Leadership isn’t a communal activity

Recently I visited the Pima Air & Space Museum here in Tucson, and among the many exhibits was a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter, the same type aircraft I flew in Vietnam.  But it was the helicopter’s squadron designation that fascinated me – HMM-163, which just happened to be the first squadron I was assigned to out of flight school.  I flew with 163 for several months before leaving for Vietnam and with only 16 helicopters in the squadron there was a high probability I flew this particular bird several times

I took a photo then worked my Photoshop magic and created a really nice image to hang on my office wall and emailed the photo to the very liberal education chair of my photo club who I’ve become friendly with via email and during Zoom presentations.  I told him of the novelty of finding an aircraft I flew more than 50 years ago.  But instead of commenting on the coincidence or the image itself, my friend responded that while I was in Vietnam, Donald Trump was busy telling the draft board about his bone spurs.

I responded by asking why it was necessary to reference Trump and that I was fully aware of Trump’s history, but the ONLY way to view an administration and its policies is in terms of results And when we look at the results of four years under Trump versus three and a half under Biden/Harris the first thing that comes to mind is  former Defense Secretary, Bob Gates quote in 2014.  “Joe Biden has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”  So, while I have no real affinity towards Trump as an individual, I am a realist, and the world  is a far more dangerous place today than it was when Trump left office.

~The liberal mindset – plenty of platitudes, no specifics ~

My friend emailed back telling me that presidential leadership has far less effect on world events and outcomes than we’d like to believe and that perhaps that’s the same primal need that has led us to create religions and the gods we’ve imagined throughout history.  He then added “given the global nature of our most challenging threats–killer pandemics, climate chaos, nuclear war—we need to do everything we can, together, to address these issues.” But in typical liberal fashion he never quite got around to actually defining the issues or exactly how the world should come together to accomplish this.  

Perhaps my friend forgot about Abraham Lincoln who held our nation together during the Civil War, or LBJ who took the nation down the Vietnam rabbit hole or Reagan who orchestrated the fall of the Soviet empire.  Obviously, my friend never engaged in any critical thinking about what this nation might look like without Lincoln’s unswerving leadership or Reagan’s, steadfast refusal to allow the spread of communism; or that just about every good or bad thing that has occurred in recorded history happened because of the leadership of a single individual – from Jesus Christ to Mohammed to Adolf Hitler.

The reality is that today the world is far less congenial to U.S. interests, human freedom and democracy from Europe to the Straits of Taiwan, to the Middle East, to the Horn of Africa than it was when Trump was in office.  And the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan was arguably most irresponsible and damaging decision any American president has made in more than a century.  And speaking of Afghanistan, I find it interesting how the party that’s all about women’s rights never seem to mention how the Taliban have reimposed feudal Islamist rule where women are back in burkas and girls are removed from classrooms while jihadists revive their terror sanctuary.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine Joe Biden tried to appease Putin by blessing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and then refused to arm Ukraine.   He then said a “minor incursion” might not elicit Western opposition- the result has been a war that has already seen more than 100,000 dead, millions displaced and a new Axis of Evil comprising Moscow, Tehran and Beijing.  So, what was it my friend said about presidential leadership having a far less effect on world events and outcomes than we’d like to believe?

Trump had tamped down the unrest in the Middle East with the Abraham Accords and instead of building upon Trump’s success, Biden ostracized Saudi Arabia our second most important ally in the region.  And it’s no coincidence that one Iranian backed terror organization massacred 1,200 innocents in Israel, and another began raining down missiles on Israel only AFTER Trump left office.  And lest we forget, just one week before the carnage began, Biden’s national-security adviser boasted how “the region is quieter than it has been for decades.”  Talk about incompetence melded with naivete.

Since Trump left office Iran supplies Moscow with missiles and drones and China has joined the Russian navy in naval maneuvers.  At the same time, North Korea is shipping arms to Moscow while being protected by China from United Nations sanctions it once voted for.  This did not occur during the Trump years.

As noted in the WSJ, under the Biden/Harris administration we are witnessing the worst decline in world order and the largest decline in U.S. influence, since the 1930s.  And can anyone imagine Kamala Harris going toe-to-toe with Messrs. Putin, Xi or the Iranian Mullahs – my God, she’d be spit out before breakfast.

Nonetheless, there are people who actually believe “It’s time the nation was led by a woman of color” – the foolishness and childishness of that type of thinking will change the course of history if Harris is elected.  Is the hatred of Donald Trump so great they don’t care if the world continues to descend into chaos?  Do they somehow think that the United States is immune from the ripple effects of world unrest?

Very sadly, someone very, very close to me recently said, “Kamala Harris has good people around her,” as if that’s what leadership is about, finding good people – my God, is this person daft or just a blind ideologue?  If Kamala Harris is elected the world will become more a dangerous place than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, which should give everyone pause – even the liberal ideologues.

Question of the day:  How did the abortion debate move away from “safe, legal, and rare”?