KYOTO ¨C On Valentine¡¯s Day, Feb. 14, 2002, five months after the attacks of 9/11, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell took live questions for 90 minutes as part of an MTV global forum to 375 million viewers. It was a different world, not yet dominated by Facebook time lines, tweets or Instagram models.
The Music Television network known for Madonna¡¯s ¡°Justify My Love¡± had asked the Bush administration to justify its foreign policy to young people who were questioning America¡¯s role in the world. The war in Afghanistan was already underway, but the invasion of Iraq was a year away. The first question to Powell came from a young woman in London who asked how he felt about representing a country commonly perceived as ¡°the Satan of contemporary politics.¡±
At first bemused by the characterization, Powell rejected the characterization and said that values drove America¡¯s image in the world ¡ª democracy, economic freedom, individual rights. Quite the contrary to the Great Satan, the U.S. was the Great Protector.
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