There are different types of leaders. Speakers are the type of leaders who tell people what they want to hear without actually doing anything practical to change the situation for the better. People will listen to those leaders and admire their courage in saying what no other politicians dared to say publicly. They are heroes of no action. All they achieve is to make people feel good during their speeches. And then nothing changes. No step is taken toward a practical solution. In reality, solutions are normally complex. Each leader is expected to take a step toward that solution. Motivational speeches without changing the structure have no impact on solving the problem. Actually, those speakers know it well. Their aim is not to solve anything. As long as people consider them heroes, practical achievements are not important. Social activists should give motivational speeches, not politicians.
Short-term policy-making is another type of leadership. Unfortunately, elections inevitably push politicians toward short-term policies that have a real impact on the outcome of the election. Long-term environmental concerns some decades ago wouldn’t be a wise election strategy for any party. The cost is now vivid. Elections encourage short-term politics which is disastrous. Shedding light on the cost of short-term politics should be among the most important battlefields for activists in the upcoming elections.
As an example, it’s clear that continuing to kill innocent Palestinians will have a huge long-term negative effect on achieving a sustainable solution to the conflict. To ensure no long-term peace will ever be achieved make sure to encode anger and hatred in a nation’s mind that lives and grows up experiencing total destruction and horrors of war. Biden knows it well. Other leaders know it too. They are removing a symptom and replacing it with a profound disease that will puzzle the next generations on how to fix it.
Politicians who decide based on long-term policies cannot say let’s finish this war first and then we’ll think about what to do next. Each day of this war is a step away from the long-term solution.
People gathered in the US to show their support for Israel. It was hard to understand what they wanted. They asked to release all hostages but also they didn’t want a ceasefire. One should have asked what they wanted. It would be outrageous to expect US politicians to ask this question. instead, they did what everyone predicted: they gave motivational speeches.
UPDATE 1:
In this conflict, other countries try to encourage the US to show leadership and this means finding a way out of this conflict and not making the conflict even more complex by viewing that from one perspective only. But if the US fails to do that other countries are willing to show leadership by influencing the conflict. This challenges the US. However, no matter who leads the way, the best thing for the world is that the conflict is directed toward a long-term solution where both sides abide by international laws.
Clearly, this doesn’t mean conflicts in other parts of the world should be forgotten.