From: Abdalah Hamis

This essay points out that naïve political leaders who are not cognizant of the evil in human beings and, more importantly, eschew using violence and coercion to shape international politics often end up causing the explosion of the international arena into major wars. Barack Obama’s obvious naiveté in many areas of politics and refusal to take decisive action in the Middle East, even in Africa has allowed wounds to fester and some of those wounds seem about to explode into major regional wars.

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BY THEIR FEAR OF WARS WEAK LEADERS CAUSE MAJOR WARS – Ozodi Osuji

I have closely watched President Barack Obama. Everything about him reminds me of Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister when the Second World War began. Come to think of it, they look alike; both are tall and lanky and look professorial but not like leaders of men in action. Both look like what you would expect your social science professor to look like. Both are well educated and conversant with current affairs.

You sense that when push comes to shove both men would not stand up and fight for their beliefs. Indeed, you sense that they do not have strong beliefs but merely mouth ideas that are congruent with their professed political ideologies.

Barack Obama mouths the expected bromides of what liberalism is supposed to be: belief in big government; use of government to help the people; use of government to intervene in the economy to make sure that it does not swing to either depression or inflation and so on.

Obama seems the epitome of a liberal politician. But as you look closer you find that he talks the talk but does not walk his talk. The liberal beliefs he espouses are not so strong in him that he would fight for them. He seems incapable of saying: here I stand and can move no further.

Nevertheless, Obama seems to believe the liberal shibboleth that people were born good in nature and to the extent that they are evil their environment is responsible for it (Jean Jacque Rousseau made that liberal argument in his book, Social Contract). In other words, if you improved the environment people would behave lovingly towards each other.

This is a naïve view of human beings. The fact is that people are by nature capable of evil. People can kill and indeed some people enjoy inflicting pain on other people. There are people who are born sadistic and enjoy seeing people suffer.

Obama does not seem aware of the reality of evil as part of human nature. Religious folks have a more realistic view here. If you recall, Christianity believes that people were born in original sin and are sinful and need someone to redeem them from their sin. Christians believe that people are inherently capable of evil and therefore you must continually watch them lest they act evilly.

Gnosticism teaches that originally people were one with God and that they chose to separate from God and go live in the world of space, time and matter. As long as people live in body and on earth they are said to be prone to evil behavior. Therefore, society must have instruments that checkmate people’s proclivity to evil. There must be military, police, courts, judges and jails to take care of antisocial personalities. Remove the police from any city and the seeming nice persons in it steal and or kill their neighbors.

Political conservatives like Neville Chamberlain accept that people are evil and establish social instruments for keeping people in line with the law. The conservative sees the primary function of government as maintaining law and order. Since, to him, people are evil, society must have police, military, courts and jails and prisons and use those to supervise people or else they act according to their evil nature and harm one another.

Beyond maintaining law and order the conservative does not see more roles for government. He believes that if government is allowed to engage in social engineering that it becomes too big; big governments, as John Locke (Second Treaty on Government) warned, oppress the people. To safeguard peoples civil liberties and civil rights governments must be small and operate in well-defined areas and certainly not be allowed to provide social services for the people.

According to the conservative, let the free enterprise economic system (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations) take care of the allocation of goods and services. In so far that some people lose out and are poor let rich philanthropists help them. The price we pay for freedom is to limit the function of government to providing law and order, not have the nanny state that takes care of people’s needs.

Liberals like Obama see human beings as good and capable of helping their neighbors. Obama exaggerates this rosy picture of human beings so much so that one often wonders whether the man actually went to elementary and secondary schools and observed boys behaviors.

At school some boys are bullies. Bullies derive sadistic pleasure from humiliating other boys.

As any realistic boy knows, the only way to stop a bully from bullying you is not to plead for his mercy. If you plead for mercy the bully thinks that you are weak and would continue bullying you.

You do not forgive the bully for to do so is to give him permission to keep hurting you. Forgiveness does not stop bad behavior. What you do is go get a big club and use it to whack the bully on his head; you hit to split his head open.

You stop the criminal by punishing him. The anti-social personality is deterred not by love and forgiveness but by force.

Obama does not seem aware of this reality and makes speeches that sound nice to the ear but that you know are unrealistic to human nature.

Talking about speeches, the man is very articulate alright. He makes good speeches. I believe that he should have been a television nightly news broadcaster for he talks well.

What he is not is a leader. He does not seem to understand that a leader is not supposed to talk too much. A leader comes out every once in a while and gives a speech and then disappears from the pubic for a while. If you are before the public too many times you lose the mystic that leaders are supposed to have. People want to see their leaders as somehow different from them.

A leader does not go socializing with his subordinates, or drinking with them. On the job if you are promoted from line to managerial work you quickly learn that to be respected and your authority accepted by those who work for you that you must separate yourself from them. A certain amount of loneliness is the price of leadership.

A leader stays behind the scene and from there do what he has to do to implement what he said in his speeches.

If you say that you are going to do something you had better do it or else people assess you to be an idle talker, not a doer. A leader must be perceived to be a doer, a man who means every word he utters.

This is not the perception of Obama. People perceive him as a nice talker but a man who would not fight for whatever he said that he is going to do. He does not walk his talk. As a result most people dismiss him as not a serious leader.

Oh, folks would like to have Obama as their neighbor but not as their leader. People want as their leader a military type, a warrior who says something, means it and fights for its realization, sometimes dying for it.

When a man who believes in something comes around people know it. Such a person has commanding presence; his mere presence communicates the message that he is ready to fight you to death and therefore you had better not mess with him.

Obama is perceived as a mere speech maker but a man who does not try to implement what he said he is going to do.

Apparently, Obama has good speech writers; as long as there is a teleprompter that he reads the speeches from he delivers them well. Whether he can think independently on his feet remains to be seen.

Most Americans have judged Barack Obama and accept that he is a decent man; he is a good man who loves his wife and children and would help his neighbor fix his fence. However, he is seen as a wimp.

Because he is seen as a weak leader most people do not respect him. They know that he is easily pushed around.

Obama does not communicate that aura which great leaders like Winston Churchill do; great leaders give the verbal and nonverbal message that they are ready to fight for what they believe.

Obama communicates the message that he wants people to love him. Anyone who has led men in business, military or politics knows that that is not how you get men to engage in the pursuit of stated objectives. To use men to achieve goals every leader learns that he would be tested by some members of his organization, that some would not obey him. He learns that to get the many to obey him that he must every now and then make examples of some disobedient followers.

As Nicolo Machiavelli said (in the Prince) a leader must deliberately punish some of those who work against the attainment of his goals and objectives.

In the work place you simply fire those who do not accept your leadership and authority. In politics you work to marginalize your foes.

Politics, Harold Lasswell tells us, is deciding who gets what when and how. The President of the United States has a lot of power to decide who gets what share of the federal budget whose expenditure he supervises (Congress decides the financial allocations but the executive branch supervises the actual dispensing of the allocated funds). It is possible to delay spending money allocated to a state whose senator or congressman is insolent to the president.

Most US senators and congressmen are insolent to Obama; they do not even see him as their President. In fact, most of them do not even bother listening to the man when he talks. Most tune off his frequent speeches. “Here we go, again; the parrot, as usual, is giving one of his useless speeches”, folks say when Obama talks, and tune him out.

A leader should not find himself in this dismissive situation. As Machiavelli said in the Prince, a leader must strive to be feared and respected. It would be nice if he is loved by all the people but love should not be his primary motivation.

People don’t always do what those that love them ask them to do. You love your children but they do not do what you ask them to do.

It is those that punish folks that folks do what they ask them to do. Step out of line too frequently a leader lets you know who is in charge of the shop.

Barack Obama’s greatest accomplishment in office is the Affordable Health Care Act. The act is very complex but the key provisions are: mandate for all Americans to buy health insurance from private Insurance companies; the establishment of insurance exchanges where private health insurance companies list their premiums thus giving the buyers ability to compare premiums and choose lower ones; allowing parents to keep their children who are under age twenty five on their employer given health insurance. When all are said and done nearly fifty million Americans still do not have health insurance. Therefore, one does not understand what exactly the accomplishment of this boondoggle is. My personal preference is the Canadian or United Kingdom Universal Health Insurance Plan that covers all citizens of the country. It seems obscene that in the richest country in the world many people cannot afford health insurance and when sick have to go to hospital emergency rooms for treatment or die untreated.

My views aside, the point I want to make here is that even the little that the so-called Obama care provides is the enemy of conservatives. The Republican controlled House of Representatives has voted 40 times to kill Obamacare. If Republicans regain the upper house, the Senate next year there is no doubt that they would kill Obama care. The question one asks is this: is this all that Barrack Obama can do? Isn’t there something else he could do to preserve his signatory achievement?

I am presuming that his soul is in the Affordable Health Act, is it? See, he does not go out and fight for it. During the yearlong battle to enact it into law the man simply left Congressional Democrats to do all the work for it. If he had thrown Public Option into the mix so that poor Americans would be able to buy health care from a government insurance company perhaps the Health Care Act would make sense. As it is, it does not make sense and one does not see what the hullabaloo made about it is all about.

Let Republicans kill it; it is useless. For our present purpose, if Obama was a real leader he would have helped enact something that serves all Americans rather than these half-measures called Obama care.

Another instance of Obama’s weakness is demonstrated when a black lady who works at the Department of Agriculture made a statement that taken out of context seemed to suggest that she does not like white folks. Fox New, a television network dedicated solely to battling Obama’s policies twisted what the woman said, and without giving her a chance to defend herself Obama’s White House called the Secretary of Agriculture and asked him to fire her. She was summarily fired. It turned out that she was actually a fighter for poor white folks in her native Georgia.

The point here is that Obama was aiming at pleasing white folks and did exactly what he believed that they want him to do, get rid of a vocal black woman. When white folks ask him to jump he asks how high they want him to jump.

Obama will throw you under the bus any time it is expedient for him to do so. He has gotten rid of many black persons who work for him and who spoke out on racism, including his environmental advisor. This man behaves like typical cowardly house niggers who do everything to please their masters so that they are not returned to field nigger status.

Whereas perception of one’s strength is critical in domestic politics it is indispensable in International politics. Actors in the International political arena assess each other and relate to each other as they are perceived to be.

The International arena is a jungle. Despite all that you may have heard about International law, the international arena is a lawless place. Strong men usually intimidate weak men and get what they want.

An axiom of International politics is that peace is maintained by balance of power. Nation A and nation B are likely to live in peace if both have balanced military power. If there is a dis-balance and one becomes more powerful than the other the more powerful nation generally holds the weak one hostage and tries to intimidate it.

If a leader is bold enough and has the military wherewithal he attacks and swallows weaker nations. Nations expand their territories by taking over their weak neighbors territories. The USA expanded its territory by defeating and taking land from Indians, Mexicans and Spain.

President Theodor Roosevelt said that in International politics you should carry a big club but talk softly (he did and swallowed loads of Spanish and Latin American territories).

If you are perceived to be weak and do not exercise power international actors disregard you and do not pay attention to what you say.

Barack Obama until recently was a nobody in American politics. Out of nowhere he burst on the domestic and international political arena. Nobody knew who he was for he had no public record that any one knows about.

He was this guy who taught part time at the University of Chicago and worked part time as a state legislator (American state legislators generally work for about four months during the year and are paid stipends, almost minimum wage).

This man was an unknown person and after been picked by John Kerry to make a speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, the next thing we know is that he was elected senator to the US Senate.

He had no accomplishment in the Senate. Two years later he ran for the presidency and won. Simply put, Barack Obama had no record of public accomplishment to talk about. In fact, he had done practically nothing before he became the president. This is weird, if you think about it.

The man had not held a managerial position in his entire life and suddenly he is the chief executive officer of the United States! Talk about somebody being in above his head! No wonder many racists call him our first affirmative action President!

The man went about the International arena talking his staple liberal nostrums. You hear him and you shake your head and wonder what planet he came from. It is Kunbaya time; Obama time is let us love one another.

Powerful international political actors studied him and realized that he is afraid of exercising power. He is not an alpha male and does not have the killer instinct you expect in the President of a superpower. Folks tuned him out and do not take him seriously.

Barack Obama lowered the prestige of the United States; he made Americans seem small; good leaders make their people walk tall.

Barack Obama has no accomplishment in International politics just as he has little or no accomplishments in America’s domestic politics.

Little tin-can dictators everywhere, such as the leaders of Syria, Libya, Iran and North Korea are not afraid of Obama. They know that he would not stand up to them and fight them so they kept on doing their things.

In his simplistic mind merely saying that people should do the right thing would make killers like Assad stop killing his people. Poor man; he has no understanding of human psychology.

Well, Assad kept killing his people; Iran is about to develop nuclear weapons which it would probably explode in New York and Washington DC!

In the meantime, Barack Obama talks about the need for nuclear nonproliferation and is unwilling to use force to bring about his professed goal.

Sometimes you wonder if he is in cahoots with Iran and wants Iran to have nuclear weapons. You never know about this man; many Americans suspect that he is a closet Muslim and wants Muslims to take over the world. For all we know, he may well be a Manchurian candidate in our midst!

Pathetic politicians like Neville Chamberlain and Barack Obama appease dictators. Neville Chamberlain did that at Munich in 1938; he allowed Hitler to take the Sudetenland, a part of Western Czechoslovak where ethnic Germans lived, because Hitler demanded to have it and he did so to avoid war with Hitler. A year later, Hitler started the war that Chamberlain was trying to avoid through appeasement by attacking Poland.

Weak leaders who appease political bullies like Hitler and Assad cause the outbreak of major wars. Obama dithered as the Middle East burned. He was afraid to exercise power and try to shape events to go the direction he wants. Events got out of control and he is now forced to act.

Obama must now act if he is not to lose whatever public respect he has. His credibility is on the line. Acting at this late juncture may bring about an explosion in the powder keg that is Middle East politics.

Unless strong arms help Obama, his weakness may lead to a major war in the Middle East. Colin Powell where are you when we need you. Please come and help Barack Obama; please help guide him to do what he has to do in International politics to maintain peace (through strength) in the world.