Colin Powell's Endorsement

This morning on Meet the Press, General Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama as his candidate of choice in the upcoming presidential electons. Take a look at this video. If you remember, General Colin Powell, along with General Norman Schwarzkopf, led the Gulf War in 1990-91. Powell then became Secretary of State under George W. Bush in 2000 but quit at the end of that first presidential term because, it is said, he had very serious disagreements with others in the Bush administration over going into Iraq without first checking into the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

What I especially like about his statement in this video is that he not only makes a very reasoned argument for exactly why he is choosing Obama over McCain, but because he also speaks about the Republican Party's negative campaigning:

"I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the Party say... such things as 'Well, you know that Mr Obama is a Muslim'. Well the correct answer is, 'He's not a Muslim, he's a Christian, he's always been a Christian'. But the really right answer is, 'What if he is?' Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is 'No', that's not America."

In the last couple of months, I've wished that Obama would come out and say this and have been disappointed that he hadn't. I do understand that the American electorate is such that using the campaigning period to 'teach' about Muslims or even about African-Americans (or, as I've discovered, about our lowered standing in the international eye) is not going to win votes. I hope that if and when he is elected president, he will make up for it.