'Dithering' Might Have Been Better

While Sarah Palin criticizes President Obama of ‘dithering’, maybe that is exactly what we should be better at when it comes to foreign interventions like the recent one in Libya.  Here are some observations/questions I recently offered in a US foreign policy group I belong to, to, in part, stimulate discussion about US involvement in Libya.

1. Analogies are dangerous. Rwanda was not Bosnia & Kosovo, and neither are any of them Libya.  The events associated with each are born from different places, times, people, governments, cultures, economies, and laws.  Still, our memories of them are powerful, and in the last several days the interpretation of each is and has been projected on Libya.  As historians we have to interpret the record associated with each while we place a huge warning label on our analyses that reads ‘This Will Never Recur Exactly As It Has Here’. (A sort of historian’s caveat emptor.)  In critical ways, each event is different.  Richard E. Neustadt’s and Ernest R. May’s Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers warns us of the danger of analogies.  Their study shows many cases of the misapplication of history, operationalized in policymaking through analogies, that cause us to ask, years later, why in the hell did they do that?  In most cases speed is a factor, and the simple enormity of what decision makers have to deal with, all the complexities and scale.  Analogies simplify and justify; they are the fuel of dispatch.  However, if we do in Libya what we should have done in the Balkans or Rwanda, will we do what is correct for Libya?  If we begin with the premise they are different, then how is doing what we believe we should have done in Bosnia or Rwanda even logical?
2. We must be careful what we wish for.  Or, asked otherwise by Catherine Ashton, the EU’s representative for foreign affairs and security, ‘And then what?’ Qaddafi (Q) didn’t become a mass murderer overnight, in fact, where is the evidence of ‘slaughter’?  Obama hung his case on Q’s psychobabble rhetoric, where Q claimed he would show ‘no mercy’, to justify intervening to stop Q short of Benghazi.  I can only conclude there was no evidence of slaughter by Q’s troops on the way from Tripoli to Benghazi, otherwise Obama surely would have hung his argument on something more than Q’s ‘no mercy’ pledge.  (I reflect on much of Reagan’s rhetoric in the 1980s and find Q’s nearly childish.)  Q clearly had the rebels on the run, but genocide?  Q has a long history of violence, like other despots (we ignore), but I am unaware of any history of genocide.  Yet, we have committed tremendous resources to a nebulous task of ‘protecting Libyans’ who will now likely face a long ground war with a desperate despot.  Many would have likely died, and now many likely will.  Where is the victory in that?  Moreover, when a conclusion is declared – however nebulous – then what?  Who will rule?  Whom will they rule and how?  Perhaps we should watch Egypt (an arguably much more stable and developed state) to see if freedom and human rights prevail over what looks like a government that will likely be controlled by the military and the Muslim Brotherhood.  Time will tell, but maybe we should let it do exactly that.
3. In the meantime, American identity is slowly changing, but politics are still politics.  The debate in the US on this issue, when you cull out the relevant pronouns, is really about the role of the US in the world – about American identity.  Involvement by the US in world affairs swings to and fro – from isolationism to overt exceptionalism.  Absent the pronouns, when you compare today’s debate to the days of Woodrow Wilson’s battle with Congress after World War I, there is an eerie echo.  We may be seeing Obama facing the same thing today.  Perplexingly, Obama seems a better fit for an advocate of a more restrained America, yet the facts (Afghanistan and now Libya) belie my perception of his intellectual disposition.  Then again, maybe it is just the primacy of politics.  After all, 2012 looms.  Both humor and pain can be found in the push and pull between the White House and the Congress (under the veil of legal issues like the War Powers Act).  Each is trying to create a position where, in the end, they can claim they were right.  So, ambiguity wins again!

Leading from the Soul (Part 4 of 4)

Part IV: Moral Purpose

The final element of leading from the soul is moral purpose.  There is a terrific book on this issue by consultant Simon Sinek, titled, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action.[1]  Sinek argues that while most of us and the organizations we work for can readily articulate what we do and how we do it, all too often there is confusion or even no understanding of why. Why provides the beliefs and convictions that direct the what and how.  If the why is missing, everything else is the product of randomness and, even more troubling, its absence provides a vacuum that will be filled by divergent interests and nefarious actors.  As Sinek points out, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., had a dream, and he shared it on August 28, 1963 with 250,000 people on the mall in Washington DC.  People gathered from all over the United States without having received an invitation by way of Facebook, Twitter, email, or cellphone.  The three most prevalent phrases in King’s speech are “I have a dream,” “Let freedom ring,” and “Now is the time.”[2]  King left us no doubt what he believed, nor of the urgency of his purpose.  Like King, Steve Jobs of Apple also has a why.  Jobs’ why, is to place the power of computing in the hands of every individual in the world.  Today that might not sound impressive, but when Jobs started his quest in 1976, it was patently absurd; computers were never envisioned for use by anyone unless they were employed by a large corporation that would buy them from a company called International Business Machines.  Jobs and his partner Steve Wozniak were determined to change all that, and in so doing they, like King, changed the world.

            The search for why may be the single most important and illusive challenge we face in our lives, but it is also a challenge that must not be ignored, however frustrating it may be at times.  Why are we here?  What is our purpose in life?  What gives our life meaning?  And, perhaps the most perplexing question, how do we know what we know?  We can and must ask ourselves these questions, as well as ask them of others — especially our leaders.  I study presidents and foreign policy.  The what happened and how it happened are usually self-evident.  The why is a much more difficult question.  Why did George W. Bush believe there were WMD and al-Qaeda in Iraq when there were not?  Why did Bill Clinton wait so long to support action in the Balkans while the evidence of genocide was obvious?  Why did Reagan decide he could trust Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of an empire he claimed was evil?  Why was Carter compelled to seek peace in the Middle East, or give the Panama Canal back to Panama?  I’ll offer you a methodology that works with presidents and can also be applied to your own lives: look for integrity by and between the what, how, and why.  If there is a pattern of consistency — if the three are aligned — you probably have identified the why.  I can tell you with presidents the ‘public’ why they offer seldom reconciles with the facts of what and how.  There is usually a ‘private’ why that emanates from what I call their unique “cognetic profile,” which is somewhat analogous, in this context, to their soul.  If our own answers or those of our leaders do not reconcile — if they do not have internal integrity — we must demand of ourselves and our leaders that they do.

            To say that these are difficult times is a gross understatement, but there may not be words adequate to describe the challenges that face us, individually or collectively, as citizens or a nation.  What we can do, however, is take a step back, take a deep breath, and remind ourselves that solitude is powerful, transcendent courage is essential, and that each of us must find our why and honor our moral purpose.  If we do, we will regain our capacity to lead from the soul.

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[1] Simon Sinek, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (New York: Portfolio, 2009).

[2] The text and video of King’s speech is available at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm.