high-powered career, he will finally admit that there is one thing he misses.
“I miss my airplane. I had my own 757,” Powell related. “I would start down the red carpet, and there would be a band playing, an honor guard and an adoring crowd. As I made my way up the steps of the plane, the right engine would start. Then when I made it to the top of the steps, the left engine would start…A steward would bring me a Diet Coke on a silver tray. And the steward would put the can down with a smart rap, and the plane would immediately start to move. It was cool... Then they gave my plane to (Condoleeza Rice), and I haven’t seen it since.”
Today, Powell said, he travels much like the rest of us. “The first time I traveled after I retired, I made three mistakes: I showed up late, I had no luggage and I paid cash,” he said, noting that the next thing he knew “a very a large dog is smelling me and a [TSA agent] is wanding away when he looks up at me and says, ‘How are you Gen. Powell?’ and I’m thinking, if you know who I am, why don’t you go over there and look for Osama Bin Laden?”
In one of the rare serious moments of his speech, Powell said that while he was one of the architects behind post-9/11 security, he would like to see the nation back off of this stance somewhat.
“We have slowed the visa system down, and we’re safer, but we’re paying too high a price,” he said, suggesting some of the security systems has created a “stand-offish image” of the U.S. “I want foreign students to come to our universities,” he said, noting that such students either stay in the U.S. or return home with the skills newly acquired at American Universities to help improve their countries–and potentially convey a positive image of the U.S. in their native lands. “They live here a while and see who we are, Not a Hollywood sitcom or a Michael Moore book,” Powell added.
Among his other stories and observations:
* The situation in Afghanistan is, in some ways, more dangerous than Iraq. “We cannot have 160,000 soldiers left behind to serve as policemen because they can’t get their act together,” he said, adding that regardless of who wins the presidency, the number of soldiers in Iraq will have to come down, because while the “troop surge” is working, the nation simply doesn’t have enough troops to sustain it.
* The U.S. shouldn’t fear a developing China because China has gone from having a nearly non-existent economy to the fourth largest economy in the world by “being our friend.” Asia, he said, is a largely stable part of the world and should remain that way so long as Taiwan doesn’t declare independence.
BONUS
Content
Subscribers can access more of Colin Powell’s wit and wisdom at www.cujournal.com and searching Colin Powell in the archive.
