Even worse than that would be a self-centered bid for more lifestyle subsidies at the expense of planned city developments. More often than not, when people let rage blind them, they accomplish just the opposite of what they set out to do. One should use the press and the courts to solve injustices. When corruption gets in the way, peaceful civil resistance can make sense. But even that can be abused.
Indian leader M. K. Gandhi, who is thought of as a father of noncooperation as a form of civil resistance, warned of this himself. He didn't advise the masses to just run out one arbitrary day and stage a huge country-crippling protest against the government.
There are steps to be taken to get one?s grievances heard and responded to and when those steps are skipped, one becomes guilty of rash and shameful behavior.
There are good examples and bad examples. As a good example, we should remember the Indian Hindus and Muslims who worked so well together to rid their country of cruel racist British overlordship in India. As a bad example, we should remember how those same two groups failed to work together after they attained their independence. The country was split between them and border fighting continues to this day.
Those planning for a day of demonstrations ought to consider whether, by having such a day, they are skipping a few steps.
I can think of, at least, ten questions which any person or group of people in any country might ask themselves if they have grievances.
• How can I help the people I perceive as victims of human rights abuses in a legal way or how can I help myself in a legal way if I believe I am such a victim?
• Have I made, or have we (if we are a group) made our grievances known to the responsible party?
• Can I define my position and recommend a solution that gives the responsible party a clear and reasonable understanding of how I believe they should act?
• Have I or has anyone written to the newspapers about the injustices we are concerned about?
• If I disagree with an ideology or cultural tradition, is my position a minority or majority position? (Minorities can rarely reasonably expect as much representation as the majority).
• If my position is a minority position, but I am a victim of human rights abuse, can I content myself with an awareness raising campaign and wait patiently?
• Have we filed a formal complaint or hired a lawyer?
• Have my efforts been defeated by corruption?
• Can I identify the source and scope of the corruption?
• If bad laws are the issue, shall we campaign for better laws or better politicians or both?
I think the need to answer these questions is self-evident. A person who has not thought all this through is liable to get confused and to be misled and even used by people who have the wrong agenda.
Where have we seen that happen before? Let me tell you a story, the details of which are not easily confirmed, but which should, nonetheless, illustrate the danger of rash impulsive behavior. This is a story of students lacking forethought and adequate commitment to ethics whose actions were actually counterproductive to their goals. The story is one I think most people in this region of the world might find interesting considering this is the region most affected by their actions. Read on and consider the moral.
This story is about Iran and Iranians who have had a long-standing problem with the US. This story is also about the US presidents that have had to deal with Iran — some good and some bad. Bear with my history lesson while I build up to the moral of my story.
Who were the good presidents? There were not many and maybe just one. I would argue that Carter was good even though he was the president in office when the Iranians attacked the US Embassy and took 52 Americans hostage. What did Carter do to upset them so much? The answer is really quite ridiculous. Carter, following the bad advice of Henry Kissinger, merely welcomed the ailing Shah to medical care in the US. He also naively believed Kissinger, who said that the Iranian people loved the Shah and said as much in public. Iranians had reason to be upset, but was such an unethical violation of international laws and human rights proportional to what Carter did?
Considering what President Eisenhower did to Iran with British Prime Minister Churchill in 1953, the Iranians had reason to be angry much earlier than this with somebody else — not Carter. If you don't know, do a Google search with the words, "Operation Ajax," which will lead you to articles explaining how they covertly replaced their democratic leader with a puppet dictator.
The Iranians were only just then liberating themselves from that mischief.
But by having taken, for over a year, 52 personnel at the US Embassy in Tehran as hostages, militant students effectively made Carter's popularity in the US plummet and caused him to be defeated in the polls. Another way of saying this is that these students helped put pro-Israeli Ronald Reagan into office as his replacement.
Carter has been misunderstood in Iran and maybe the whole Arab world. What did the Iranians know except that Carter was in office during the Islamic revolution and he welcomed the Shah to the US? Let's look at some more facts. Carter brokered the Camp David Accords, which led the Zionists to relinquish the land they stole from Egypt. If Reagan were in office at that time, he would have done just the opposite and helped the Zionists to keep the Sinai Peninsula.
While much of the Arab world has long resented Egypt?s recognition of Israel and therefore has viewed pictures of Carter holding hands with Begin and Sadat with disgust, there are a few points this region should bear in mind. Carter and Sadat were better men than Reagan and Mubarak. US foreign policy under these presidents was very different. Carter was warning the country about the pro-Israeli lobby while Reagan cultivated that lobby, relied on them and did their bidding.
Let's look at some more facts. Carter has written extensively on the predicament that Zionists have created for the Middle East and the world. But do the Iranians know this? No. Carter was guilty of only one faux pas. He listened to Kissinger who fed him misinformation about Iran and about the Shah.
To this day, I don't understand why a Democratic president trusted and consulted with a man from the opposite party with a history of engaging in dubious conflict of interest activities and which, in this case, ultimately led to Carter getting replaced by a Republican president.
The worst part of this story is that the Iranians played into Kissinger's hands. Regretfully, Carter's efforts to bring peace to the region were probably sabotaged by, more than anything or anyone else, the Iranians who allowed their blind rage to be exploited by Kissinger. They do not realize that both Carter and they were duped by Kissinger into unwittingly helping him put a Republican back into the president's office — in this case, one who happened to be pro-Israeli.
The moral should be roughly understood as: Don?t let someone with an agenda take advantage of your rage and blind you to the correct answers to questions one through ten and don?t act like destructive vigilantes rather than constructive, ethical power brokers truly interested in justice.
