Page 138 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

LEADERS ASK THE TOUGH QUESTIONS

Bush asked if Vlasic had made it to Sudan. “I said I had not and told him
the story of the Sudanese Embassy pushing back on my visa and that it
may have been related to my past and current work. The president joked
that it was a good story and that I should be proud of the fact that I was
rejected by Sudan!” 37
A few minutes later, the president announced that he needed to finish
up so that he could meet with the Saudi ambassador. As he and the Fel-
lows made their way from the Roosevelt Room, through the Oval Office,
and out to the Rose Garden for a final photograph, Vlasic suggested that
the president should feel free to ask the Saudi ambassador to pass on his
thanks for the fantastic dinner King Abdullah had hosted for the Ameri-
can contingent the previous week. “The president looked at me with sur-
prise and asked, ‘Were you at that dinner?’ I told him that I was,” Vlasic
said. “The president smiled and said he had heard about that dinner. I asked
if he’d heard about the sharks, and, laughing, he said he had, adding, ‘Wow,
you’ve had a great year!’
“The president was right: I had an outstanding year. I came away with
a clear understanding of how personal relationships and international diplo-
macy are vital to America’s commitment to international peace and secu-
rity in the world, and I also learned that you do neither the president nor
yourself any favors by not asking the tough questions. As Edmund Burke
once said, ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do
nothing.’ As leaders we have an obligation to speak up, especially in closed-
door discussions. It’s easy to doubt yourself, but when it comes down to it,

37 In July 2008 Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo at the International Criminal Court (ICC)
in The Hague filed ten charges of war crimes against Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir:
three counts of genocide, five counts of crimes against humanity, and two counts of mur-
der. The case was referred to the ICC by the United Nations Security Council in March
2005. The ICC was founded in 2002 to extradite individuals to an international court
whom a country’s own weak justice system could not prosecute. The ICC claims that al-
Bashir “masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part” three tribal
groups in Darfur because of their ethnicity. Moreno-Ocampo is expected to ask a panel
of ICC judges to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir. Although 106 nations have signed
the international convention establishing the ICC, its authority is hampered because pow-
erful countries such as the United States, China, India, and Russia have refused to endorse
it. See Peter Walker, “Darfur Genocide Charges for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir,”
The Guardian, July 14, 2008.

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