Caption time

Leadership

I want to say first, War sucks, no sane person wants a War. Now that I have said that lets get to the heart of the matter. Wars are not going away, as long as we have people with different beliefs and moral values we will have wars. In fact as long as people are different we will have conflicts. War is a horrible thing but just like everything else in life not all is negative. War produces leaders, men and women who can make decisions and understand the impact of those decisions.  While the men and women of the armed forces have paid a tremendous cost, they also have picked up a debt of leadership. Like freedom, leadership is not free, it costs and sometimes the cost can be beyond the grasp of those that have never had to make those choices.  The military trains leaders, civilians train managers and there is a difference.  I am not saying that the military always produce quality leaders, it doesn’t there is a known quantity of major ass sucks just like in the civilian world and sadly the higher the rank the better chance they kissed some major ass. I will give you some examples, Eisenhower was a leader.  Bill Gates is a manager.  While Eisenhower had no problems with the management side of leadership, Bill Gates is lost in the world of leadership. Great leaders like great managers don’t make decisions in a vacuum but the leader will take the blame for failure and pass the glory for success. Managers pass failure to their staff and take credit for success. We will have years to wait until the group of real leaders emerge from the current war. What we have today is a choice between managers and leaders.  Obama is a manager, he will manage his campaign and strategize for the maximum impact of his words and will say what he thinks the public wants to hear.  McCain is  leader,  and while I might not agree with everything he says and stands for at least I know I am getting an honest opinion.  The same goes for the VP candidates.  When life is good and times are easy having a manager as President is not a big issue, but when the going gets rough there is no substitute for leadership.