The Leadership Vacuum

The old saying goes, " As Rome burns, Nero dances" or something like that. Don't be mistaken I am not comparing President Obama to Nero; rather I am comparing the entire leadership of the United States to Nero. For over two decades our elected officials have failed us. The trouble is that we Americans have enabled this failure through our apathy and lack of demand to vetting our leaders.

One has to go back to President Truman to get our last true leader that actually meant it when saying, "The buck stops here." In the White House we have the American version of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. But our King Louis is years in the coming so no one should be surprised. We haven't voted for Statesmen for decades; rather our politicians have been able to skate by without addressing the tough issues and being properly vetted. Minnesotans saw that last year when the Legislature, again, kicked the can down the road instead of dealing with the tough realities that face the State.

Thankfully the small town I live in and the Council I am apart of understands that we cannot rely on handouts to fund our government and that if we want to grow we all must share in the pain. Here we all sit watching United States embassies burn and KYC restaurants being attacked. What did KYC ever do? Don't they employ people in the country they are in?

Instead of sending a stern message, words are not stern in my book, the current administration first apologized for the film that apparently started it all. The attacks on our embassies and bomb threats on US campuses are not a response to some YouTube video that has been on YouTube for several months. It is a result of the Arab Spring that our current leadership thought was a great Democracy movement. The Arab Spring was a guise to put in power those factions in the world that want to see the destruction of the West.

We need leadership. We need a Statesman. Are we capable in America anymore to vote for a person that is capable of making the tough decision even if it's unpopular and may not get re-elected for that or will we stay in our camps and blindly vote D or R?

Middle East

Last year the United States assisted the Libyans and Egyptians in disposing of their dictators in an effort to bring Democracy to the region. Yesterday the citizens of those two countries showed us thanks by storming our embassies and killing an ambassador and three others. The mob also tore down the United States flag and burned it in protest. In Libya they replaced the burnt American flag with a Islamic banner too.

For over a decade we have been dealing with the tragic 9/11 events and we used that as a rally cry to take the fight to those responsible. We still have troops in Afghanistan - which are being killed nearly every day by "friendly" Afghans - and a presence in Iraq as well. We currently are using predator drones to assist those fighting for "freedom" in Syria with the stark possibility that US military troops are on the ground as well.

The events at the two embassies and the continual attacks on our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan should be sign enough to any administration that we no longer need to have a presence of any kind in the region.Colonial times are over and our nation building of the late 70's and early 80's was a losing proposition as well. Why in the 21st Century do we continue to allow our President and Congress to act in such an Imperial manner?

The United States has a partner in the region, a reliable partner, in Israel. Leverage that partnership and the build on the rickety one with Saudi Arabia to ensure stability in the region. We no longer need to be the police of the world; especially when the reward is the death of our ambassador's and our troops.