Colin Powell: From Vietnam Doctrine to a Fateful UN Speech

Showing 4 Colin Powell videos from Charlie Kirk's video collection.

Colin Powell rose through the military ranks after serving in Vietnam via a New York City ROTC commission, a career historians describe as showing steady pragmatism rather than early standout promise, before Operation Desert Storm in 1991 made him a household name as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That war produced what became known as the Powell Doctrine, a preference for overwhelming decisive force intended to avoid repeating Vietnam's prolonged uncertainty, and NewsNation's Leland Vittert credits Powell's political sensitivity for holding together the international coalition behind that first Gulf War despite criticism that he operated as much like a political general as a military one. Roughly a decade later, Powell served as secretary of state under George W. Bush's post-9/11 administration alongside Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and delivered a widely cited 2003 United Nations speech arguing Saddam Hussein was concealing weapons of mass destruction, a case built on intelligence later confirmed to be faulty. This same NewsNation special separately catalogs American generals from George Washington through Powell as a study in the qualities, and costs, of consequential military leadership.