"Steven Douglas" <dsteven@flashmail.com> wrote in message
news:1124595052.900335.286020@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...

Tom wrote:

"Steven Douglas" <dsteven@flashmail.com> wrote in message

Sometimes a great leader will know something is not
politically popular, but it is something that must be accomplished.

Hmm.. can you think of a recent example? Tony Blair, for example, had
the backing of most of the electorate when he went to war in Iraq, it's
just that the oppostion was very good at making a noise.

Same situation here. As for great leaders, the most recent examples of
the type of leader I'm thinking of would be Winston Churchill and
Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Hmm.. Curchil was an extremely popular, and extremely populist Prime
Minister and wartime statesman, so I'd say taht's a rather bad example Of
course, he wasn't much cop at keeping a country running (Atlee did that
during the war) , hence his defeat i

In the late 1930's, the mood of the US
electorate was very isolationist. Bad memories of WWI remained strong,
and Congress had passed a very popular Neutrality Act to keep us from
getting involved in another European war. The US military had long
since been downsized to the bare bones.

FDR, watching events unfold in Europe, believed the US military should
be made stronger, even while the population was against such a move.
Churchill and FDR developed a close friendship, and FDR wanted to
assist Churchill in his heroic stand against Hitler. But the Neutrality
Act kept him from doing that. So he *led* by pushing Congress to accept
his idea to sell military equipment to the UK and others in Europe
still able to fight Hitler.

That's rather more a business case for US export than persuading the
electorate. The US made a tremendous profit off Britain at least (and not
just in monetary terms). I can't see anyone objecting to that

FDR's idea was not politically popular among the US electorate, who
feared it would lead to deeper involvement in another European war. But
FDR pushed ahead anyway. He *led* by pushing an unpopular act through
Congress to assist our friends in Europe and the Soviet Union.

Please cite the *popular* opposition to such an act, not congressional

And when Churchill told FDR the UK was low on cash and couldn't afford to

buy

more equipment, FDR devised a way to lend the equipment -- even though
it was skirting the law, which required cash payment. He got it done
anyway.

Againm no popular oppostion there. But OK, Roosevelt did have the foresight
to see that the US would inevitably get invlved if it knew what was good for
it.

That's what I mean by leadership. Seeing a problem in advance, and
acting on it while it might still be unpopular with the electorate.

..except you haven't shown that lend-lease was unpopular with the
electorate. It led to significant propsperity in teh US, after all.

Thank God for the leadership of Churchill and Roosevelt. Who knows what
the world would be like if we hadn't had such great leaders when we
needed them.

Hang on, what did Churchill do when he was PM that was against public
opinion? YOu still haven't managed to come up with anything.

A great leader will overcome resistance from the population, and >

convince them his mission is the right one.

That doesn't sound very democratic

It's perfectly democratic if he can lead the population to agree with
his mission.

Really? So e.g. Saddam Hussein was democratic, as he cuold lead people to
agree with him by locking them up or killing them if they didn't

I wish we would have had such a
leader prior to 9/11. We didn't. Obviously that would include the
Clinton/Gore administration, as well as the Bush administration.

Do you think yo have a great leader now? Or simply the man with the

right

image for the time and some extremely clever people behind him.

I think he has risen to the occasion.

Hmm... if you truly think that, I have this Nigerian gentleman offering me
money you might want to get in contact with.

No one expected us to be attacked
on 9/11 -- that's my whole point, it's a real shame we didn't have a
great leader with the vision to see it coming.

But Churchill or Roosevelt would have seen it coming?

In the middle of Clinton's second term,
two US Embassies were bombed, killing hundreds. Then, only one

month

before the 2000 Presidential election, a US Navy ship was attacked

in

Yemen, killing 19 sailors and injuring many more. The US

electorate

(including me) didn't want to deal with it.

..and there you have it. You didn't want to deal with it, so a

re-election

of presidential candidate is hardly likely to make it a platform

issue,

regardless of what they're ACTUALLY doing to address it (see Woods'

links)

I did see Woods' links. Clinton was going about it as a law

enforcement

problem, for the most part.

The correct approach, IMNSHO.

No, the correct approach would have been to go after the Al Qaeda
training camps with full force instead of a few little pinprick
attacks.

Really? HOw would that have prevented 9/11, or even the bombing of the
London tube? Dod they have flight simulators at these camps?

We should have militarily decimated every bit of Al Qaeda we
could find.

So you would have been bombing flight schools in Boston etc? International
terrorism is first and foremost a police matter. Always has been, always
should be.

The entire nation should have been on high alert

An empty phrase. Define "high alert" and explain how the miltary are better
employed to maintain thss state than the police.

, and we
might possibly have thwarted Bin Laden's ability to pull off the WTC
attack.

That's what a great leader might have done. Wishful thinking on
my part, of course.

Mainly because you haven't come up with any practical suggestions.

THe Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo embaressments wouldn\t have happened,
and troops woudln't be deployed as police in Iraq..

How?

Because you woldn't have had half-dumb rednecks under military command
torturing prisoners, that's how.

We should have treated Saddam as a law enforcement problem?

What does that have to do with Abu Ghraib or Gitmo?

Who was going to arrest him and take him into custody? Kofi Anan? No, as
you said, the public was ready to take Saddam down by force.

..in which they were wrong, generally. Hussein was a contained, known and
toothless threat. The no-fly zone in force since 1990 meant he was getting
bombed almost daily as well. Iraq is now full of uncontained, unknown
threats, many of whom would probably have gladly fought Saddam before the
coalition bombed their houses and killed their relatives.

In this country, even most of the Democrats were onboard, believing
Saddam possessed WMD and needed to be forcibly removed from power.

Totally irrelevant to letting the police deal with terrorists, and not
employing soldiers to do police work, of course.