What Happens When Our Leaders Lack Moral Courage by Wesley Clark
'Power is acting for good — and knowing when you should.
Over the years, thousands of cadets at the United States Military Academy, myself included, have memorized and recited West Point’s Cadet Prayer. “Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong,” the prayer goes, “and never to be content with a half-truth when the whole can be won. Endow us with courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, that scorns to compromise with vice and injustice, and knows no fear when truth and right are in jeopardy.”
The prayer describes the value of acting for good, and how moral authority is itself the deepest source of power. Cadets are taught that one’s values ought to be the primary reason to seek power, and its only justification for use. This is the essence of the “courage” described in the prayer, the courage that should be a part of every leader’s core.
But we as a nation and as leaders have not always demonstrated this courage. Two major events in my career illustrate when we acted for good with our values in mind, and when we did not.
On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the Hutu presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, was shot down over Kigali, the Rwandan capital. Their assassinations sparked a campaign of ethnic cleansing whose scope and brutality would shock the world. Early in the crisis, the American government expressed concern and called on Hutu authorities in Rwanda to halt the unfolding genocide. Washington pleaded for the United Nations to reinforce its small peacekeeping force in Rwanda to end the slaughter. But that was the extent of it.
At the time I served as the director for strategic plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In response to a request from Madeleine Albright, then ambassador to the United Nations, my staff and I submitted a military concept plan to halt the Rwandan genocide. But it went nowhere. A common refrain we heard was: “Do you really think Congress would authorize 20,000 troops and $2 billion in the heart of Africa?” Over the following months, my staff and many others in the government read and discussed the accounts of the atrocities in Africa with growing horror. . .
With regard to the Rwandan genocide, we hadn’t been wise or compassionate. We hadn’t acted on our values. But many of us became determined to never let something like this happen again. . .
The next year, in the midst of the Bosnian war, Bosnian Serb soldiers seized the United Nations-designated “safe area” of Srebrenica and massacred some 8,000 Muslim men and boys. The United States called on NATO for a response plan and renewed diplomatic efforts led by Richard Holbrooke, the assistant secretary of state, to end the fighting. Soon the Serbs struck at Bosnian civilians again, this time with a mortar attack on a crowded marketplace, and the Atlantic alliance responded with air power. . .
“When you can make a difference, you should,” Mr. Clinton used to say. We had,but beneath the achievements of Dayton lay the guilt over Rwanda. I had seen the ruins of shell-blasted Mostar, and listened as Bosnian leaders described the torture and rape their people had endured. We knew what the consequences would be if we failed to act.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/opinion/power-moral-courage.html?
