Real-life Horror: Our Leaders’ Failures in Leadership
{This is a controversial blog I’ve posted at http://www.thedeepening.com/horror/ Some folks have strenuously disagreed with parts of it. However, I remained concerned about our current leadership and feel you can be polite and kind without constantly apologizing for your faults and advertising them to the world.}
Remember Neville Chamberlain?
In 1938, this British prime minister negotiated with Adolph Hitler and said of the Munich Agreement that it promised “peace for our time.” We know now that the Agreement not only gave the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis but tempted the Fuhrer’s desire to conquer and subjugate all Europe. Granted, Germany’s long-term territorial aims were basically unknown, but appeasement has an historical tendency to open the door to insatiable tyrants whose ultimate goal is to conquer the world. In 1939, following Germany’s continued aggression, especially its invasion of Poland, Europe was plunged into World War II.
In the realms of Horror, whether we’re talking fiction, movies, graphic novels or what-have-you, the periodic weakness of our nations’ leaders in international relations is an important but insufficiently explored theme. This is regrettable, for on the world stage, appeasement and weakness can have colossal, unrivaled consequences. Indeed, as we know, with the advent of nuclear weapons, billions can die and LIFE AS WE KNOW IT can end.
My father taught me never to run from a bully because you may never stop running. Also, it only whets the bully’s appetite for your blood and sharpens his hunger to humiliate you. Significantly, there are many ways to run, whether it’s by turning tail and scampering off, or by looking someone in the eye and blinking first. You can even display weakness by letting the other guy talk too long or by letting your emotions distract you from your main task.
This is what happens in my novel, Beyond Those Distant Stars (Mundania Press). Stella McMasters is finally given her first command of a starship. However, at the beginning she has difficulty displaying firm, focused, and decisive leadership. She lets an officer continue to question their orders during an executive meeting. Later, her first officer bluntly tells her, “Our physician is your subordinate. He answers to you, not the other way around.” Stella’s leadership is threatened further when she becomes romantically attracted to a dashing pilot and finds herself distracted when it comes to her duties.
These particular scenes remind me of similar problems involving America’s highest leaders: President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Nile Gardiner, Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, states that Clinton “has been the most low-key secretary in recent times.” Certainly, she has been upstaged and sidelined repeatedly by figures such as her own husband traveling to North Korea to negotiate the release of two imprisoned Americans, and Virginia senator Jim Webb embarking on a similar mission in North Korea and Burma. The perception is that there has been a sharp detour around Clinton’s State Department, which has been marginalized and ignored. Some observers’ confidence in Clinton has been shaken. “Who’s in charge?” they ask. “Who’s really representing the Obama administration?”
Some have argued that Hillary Clinton is not at fault here, particularly in the case of North Korea which requested Bill Clinton’s visit and has a contentious relationship with his wife. Still, the impression created is that of weak and ineffective leadership, a dangerous situation in the shark-filled waters of a post 9/11 world. Pursuing short-term goals by placating people who rule by bloody force is a prescription for failure because it is based on a failure to grasp the savage, irrational nature of your enemy.
Doesn’t the present situation with North Korea, a dictatorship seeking to become a nuclear power, sound like the basis of a great international thriller, a spine-tingling novel of diplomacy gone wrong? If current events continue in the wrong direction, we might not even have to change the names of this page-turner. Life could imitate art in the most frightening way.
When it comes to President Obama, the failure in leadership may be even graver. I voted for the man, though I was troubled by his slender resume and lack of foreign affairs experience. Obama has repeatedly apologized for Arrogant and Impolite America, usually overlooking the historical sins of those he wishes to charm. To young Europeans in Strasbourg, he announced, “there have been times when America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” To Russian Prime Minister Putin, he said, “I think it’s very important that I come before you with some humility,” and “in the past there’s been a tendency for the United States to lecture rather than to listen.” Though honesty and self-criticism are admirable, they can be extremely harmful when you are the sole super-power in a world of nations that almost never admits fault or apologizes for anything.
By the same token, I think it’s a mistake for the Attorney General to assign a special prosecutor to go after CIA interrogators who may have crossed the line in prying information from terrorist suspects. Second-guessing the past is fraught with peril. If we have all these faults, why should anyone respect or listen to us?
President Ronald Reagan once said, “We maintain the peace through our strength; weakness only incites aggression.” This is a truth that leaders—whether they’re fictional ones like Stella McMasters, or real, contemporary ones like President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton— would do well to remember.
