Monday - April 15, 2002
George Bush and Back Bone
I spent many years in the United States Marine
Corps as an officer of Marines. I claim no special gift of leadership ability,
but I learned a lot in those years. The Marines, like all things they do, are
very good at leadership. In fact I would say that teaching leadership is their
greatest strength, they nourish a cult of leadership. Leadership is cultivated
with all the fervor of a religion, and the result is that Marine Corps units
have been known to sustain 70% casualties (Iwo Jima) and still remain effective
as one man after another steps up to take charge. (We hope that those casualty
rates aren't necessary to prove the benfits of this cult!)
Whenever you pick up a Marine Corps Gazette or
peruse any other forum where Marines communicate, you will quickly notice that
Marines are obsessed with what makes a man a leader. We have lists of leadership
traits, leadership fundamentals, and leadership concepts that sometimes are
memorized, and always debated. No two Marines agree on which are the most
important leadership traits. Some will claim honesty, some will claim integrity,
some will claim technical proficiency, and some will claim knowing your men in a
fatherly, or some will say brotherly, way is the most important. Like all
Marines, I have my own idea of what is most important. I say none of these are
the most critical. Leaders can be dishonest, ignorant, or even brutal and still
get people to follow them. The most important leadership trait is
consistency.
A leader must be many
things, and consistency obviously isn't important to an impromptu leader who
takes charge in a pinch. But once you become a leader the most important thing
you can do is be consistent. If the leader could do everything himself, he would
have no need of followers. The whole point of being a leader is to get people
working together on a common goal. They must be able to know what the goal is,
and they must know what happens if they don't understand the goal, or if they
incorrectly anticipate how to react to changes in the situation that require
adjustments.
Let's give an example. A
captain must know the rules about what the colonel wants. The sergeant must know
what the colonel wants. Knowing the rules isn't enough, they must know the
colonel's reaction to a situation. Knowing what is important to the colonel
instills confidence in these men that they are doing the right thing. If the
colonel doesn't care about something sometimes and then reacts strongly at other
times, then his followers will be confused, and unsure of their actions. People
will be unable to anticipate his desires and if this inconsistency is bad
enough, a climate of fear and even backstabbing will
result.
It matters little how good or
bad the leader's ideas are, if he is consistent, then people will be able to
anticipate his reaction to new situations. To take an abhorrent example, Adolf
Hitler was a strong leader. His people knew what he wanted and they gave it to
him. The individuals in his country were able to harness their own minds in a
united effort to implement his will. It could be said that Hitler's decline
coincided with his becoming arbitrary and with wildly diverging moods and
reactions. I don't mean that Hitler should be emulated in any way, but it is
instructive to learn from all strong leaders and understand how they were able
to lead. There is much more, obviously to his initial success and his ultimate
and well deserved destruction, but we can say that he was very consistent in all
of his policies during his rise to power and for much of the
war.
Let's look at a more successful,
and less evil, leader. Ronald Reagan, no matter whether you liked him or not,
was almost unparalleled in his consistency. He hated communism, and he hated big
government. You always knew this. He didn't always succeed in his goals, but you
knew where he stood on issues and people knew how he would react. Because of
this, his followers stayed with him no matter what
happened.
Even Bill Clinton can be said
to be an effective leader for the same reason. We knew what he stood for,
himself and his popularity. Anything that was not glorifying him was attacked
and lied about on a very consistent basis. His followers always knew what his
reaction would be: he was not always partisan, he would attack democrats as
viciously as he attacked republicans, he just always did anything necessary to
glorify himself in the short term. His followers are still extremely loyal to
him.
The whole point of this rant is to
point out why George W. Bush will be a failed president just like his father
was, and for exactly the same reasons. He has no consistency. It doesn't matter
how right or wrong his individual policies are so long as they remain
consistent. After the melting of New York's skyscrapers he became a very popular
leader because he issued a call for moral clarity regarding terrorism. He
pounded at this theme over and over and all of the people of this nation eagerly
fell into step. He has a historic opportunity to free the Muslim world from the
dark ages, yet he is abandoning his successful approach for the sake of the myth
that we "need" moderate Arab states'
support.
This is nonsense! The Arabic
world will follow us if we remain consistent. These primitive tribes
masquerading as nations haven't the courage to stand up to us, and only when we
question ourselves do they openly speak against us. We need to face them with
resolve and consistency. We must say very clearly that we will not support a
Palestinian dictator because he is a brutal thug and murderer of his own
people.
The same goes for the new
regimes controlling the vacant minds in the European nations, under color of a
European Union. Our occupation of Europe should end if we no longer enjoy their
support. This will free up vast military resources to fight our real threats,
China and the Arabic and Muslim
tribes.
Bush has a very enthusiastic
following for his policy of moral clarity. If he abandons it, he will lose his
following. If he sticks with it, even if he is unable to implement it, then his
followers will stick with him. Let's hope he gets the backbone that he seems to
be genetically deprived of.
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