Stardate 20021214.1614

(On Screen): Colin Powell made a statement that the Palestinians needed new leaders. Arafat responds by saying that the Palestinians should choose their own leaders.

On the face of it, those two statements don't contradict one another. After all, what is wrong with the Palestinians themselves choosing new leaders?

But what's going on here is that each guy is using coded statements that mean something other than they appear. Powell says "The Palestinians need new leaders." (Real meaning: Arafat must go; we won't deal with the Palestinians as long as Arafat and his thieving cronies are still in power.) Arafat says "The Palestinians will pick their own leaders." (Real meaning: I ain't going nowhere.)

Powell's statement shows that Bush's decision a few months ago to stop dealing with Arafat is still in force, which is good. Within the more global scenario, it also means that the US isn't going to let the Palestinian situation distract it from the larger issues of the war, which is even better.

It's been interesting how Powell's image outside the country as "the reasonable one, the one we can work with" has turned out to be useful when delivering messages like this. When someone like Rumsfeld says this kind of thing, many in the world will dismiss it immediately. Even when Bush himself does, they can try to brush it aside. But when the reasonable one says something others in the world really don't like, it's really pretty deflating, and I sometimes wonder whether the buildup of Powell as the constantly-dissenting voice in the White House isn't deliberate so that he can be used this way, once in a while, to truly hammer a point home.

Powell is still an enigma to me. I keep changing my mind about him. For a while I felt as if he'd sold his soul to the Europeans and should be replaced, but what I'm coming to believe is that he sees himself as an advocate, sort of like lawyers in a trial. Within the administration, his job is to try to make the best case he can for the idea of trying to use diplomacy in each and every situation. But he's also a team player, and when his boss makes a decision, Powell will follow it, and even in cases where diplomacy is not clearly the right answer Powell will try to make a case that it is, primarily so that his boss (the President) is presented with as many reasonable alternatives as possible amongst which to choose. Ultimately the President isn't capable of holding the entire problem inside his head; he has to rely on his subordinates to present alternatives. Powell's job is to present diplomatic alternatives, and sometimes he prevails and sometimes he doesn't.

But whether he does or does not, he doesn't take it personally because he understands that his job is helping the President to make reasonable decisions.

That's what it seems now to me is going on, which is why when Bush seems not to have made up his mind about something, Powell is gung-ho for diplomacy, but after Bush makes a decision Powell seems to fully go along with it.

If, indeed, that is what Powell is doing then I think he's just about exactly what we need, and doing a very fine job.

But my mind might change again in another month or so...