It is a seemingly simple question, “What makes a good leader?” It is a question that, in a vacuum, can have a nearly endless supply of answers. What escapes us many times is that it is the circumstances that we find ourselves often dictate the actions our leaders take. The truly great ones are able to understand the dynamic time in which they live and make their decisions accordingly.

While we may learn from the policies that past leaders ultimately implemented, we sell ourselves and these great men short by not understanding the thought process that was involved when these decisions were made. Superimposing a strategy that was successful from the past and simply implementing it without a thought to the changes in global dynamics of our modern age is not only lazy, its bad policy.

When George Washington assumed the Presidency, he understood that the United States was a weak power, in a world of the strong. Therefore an isolationist policy that allowed trade to everyone, but military ties to no one; was the best available option to navigate the dangerous times of a Democracy in its infancy. While the minutemen may have been victorious against the might of the English Empire once, due to the help of all people the French, Washington was aware that to tempt fate again would not be wise.

We see this strategy, without its recognition of the changing dynamic that is the international community, superimposed after World War I. The United States decided to turn in on itself without the acknowledgment that it had become one of, if not the dominate, powers on the international scene. This after implementing a peace agreement that would only serve to antagonize a Germany that had aspirations of regional hegemony, and leaving those unable to enforce such an agreement in charge. For if the combined efforts of the French and British could not stop German aggression during the war, what made US officials believe they could win the peace? This inability for the leadership of the United States to make their constituents realize these dangers, or even more damning, to recognizing themselves is what lead to the second World War.

So the incompetence of not being able to hold public opinion appears to again lead to a lazy policy approach. Preventing terrorist attacks is hard, tracking the number of splinting groups from a violent ideology is hard, while it is much easier to start rattling off names of those enemies we are familiar with. *cough* Iraq *cough* Easier still is to evoke a strategy from a supposed prophet of wisdom *cough* Reagan *cough* by calling for measures to be taken against “Evil Empires, or Axis of Evil”.

This without understanding the fundamental reasoning behind such a strategy. That those who believe they will eventually win, and have something to lose, are in fact deterable enemies. Men who are willing to sacrifice themselves in the name of their God, because of faith and the knowledge that this life has nothing better to offer them, are not deterable. Therefore to challenge them to a do or die scenario means if fact nothing to them, that our own drive to attack them turns the deaths of innocent bystanders into sanitized terms like, “collateral damage”.

Such actions merely give sympathy to the majority of the Muslim World that do not advocate terrorist activities but remain silent because they are glad to see a United States they see as corrupt with power taken down a notch.

It is a simple truth, that only after you understand your enemy, can you then kill him. A cold war policy that maintained our, “moral superiority” was the vast lengths the United States went to make sure that it was not the aggressor. Willing to accept the first strike, though would reciprocate without mercy, was the functional policy from which Reagan expanded upon. Though the defense budget has increased many fold, as well as a new government agency, the knowledge of root cause to the creation of Islamic Fundamentalists is no higher now than before 9-11.

The talk of Democratic principles within a vacuum has created the most volatile and gravest dangers to the United States, that as of yet goes unnoticed by this Administration. That the government of Musharraf could be toppled by radical Islamic forces that supported the Taliban in Afghanistan will come into the possession of Nuclear weapons. It is in the face of this true crisis that we need leadership that is based on the correct understanding of the world around us. Unfortunately we have to wait until January 2009 for that type of leadership, for the current Administration has made it abundantly clear that they would lead us not…