Analysis: When leaders refuse to leave the stage
There is a popular adage about the leader who leaves the stage.
“You don’t leave the stage until you leave the building,” says the adage.
The leader who leaves the stage, meanwhile, is one who has to remain on it the entire time, regardless of the situation. The leaders who leave the stage, instead, are those who have to stay on the stage for a long, long time, even if the situation has changed from bad to worse.
And, in this particular instance, the leadership on the stage, in terms of the national media, is Barack Obama, who refused to leave the stage, regardless of the fact that the story was about a U.S. Navy SEAL who was killed by a terrorist in Pakistan.
“We don’t leave until the job is done,” Obama said after the latest suicide bombing attack against the U.S. in Afghanistan.
After the latest U.S. attack in Afghanistan, he would have left. But right after the attack, he stayed on the stage for 45 minutes.
The media and the Obama administration have been desperately trying to make Obama the scapegoat for the latest outrage in Afghanistan, but there was always an underlying theme in his statement: Obama was standing on the stage not because he wanted to but because the attacks were happening in his own backyard.
The attacks on the U.S. Embassy were meant to intimidate us. We have come to expect that from the Islamic State. They were meant to scare us. And it worked.
It was the same for the Times Square bomber. The goal was to scare us. It worked. It’s working even now.
As a nation, we have come to expect that from the Islamic State. They are a direct threat to us. They are on our soil. They are in our back yard. They are part of our
