February 2011 Archive

America is confronted once again with the near demise of a head of state with which we had established a diplomatic relationship: Colonel Muhammar Qaddafi, who by all accounts is a brutal dictator. American foreign policy has a long history of associating with questionable characters and brutal dictators such as Pinochet in Chile, The Somozas in Nicaragua and the Duvaliers in Haiti and the Shah of Iran. This list, sadly is far from exhaustive.

The realpolitik approach is that these people are in authority, as head of states, often illegitimate by democratic standards, and that we do not have a choice but to deal with them.  If we only associated with people we approved of, we would be totally isolated.

However we need to have the moral courage to exert as much influence as possible to obtain the respect of human rights. We have often failed in this endeavor. We have most often opted for our best interest in stability, security and financial advantages to the detriment of our ideals of freedom and democracy. As Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, wrote: “We should signal more clearly that we align ourselves with 21st-century aspirations for freedom rather than the brutality of a medieval ruler.”

We, as individuals, also find ourselves in similar situations when dealing with people whose behavior we object to or find totally reprehensible.  Would you buy a house from someone you know was a convicted rapist or would you rent out your apartment to a child molester? Would you work for someone who you knew for a fact was defrauding his clients and/or cheating on his taxes? Would you sign a contract with a Holocaust denier?

Where do we draw the line between an association we can tolerate and one we can’t, and what are the criteria that will determine our decision?

Let me list some ideas. We should:

1.     Make sure we make a distinction between hearsay and facts. We have to be reasonably sure that the information we have is accurate.

2.     Be aware that bad associations taint us, causing damage to our own reputation and may, in some cases, make us an accomplice to a crime.

3.     Ask ourselves whether by our association we are somehow enabling the individual in question in pursuing the precise behavior we disapprove of?

4.      Be aware there may be a cost to our refusal to associate ourselves with certain individuals or organizations and be ready to pay for that cost.

5.     Remember that ultimately it is our decision to make and that we may have more options than we think. I never like to hear the sentence “we had no other choices” because most to the time we do.

As Roy Disney once said:

“It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.”

Machiavelli in The Prince wrote that for a leader it is far safer to be feared than loved, if you cannot do both.

Fear indeed is a powerful emotion that motivates many of our actions. The fear of being fired at work will keep us from doing something detrimental to the company we work for. The fear of suffering from an avoidable disease will motivate us to have healthy eating habits and to exercise. Fear of the government guides most people, particularly in autocratic regimes.

However fear has its limits and when it is finally overcome, little can resist its liberation power. Once people have nothing to lose, or fear, and nothing to hope for, they become desperate. That becomes dangerous for those in power. President Obama said yesterday in the interview with Bill O’Reilly on Fox: “Suppression is not sustainable.” When people are desperate and angry they are ready to explode.

That is how revolutions come about, sometimes triggered by one particular event.

The revolution in Tunis was triggered by the self-immolation by fire of Mohamed Bouazizi, a fruit vendor who had been humiliated by the police. He felt he had nothing left to lose or fear and committed the desperate act of suicide. His act was recorded on mobile phones, posted on the Internet and then broadcast by Al Jazeera. His desperate act led to street protests that eventually toppled the government of Tunisia.

The events in Egypt, according to yesterday’s New York Times were triggered in part by the story of Khaled Said. Khaled had discovered evidence of police corruption and revealed it on an Internet posting. He was arrested and beaten to death by the police. The beating was photographed by passerby. Within five days of his death, a human rights activist created a Facebook page called “We are all Khaled Said” with photos of his battered and bloody face. In a very short time the Facebook page had 473,000 users. As Ahmed Zidan, an online political activist said: “There were many catalysts of the uprising. The first was the brutal murder of Khaled Said.”

We are most likely not heads of state, but we are all to some degree leaders. Can we be both feared and loved? I think it is possible. As parents we try to find the delicate balance between authority and love. Such balance can also sometimes be found in the military. We read and hear of stories about commanders who were both feared (court martial is always a possibility if one does not obey orders) and yet loved by their men who sometimes would even risk their lives for their leaders.

My grandfather, Charles Gabriel Petter, was one of them. He was a captain in the French Army during WW1 and he was loved by his men because they knew that he would (and had) risked his life for them.

As Napoleon Bonaparte once said:

“A leader is a dealer in hope.”