...as I said, there is no natural leaders, only natural followers...
-"I'ts not my fault, I only followed orders"
Every man is a leader unto himself. Every thing we do, every choice we make is ours alone. No man/woman, in the state known as sanity, ever acts without first deciding too. Even actions taken from fear, intimidation, or coercion, require that final decision to give in.
Such being the case, everyone who decides to follow has first made a leadership decision for himself, to do so. There are no followers without leaders. And if leadership could not come naturally to some, from where did that first leader spring from?
The oft quoted "I only followed orders" line isn't to me so much a leadership/follower issue, but rather an issue of courage and conviction. Men who have stated this in the past lacked both the courage to admit what they had done, as well as the conviction that their actions truly were their own. The statement itself cancels out the prior "It's not my fault", so taken as a whole is nothing less than a confession of guilt; the guilt the man feels for having made a bad decision. But it was still his decision to follow.
Hero and villian are interchangable roles depending on who views any given action. As a freedom loving people we people of the Western world view the acts of the man in the picture above as that of freedom fighter or as a just crusader of a good cause (for we all know that communisim must be fought back at all costs, lest our profit margins fall). To us he seems a hero. But in China he was but a participant in an illegal demonstration. He was a criminal breaking the law, a revolutionary, and bad press to the Chinese government. To them (the Chinese government) he was a villian.
(My source of this paragraphs information is suspect, as its basic facts come from a politically motivated "fact sheet") Noone in the west truly knows how many students died in Tiananmen Square back in 1989. The Chinese official number is 300. The CIA originally reported 2600-3000 dead. Todays western estimate is around 700. Among the soldiers there were an estimated 400 missing or killed. Since most soldiers would have been at roughly the same age as the students, most of those 400 were probably desertions. (My source of this paragraphs information is suspect, as its basic facts come from a politically motivated "fact sheet")
In my previous post I said "and as a crewman I would not have hesitated to run the fellow over if I had been ordered to, or if I KNEW he was an enemy (I might have felt bad about it later, but I would have done it)." I would have also DECIDED to do so, if those criteria fit. I was a hard charging motivated soldier at the time. I was young and thus felt charged with a sense of immortality.
I've mellowed some since then, and feel a bit wiser now. The man in Tiananmen Square, if he still lives, is probably a bit wiser today too. He probably wouldn't step in front of that tank again. But who knows? There is no cure for stupid.
But please, if you will, don't assume to interpret the context of my statements by inserting your own commentary as to MY motivations.
Aelwulfe