Epilogue
to the Twentieth-
Anniversary Edition
by Warren Bennis
When I last revised On Becoming a Leadersix years ago, the
world was anxiously waiting to see if the United States would
go to war with Iraq. Today we all know the tragic answer. The
question that now torments the United States is when we will
get out of Iraq, where we have been fighting longer than in
World War II. That conflict has cost the lives of more than
4,000 American soldiers, left thousands more grievously
wounded, and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
The war has also cost the United States almost a trillion dol-
lars, money raised by borrowing from China and other nations
because, for the first time in American history, we went to war
without raising taxes to pay for it.
The United States was also suffering economically during
the previous revision. In 2002 the nation was still reeling from
a recession that saw the stock market tumble more than 40
percent. Today, as I write this, the country is in the midst of0465014088_02.qxd:0738208175_02.qxd 1/9/09 1:33 PM Page 199