Most of us are followers. A few are natural leaders and are looked to by followers for direction and calls for action. The military test is not the only one, although it was just used in our country. The threat of death and destruction while a leader pulls victory out of defeat is the stuff manufactured by story tellers. We know Alexander and Julius Caesar were actual battlefield commanders who conquered the known world. We remember the history of the Napoleons of later times who planned on making themselves emperors or dictators like Hitler. Such leaders destroyed much of the world pursuing their goals and changed history.
We continue to fixate on a kind of heroism in the shoot-outs of mythological Wyatt Earps and dishonorable enemies facing each other in a “fair” display of quick drawing a pistol, pulling a trigger first and letting daylight through a pretty despicable bad guy. Life is not that way according to those who study the actual combat of so-called western lawmen who would just as soon as ambush a target in one way or another. Combatants spend an awful lot of time trying to kill off one another any way they can and avoid being killed themselves.
Yasser Arafat was not a gunman. He blatantly toted one into the United Nations Assembly one memorable day. He gloried in a military uniform although he used others to maim and kill by supporting Al-Fattah and Hezbollah. Yasser Arafat has died but he was no leader in the mould of M.K. Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. He was a fictionalized creature who was given accolades as the father of the Palestinian people even while all the negotiations to create a state in which he was a part produced nothing but a state of war by organized gangs in Gaza or the West Bank who made martyrs out of mesmerized children, girls and adults to blow themselves to bits as they attacked innocent civilians. The world has many times applauded these self destructive acts while they condemn the military defense of a democratic state to stamp out terror.
While most of the 1.2 billion Muslims mourn the self-created leader, Yasser Arafat, another part of the world is glad he is gone. There is hope that the peace process will once again be initiated by other leaders in other countries to bring the terrorists in all lands to stop their madness and create the two state solution without Jewish settlers encroaching on land that might have been theirs two thousand years ago but is clearly not theirs today.
No doubt there will be a struggle for primacy in the Arab/Islamic world and the Palestinian people will choose someone who will try to work with real leaders in neighboring states and particularly with the reelected “leader” of the United States. They are all, of course, Statesmen.