From history’s beginning, humans have longed for self-rule, freedoms we call individual rights. As often, this longing is resisted by those in power. Today, those defending freedom and those suppressing it are locked in battle – abroad and at home. Without strong leadership, these conflicts will multiply, intensify, and could get out of control.
If this sounds scary, it should. We should be able to handle a two-front war, but already have a proxy with Russia, and another with Iran, both eating resources. China threatens. Our hands are full.
At home, for all the denials, threats also abound. We face – listen to law enforcement– elevated terror, transnational crime, border, gang, drug, surveillance, grid, and ideological threats.
The combination of high-tempo foreign wars – possibly drawing us deeper – combined with ideological conflict at home – means level-headed, focused, capable leadership is needed.
Do we have it? Hardly. Adversaries know it. The President is barely cogent, as most now admit. If we end up in a prolonged war, he is unlikely to see it through. He is weak mentally and physically at 80, less cogent than late FDR, scarcely better than Wilson after his 1919 stroke.
The Vice President displays stunning immaturity, giggling and disengaging from life’s gravity. Morality and maturity aside, she is unprepared. Her left-leaning ideology is anti-patriotic, and she seems to sleepwalk through assigned events.
The Secretary of Defense, still at post, lied to his boss – the president – as well as the Deputy and chain of command – for almost a week. He left the country ill-equipped mid-crisis. He betrayed tens of thousands of US allies in Afghanistan and is unabashedly “woke” costing readiness.
The Secretary of State has become a laughingstock, his failed Afghan withdrawal a disgrace that has re-empowered the Taliban, al Qaeda, and ISIS-K, which just hit Russia, has eyes on the US. The Secretary excuses China, is silent on North Korea, and appeases Iran, all senseless.
The Secretary of Homeland Security is worse if possible, acting like a Secretary of illegal entry and voting. Impeached for failing to enforce seven statutes and lying, he is shameless. Compared to every one of his predecessors, he is an abomination.
The Attorney General is something else, bitter for losing a Supreme Court seat, anti-First, Second, and Fourth Amendment. He still has an FBI task force harassing parents with a terror statute, a trick he engineered with a false letter (later retracted) from an outside group.
He appears to have allowed undercover agents in Catholic churches, continues to abuse laws tied to the 2024 election – and seems content to imprison or bankrupt the leading Republican.
Inexcusably, he allows abuse of power to protect a sitting president, with no charges for revealing classified documents for financial gain – saying “specific intent” is not provable. Stunning.
He allows the president to cart a criminal son around the world for illegal contracts as vice president and ignores evidence he sold his office for profit. If not guilty of felony bribery, Foreign Corrupt Practices, or RICO crimes, what are these? Silence.
All of this leads back to the premise: Our nation is living through a moment of unusual risk, vulnerability, and threats due to bad leadership, chiefly a president not up to the job.
What can be done? Not much – until November. Then, whatever the alternative, new leaders must be elected. Is the nation at risk? Undeniably. Can this be fixed? Yes.
In 1922, following a profound global conflict, T.E. Lawrence, the British military officer later known as “Lawrence of Arabia,” wrote a book called “Seven Pillars of Wisdom.”
In that book, he spoke about how we see and manage global – even domestic – threats. A strategic thinker, he saw the first step toward “normal” as understanding the stakes and sources.
T.E. Lawrence, whom Churchill regarded highly, was a thinker. He did not imagine political leadership was ever perfect but instead worked to pick and choose among imperfect options.
He thought those who governed by ego or vanity were a concern, but not the highest concern. More worrisome were those coveting power for its sake, ideological by day, not freedom-loving.
Wrote Lawrence: “All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day … are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.”
When those dreams involve demonizing freedom-loving citizens, redefining constitutional rights, failing The People, and persecuting opponents to retain power, all is not right. May these things change in November. If they do, things will improve. If not … well, they must.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
