--- title: Colin Powell and the Power of Owning Your Mistakes description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/6107901/colin-powell-legacy/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2021-10-18T19:02:20.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-14T09:15:44.582Z article:section: Politics og:title: Colin Powell and the Power of Owning Your Mistakes og:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. 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Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. Senior correspondent Philip Elliott brings sharp context to the issues driving the capital, connecting the decisions made in Washington to the institutions, industries and people they affect. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=c5453368-d301-4bfd-b8fa-8b32f52db8c0&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: May 2012 - 10 Questions for Colin Powell [Watch (HLS stream): May 2012 - 10 Questions for Colin Powell](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/lhTwCBTd.m3u8) (6:12)  _Published 2012-05-22. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell talks about the Iraq war, why longer terms in Congress aren't better, and the time he almost ran for president_  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Oct 18, 2021 7:02 PM UTC Former Secretary of State Colin Powell talks about the Iraq war, why longer terms in Congress aren't better, and the time he almost ran for president  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Oct 18, 2021 7:02 PM UTC _This article is part of the The DC Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up_ [_here_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/newsletter%5Fopt-in?qs=3a19a0aa35903a2d9f214b74f69a37910b58de73cf3f2b89adc123fac024f0478c72f91010ae9d01f08f46c616068cab3e74726837cd2cce70dac3796e46c2b4) _to get stories like this sent to your inbox every weekday._ There are plenty of reasons people here in D.C. roll their eyes when someone mentions Aaron Sorkin. The screenwriter and playwright sent a generation of operatives to Washington who believed witty hallway banter was a substitute for reading the footnotes of a whitepaper, who obsessed over clever tactics instead of baseline principles. Sorkin’s versions of Washington, as seen in _A Few Good Men_, _The American President_ and _The West Wing,_ reduced this company town to a dichotomy of absolute good versus unquestioned evil, morality against depravity and truth against hypocrisy. Without even involving his consistently problematic treatment of female characters, Sorkin corrupted America’s understanding of Washington more than can be quantified in this lifetime. But—and there always is a _but_—Sorkin nailed one essential truth about how this town considers influence Late in its run, _The West Wing_ landed a truism about how D.C. measures power. “You think I’m not aware that I’m living the first line of my obituary right now?” asked fictionalized White House chief of staff C.J. Cregg at a late-night dinner near the White House. In that, Sorkin nailed a Washington reality: legacy is defined by the last high-profile line on a C.V., or, more often, one monumental error. Which brings me to the death of Colin Powell, a legend whose legacy spanned the globe for decades. He broke barriers, made and shaped history and reset the rules for how American military force was—or should be—deployed in the post-Vietnam era. He was, until the election of Barack Obama, the highest-ranking Black individual ever to serve in government, fourth in line to the Presidency as Secretary of State. The four-star Army General also was the first Black man to serve as National Security Adviser, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and as State Department chief. He completed the national security trifecta: top adviser, general and diplomat. To read the coverage today, it’s easy to see Powell as a tragic figure who used his sterling reputation to mislead the world into a war with Iraq. The Washington Post’s homepage called Powell the “first Black secretary of state who struggled with Iraq invasion.” The New York Times’ secondary headline noted he “helped pave the way for the war in Iraq.” The _Associated Press_ [headline](https://apnews.com/article/colin-powell-dead-covid-9c918dc1c137ebf368f2cbb461e4fad4) described him as an “exemplary general stained by Iraq claims.”  President George Bush announcing re-appointment of his Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, 1991. Diana Walker—Getty Images Yes, Iraq was always going to be the first line of Powell’s obituary. Powell lent his reputation to building the case for war based on what is now clearly seen as bad information. He later lamented that he was only given a week to go over the intelligence behind the Bush Administration’s decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power and conceded his presentation to the United Nations arguing for that outcome would become a “blot” on his career. “I’m the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world,” Powell told Barbara Walters two years later, acknowledging that his 76-minute presentation “will always be a part of my record.” But Powell was more than that blunder that led to thousands of dead Americans and Iraqis and a stained U.S. legacy as a world leader. He was a fierce advocate for opportunity for immigrants and a steadfast defender of dignity, both here and abroad. His experiences as a first-generation son of Jamaican immigrants who fought in the fields of Vietnam and the corridors of Washington shaped him and his country. In the wake of the Vietnam disaster, he developed a doctrine for the use of American force: deploy it overwhelmingly, but only when all other options are exhausted, when there is a clearly defined win and when the public has the troops’ backs. He never pretended the military was above political pressures. “Anybody who becomes a senior officer had better have some political instincts or you’re going to get ground up,” he told The New York Times in 2007\. “We are a political nation. It is not a dirty word.” Throughout his career, he had a front-row seat to politics and to history, including a stint as the top uniformed aide to future-National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci and Defense Secretary Cap Weinberger. In the meltdown of Iran-Contra, Ronald Reagan recruited Powell to the White House as a deputy national security adviser, and a year later promoted him to the corner suite in the West Wing. Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, promoted Powell to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a position he held during the last days of the Cold War, the successful Gulf War and the botched early days of Somalia that lay [blame](https://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/01/world/study-faults-powell-aides-on-somalia.html) in Powell’s orbit. His was the advice that kept Bill Clinton from unleashing hellfire on Iraq after its intelligence service had tried to assassinate Bush 41 during a visit to Kuwait. After Powell’s subsequent early resignation in 1993, he flirted with a run for the White House himself. By then a celebrity general, he drew huge crowds to best-selling book’s [signings](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,983438,00.html), landed himself marathon television interviews with the media giants of the day and seemed poised to challenge his one-time boss, Bill Clinton. He was a modern-day [Ike](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,981557,00.html), such a threat to Clinton’s second term that some White House advisers considered bringing back into the fold as Secretary of State.  President George W. Bush meets with Chief of Staff Andy Card, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in the Oval Office, 2001. Eric Draper—White House/Getty Images But most of his family was dead set against a [possible run](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,983437-1,00.html). His wife, Alma, had mused publicly and without an ounce of irony what it would be like to watch her husband gunned down. During one private meeting, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich visited Powell’s home and warned him of the potential personal costs of running, a sentiment echoed during other meetings of Powell’s brain trust. The consideration overlapped with the racially charged O.J. Simpson trial, and days before Powell made his official declaration as a non-candidate, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, a reminder that no political leader can ever be entirely safe. Powell never led the nation, but he did become a unique figure in American life. In his first go at retirement, he introduced _Saving Private Ryan_ at the Oscars. He broke with his Republican Party to speak in favor of affirmative action and further split with the GOP when he endorsed Barack [Obama](https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/18/politics/barack-obama-colin-powell-2008/index.html), Hillary [Clinton](https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/25/politics/colin-powell-hillary-clinton-endorsement/index.html) and Joe [Biden](https://www.npr.org/2020/06/07/871636604/colin-powell-says-hes-voting-for-biden) for the White House. He was tireless in speaking up for what he saw as America’s moral footing, even in acknowledging his own errors in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In the 20 years since 9/11, it sometimes seemed as though Powell was living a maxim made infamous when he uttered it during an extended 2002 briefing to Bush on Iraq: “You break it, you’re going to own it.” Well, Powell did damage his reputation—to some, irreparably. But he owned his grave error, and to even his harshest critics, the dignity of that stood in contrast to the petty politics of the moment. It set him apart from the run-of-the-mill politicians who are cut from the same cloth of self-preservation. Powell never ran for office, and that perhaps allowed him to never need to bend in unnatural ways. A few weeks ago, on the eve of the Sept. 11 attacks’ 20th anniversary, Powell returned to the Kennedy Center to introduce an evening of music and memorial. He didn’t cover any new ground—in fact, he read the remarks he gave on that day before rushing home from a summit in Peru—but the crowd was transfixed by his cameo. Even in Washington, where one wrong step forever can render someone like Powell a pariah, there was an acceptance that legacies are complicated and seldom can be genuinely reduced to one decision in a chain of history. And in that, D.C—like Sorkin—finally got one thing right. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the daily D.C. Brief newsletter._](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/politics?source=dc%5Farticle) ## Transcript I'm Belinda Laska I'm an editor at large at Time Magazine. I'm sitting here with a four star general who is also a former National Security advisor, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Former secretary of state, former teamster. The author of several books, including a new one on leadership called It Worked for Me. And one of the biggest fans in the world of the movie, The Hustler. General Powell, thanks for being here. Thank you very much, Belinda. Now, you say in this book on leadership that the two months that you spent mulling around for the, arguably the chief leadership position in the world, leader of the so- called free world. Was the most difficult two months of your life. Yeah. Why is that. It was the most difficult because, one, I never had had any political aspirations, I'm a career soldier. I never really belonged to a political party. I had views about things, but I never spoke about them. But then I leave the army, and suddenly my book comes out. And there's this enormous interest in my running for office. And so I had to think about it. And it was something of a guilt trip that I felt on top of me. People said, you have to do this. And I felt obliged. A soldier always wants to do what he's supposed to do. But then it became very clear because it was not a single morning that I woke up. Or I put my feet on the floor and said this is right for me, this is what I wanna do. I didn't want to do it. Then you went on to, in that, during that campaign to endorse President Obama. Do you think you might endorse him again this time? I don't know, we'll see. What I've always tried to do is look at the candidate of both parties. But also to see what those candidates represent. Cuz you're not only electing a person, you're electing a movement, you're electing a platform, you're electing a Vice President. And so, I always like to take my time and examine all parts of the political equation, and that's what I'll do this year. One of things you talk about in your book is how you think members of Congress stay on a little longer than they should. Well you know we need congressional experience. We need people who know how the system runs but it seems to me that it really is not necessary to stay there for an entire career. This really wasn't what the founding fathers had in mind. For you to stay there for your entire life and I think it's like we do in the army. Move on and let some new people come in and they come up and make the way clear. Anybody you'd like to extend a personal invitation to leave? From Congress, I'm saying. I don't have all of my stationary with me so I don't [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] A lot of the leadership lessons you draw obviously are from the military. I wonder what you think about the sort of spate of military scandals we've had in the last couple of months. The sex scandal in Columbia. Recently, there were soldiers posing with remains. Is this a failure of leadership, or is there something else going on? You have to remember that the armed forces are very large. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of young men and women. But most of them are very disciplined, very well behaved. And if there was a leader in the situation who saw this happening and tolerated it. That is a failure of leadership and senior leadership should do something about it. But all of those things are being investigated. We don't, we don't look past them. There's a chapter in your book, chapter 35 where you say that the date February the 5th, 2003 is burned on your brain as much as your birthday. So, do you feel, even though it is not your personal responsibility. Do you feel, guilt, over the, over the war, over the lives that were lost in this fruitless search for weapons for weapons of mass destruction? I feel bad about any loss of life on either side of a conflict. But it was a case where, the intelligence information we're getting, made it quite clear at the time, we thought. And the CIA stuck with that assessment long after we didn't find anything. They still believe that their judgments at the time were correct. And since we based our case on those judgments, And what we were hearing from others. Then the President made the decision, and I think at the time it was a justified decision based on what we knew. How the war was fought and whether it was fought correctly is another issue entirely. You say that you were in Peru on 9 / 11. And you were in Asia when some of the key decisions were made... Mm hm. About CIA black sites. Do you think you would have, things would have been different had you been in, Amer, America on 9 / 11. Or when some of those... It wouldn't have been any different on 9 / 11. I just wish that, you know? [ INAUDIBLE ] it didn't take me eight hours to... Get back? More than eight hours, about 12 hours, when you figured [ INAUDIBLE ] getting the plane ready. What about [ INAUDIBLE ]? There were some things that took place with respect to interrogation policies and, and detention policies that didn't get full discussion. And maybe would have had that full discussion had I been here and could have Pushed it or participated in it. In chapter 16 you talk a lot about how you revolutionized the State Department in regard to the Internet. Mm- hm. Looking back now on the Internet Age with Wikileaks, Anonymous, and the speed. Just the speed at which you have to make decisions now. Is it a net positive to have the internet at your disposal? In terms of There's no choice. It sometimes is very, very positive and sometimes very, very negative. But if you're going to live in the twenty- first century world, it's gonna keep up with our kids. And you're gonna keep up with the way the world is moving What I told my state department friends. We have to move to a transactional world. We've gotta have all the information available to us. We don't make widgets. We don't have an assembly line. What we work on here in the state department is information. And our information system, I kept emphasizing, we should try to make it as good as Google or Wiki. And finally, do you ever use Sir Colin? Only in the United Kingdom. Get yourself a table at. It wouldn't be considered appropriate here, and my British friends would not consider it appropriate for me to use it here. It's honorific. Sir Colin, thank you so much for being here. Thank you my dear. [ LAUGH ] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6107901/colin-powell-legacy/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6107901/colin-powell-legacy/"},"headline":"Colin Powell and the Transformative Power of Owning Your Mistakes","datePublished":"2021-10-18T19:02:20.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-14T09:15:44.582Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/6107901/colin-powell-legacy/","keywords":["The D.C. 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