Iman Moosavi
Research paper
English 101
Hasmik Barsamian
12/11/2015

Who should have the power?

Power can be defined as the ability to influence other people’s life and behavior. It has been common since thousands years ago that a group of people chooses someone to lead them and make important decisions that affect everybody’s life, as today people elect president and senates or before they chose kings and advisors. Usually leaders make up rules and regulation to control the people’s behavior, solve the problems and move towards a goal that a society is seeking. For instance, in the “lord of the flies” novel, one of the first things that kids, who were stuck in an island, did was to choose a leader. After that the leader, who was Ralph made a goal, which was being rescued form the island and made a rule for talking, that was “whoever wanted to talk should have hold the conch”(Golding 43). People who have the power and lead a society, basically directly or indirectly influence everyone’s life, even people who didn’t choose them as a leader or even people of other countries. For example the conflict between Iran’s and U.S or U.S and Russia’s government affects civilians of these countries, as U.S puts economic sanctions against Iran or Russia, it influences the income of these counties citizens. It was only a simple example that how a U.S president can affect an Iranian civilian’s business. I believe in our century people should get selected to have power, which are not thirsty of having power. Wise people who really care about human being and care about future of human’s life should be in power, especially in powerful countries such as the U.S.A, Russia, China ant etc. People who vote should have enough knowledge about the person, who they want to vote for, media should represent honest resumes of candidates, and elections should be honest. Also after someone got elected as person who can have power, people should still be able to impeach him/her if they see this person is not as he represented himself/herself during the election’s period.
Power could be used in different ways to achieve a goal or to change a goal. In the history we see two kinds of same incident that happened in India and In the United States. In India civilians with the leadership of mahatma Gandhi freed their country from British colonial, and in the U.S. a same movement happened with leadership of George Washington. The two leaders used different ways to achieve their goal. Gandhi did a revolution without violence or killing, but Washington did that using force and war. Gandhi believed that “ true power resides in the people and not in the government or legislatures”(lyre 53). Uniting the Indian people, Gandhi raised the power of India, to reduce the power of Britain Empire on India. Gandhi did not use his power to kill, or capture other countries. He said, “power is of two kinds, one is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by act of love”(Lyre 83). From Gandhi’s ideas and his success, we can conclude that leaders can lead by “act of love”, by understanding the civilians, by peace and negotiations.
On the other side, George Washington used his power violently against Britain Empire. Washington achieved his goal, which was the freedom of the United States and he achieved it within a shorter time than Gandhi did, but the way he used his power included killing and violence.
Violent and war is not the only, or the first solution to any problem. In the novel “ lord of the flies”, a group of kids who were stuck in an island and were trying to escape, chose Ralph as the leader, since he was older than the others. There was another kid who wanted to lead the group whose name was Jack, and he was jealous that Ralph got elected, but Ralph still suggested him to be the leader of a group to hunt. Ralph did not use violent to achieve his goals and he was not thirsty of having the power over others. He tried to split the responsibilities, to move forward toward their goal. At first that the kids were following Ralph, no one was murdered and no violent was used. Ralph suggested building a fire as a sign, so any rescue team could notice them and they did so. But after a while, Jack whose thoughts were more about killing and using violence made up his own group and used force to achieve his goals. Using force was the start of killing and savagery in this story. The result was the deaths of two other kids, who were murdered by the effect of savagery that Jack led others to. At the end of the story Jack puts the forest into fire to kill Ralph, but the fire actually helped Ralph, in the way that some ships saw that sign and rescued them. The method rescued them all that Ralph was using at first. Here we see that they achieved their first goal, which was escaping the island, but as soon as violence and savagery started they killed their friends, who were helping them achieve their common goal.
Another incident, which happened about 12 years ago, is Iraq’s war. United Nation, Israel’s intelligence agency, and U.S Government reported that the leader of Iraq is using armed force against his own people to achieve his goals, and they have weapons of mass destruction. U.S. and NATO attacked Iraq to disarm Iraq of these kinds of weapons and spread democracy in that country. George W. Bush, who was the president of the United States, used armed force to remove the violence from Iraq. But not that they did not find any kind of mass destruction weapons, after 12 years Iraq still is not in peace. “The result of that war is raising new radical groups who are more violent that the previous leader of the Iraq, Saddam Hussein”(Byman 608). These results show that war did not solve Iraq’s problem and did not bring Iraqis people democracy.
Meanwhile, there is a problem between Iran’s and the U.S governments about the Iran’s nuclear program, and Barack Obama is using his power in a different way to solve this issue. President Obama believes that “war should not be the first step to solve a conflict, but negotiation and diplomacy should be the first try” (Friedman 3). Even though some politicians believed that war is the only way to stop Iran’s nuclear programs, Barak Obama and his team chose diplomacy instead of war. After years of negotiations, the results show that diplomacy works. The nuclear issue of Iran is being solved with a nuclear deal between Iran and the U.S, without any violence and war. From these two incidents the results of “war” and “diplomacy” to solve an issue is being experienced by “bolds” and “deals on paper”. War in Iraq still continues, more people die and more cities are being destroyed, but diplomacy solved the Iran’s nuclear issue without killing a single person or bombing any city.
In more detail, power and leadership does not belong to only the presidents or politicians. A father, a mother, a teacher, a coach of a sport team and any person whose ideas and decisions affect a group of people can have power to lead. It is essential to consider the affect of leaders in each part of our society. Leaders, who use their power properly, can lead a society to success. For instance, teachers who teach nuclear physics or chemical engineering can affect a nation by how their students will use their knowledge in future. Students can work on making nuclear or chemical bombs to kill and destroy, or they can work on nuclear power stations to bring light in houses. Of course the teachers are not 100% in charge of the behavior of their students after they graduate, by the way they lead and behave with students affects the students. Teachers, who use force and violence in class, as it happens in some schools in the Middle East, might lead the students to use their knowledge in violent ways. Parents directly and indirectly are in charge of their children’s behavior when they grow up. When adults start to live by themselves, start going to work and being among others, their behavior and what they learned during their childhood affects other peoples who are in contact with them. The way parents use their power on their children can lead them to success or failure. Parents, who use force and violence when they want to teach their children something, indirectly teach their children to use violence and force to achieve their goals. These are some examples of how leadership of a teacher or parents affects our society in general.
Further more, leadership of a person not only affects the people who choose them, but also it can affect people of other nations or countries. An example of this case is the political deals that leaders of countries make with each other. In the case of nuclear issue between Iran and the U.S, United States put some economic sanctions against Iran. One of these sanctions banned Iran of importing medicine from other countries. As “The new York Times” reports, “Patients in Iran are dying of treatable diseases because of shortages in life-saving medicines. The past year has been nothing short of catastrophic for the Iranian health-care sector: Imports from American and European drug makers in 2012 were down by an estimated 30 percent since 2011, and they continue to fall.” (The New York Time 2). Some of these medicines were being imported to Iran from Germany, and after the sanctions they became very rare and expensive in Iran, and people in need of these medicines, struggled buying or finding them. Also companies, which sold these medicines to Iran, lost a portion of their business. This is how an elected president in the U.S. affects an Iranian civilian or a medicine company in Germany, which is an U.S ally.
We are living in a sensitive time period in the history. Since thousands years a go many wars happened between nations and as technology improves more and more people die in the wars, since people use technology to make more advanced weapons to kill and destroy. Now many countries have nuclear and hydrogen bombs, which can kill more than two hundred thousands of people in less than a minute. People who have the power, and lead a country should have enough knowledge about what kinds of results their decisions will have. People, who are volunteers to become leaders, should not have the sense of violence or savagery, since these are not the solutions to peace and a better life. Leaders should understand that the “earth” is our only home, and we should not destroy it with wrong decisions that could lead to a nuclear war. Leaders of each part of the society, from a small company or a mayor of a city or a president of a powerful country, should be educated enough about their positions, and the leaders should not be thirsty of having power, but being passion of serving others and solving problems peacefully.

Work Cited

Byman, Daniel. "An Autopsy of the Iraq Debacle: Policy Failure or Bridge Too Far?" Security Studies 17.4 (2008): 599-643. 2008. Web.05 Dec. 2015.
Friedman, Thomas L. "Obama Makes His Case on Iran Nuclear Deal." The New York Times. The New York Times, 14 July 2015. Web. 05 Dec.2015.
Namazi, Siamak. "Blocking Medicine to Iran." The New York Times. The New York Times, 01 Mar. 2013. Web. 09 Dec. 2015.
Iyer, Raghavan Narasimhan. The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2000. Print.
Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. London: Faber and Faber, 2012. Print.
Bulduc, Brian. "The Leadership Secrets of George Washington." WSJ. The Wall Street Journal, 11 Feb. 2012. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.