Managing Leadership^®

Some time ago, I was speaking with a previous commanding officer of mine from the Marines. Shortly after he retired, the Berlin Wall came down. He remarked that there was a satisfying closure in that for him, since his career had been largely devoted to fighting the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union symbolized the value of his own efforts and those of his comrades in arms throughout that long, complex period.

A few years after I retired, in turn, from the Marines, another symbol came down. But this time it was on our soil, and it offered not symbolic closure, but a bitter reminder that a struggle against barbarism, which much of my own career and those of my peers was directed at confronting, would have to be passed along to those filling the ranks from the generations rising up in our wake.

And fill the ranks they do. We were staggered that day, but not stopped. The battle colors of the Marines and of our sister services remain aloft, borne there by as fine a generation of Americans as this profoundly great country has produced.

It should be noted, though, that our enemies today are not reacting to our military power, but rather to our civil, political, and cultural strength and reach. Their struggle is doomed to defeat at our hands because the depth and breadth – and worth – of those sources of power cannot be matched by the atavistic battalions that rise, with desparate, brutal futility, against them.

Moreover, the Americans, imbued with the unique culture that produces and is perpetuated by those strengths, will themselves continue to resist the descent into the chasm, and continue to press forward, seeking out the paths to greater hope, opportunity, and freedom. Americans, even to themselves, can appear to be paralized by their diversity and tumultuous debate. But throughout it all, individuals are making progress into new ground. And when the time comes to turn the energy generated in that debate against our foes, its force will be prodigious indeed, and the paths through which it is unleashed will have been reconnoitered.

And they will be joined in this struggle by many of the finest among them, who keep aloft to the dismay of our enemies the battle flags of the unique military power that springs from all of our other resources, chief among them the greatness of the hearts that serve. One day, I hope to discuss with them the satisfaction they feel in having closed the fight with this foe.

But I know that I and my colleagues will have our own successors, too, saddened that they must leave the field while the fight is not yet won, forced to take comfort in the fact that they kept their battle colors aloft, proud and confident that their successors will prove equal to the occasion, and will complete the mission.

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