Good command decisions

I don't mean to say Ben was a bad leader. No, he was a very good one. He unified the Islanders, who had become polarized under Charles; he made them believe implicitly in Jacob, whom Charles had always treated as incidental (I realize now that Jacob didn't really care what Charles thought, until he needed him). He knew what to do in whatever situation faced him; he knew how to mobilize people to action.

He began recruiting people. Our ranks were greatly depleted. Older Islanders had died, no new ones had been born since the Incident, Alex was the only child we had, a number of pregnant women had died, Charles' strongest supporters were gone—we were greatly diminished. We also had few people who knew anything about science. Ethan and a few others had been allowed to study in America, but we needed people with longer, more specialized training if we were to pick up studying the Island where the Dharma Initiative left off.

Ben sent me on my first trip to the Real World. I was reluctant at first, because of Jacob's rule, but, as Ben said, we weren't really leaving. We were coming back, with more people. I had never thought about leaving the Island. I had a purpose here and nothing anywhere else, no reason or desire to go back to the Canary Islands. My entire world was the Island. Ben thought that was why I should be a recruiter, because I believed so deeply in the Island. So I went to America, that place Isabella and I had dreamed of going, and it was entirely unlike the place we had dreamed of going. It was a bewildering place, and in time I had to learn to ignore everything except what I needed to accomplish. Certain facts, certain places, a certain facility for the culture that I didn't really have. Over the years I did grow used to it, but even now I am an alien in it.

Ben went as well, but never at the same time I did. One of us was always on the Island at any given time, to give our people leadership. He never became attached to that world, as Charles did. He learned it intimately and learned how to manipulate it, but it was never anything more to him than a tool to use. Like me, he always wanted to come back to the Island, where he belonged. But he was an excellent recruiter. He knew how to get people to come—to want to come. Most who came wanted to stay. Those who didn't he found ways to make them stay.

Juliet was a rare exception, one he never fully was able to persuade or hypnotize. Anyone who had seen the job he did on Tom Friendly would think a meek, frightened woman like Juliet would be no trouble, but Juliet was a woman who hid far more inside herself than any of us dreamed and had reserves of strength and stubbornness she never dreamed herself. Ben was at a disadvantage with her anyway, being in love with her. He pushed her too hard in some areas and not hard enough in others. He was emotionally compromised and could not see his way clearly as he usually could. The very same thing happened with Alex. He loved her too much to know how to deal with her. Whenever his emotions were involved, he made the wrong decisions.

This can happen to anyone. He made many good decisions as well. He was the one who started us studying the problem of women's pregnancies, who led the Islanders to live in the Barracks, who gave over leadership of the Temple to Dogen as Charles had refused to do, despite Jacob's personal selection of him. He provided unity. In short, he did all those things I had known he could do and once again proved over and over to me that I was right. Of course I was wrong.