Leading from the front versus leading from behind

In the wake of the Jordanian pilot’s immolation at ISIS’s blood-stained hands, King Abdullah II of Jordan vowed to strike back quick and hard. And that’s precisely what he did. With a long and strong military background, Abdullah isn’t just making noise.  He knows how to wage war:

Abdullah at the controls

Abdullah and his troops

More photos and a video here.

What Abdullah is doing looks remarkably like leadership from right up front, done by a man trained to lead and comfortable with doing so.

It’s not Obama’s fault, of course, that he has no military background. &It his is fault, though, that he’s a self-defined “lead from behind” kind of guy, which pretty much translates to a follower or, in his case, a slobbering crawler. It’s also not his fault that he’s a girly guy — that is, after all, what Americans wanted — but you just can’t help contrasting the photos above with some of the more famous Obama images:

Obama on bike big

Obama throws baseball

Obama's umbrella problems

Obama's grace in the water

One doesn’t have to engage in manly pursuits to be a leader but, gosh darn it, it’s really hard to imagine those filthy, bearded, gun-toting ISIS types taking Ms. Obama . . . I’m sorry, I mean President Obama seriously.  More than that, I’m really mad at Obama right now for making me long for a hereditary Arab Muslim leader over the elected leader of my own country.

(It helps that, from what I’ve understood, Israel has long had a civil relationship with Jordan, making it one of the more appealing countries in the Middle East.  You can tell a lot about a country by its relationship with Jews.  Those that treat Jews well, even if only comparatively well when judged against other countries near them in space or time, also tend to be countries in which the rest of the citizens also do well and are blessed with more freedom than found in Jew-hating nations.)

(Hat Tip to MacG for the Abdullah photos.)