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Sondhi Limthongkul was pleading for public sympathy on Tuesday night. We regret causing a major inconvenience, he said, referring to the seizure of Suvarnabhumi Airport, but we have no choice. His political movement, the People's Alliance for Democracy, has been the target for sporadic bomb attacks, and the rising death and injury tolls are adding to the tragedy of October 7, when police fired tear gas at Parliament-bound protesters, resulting in deaths and injuries.

The PAD's pain is understandable. Its reaction and responses are hardly so. When thousands of PAD members blockaded Suvarnabhumi Airport on Tuesday and penetrated the passenger terminal and scuffled with officials, causing a total shutdown of the airport, what unfolded before us was the transformation of Luke Skywalker into Darth Vader.

Imagine a son about to board a plane to go back home to see his dying mother. Imagine patients in need of urgent medical help stranded. Business deals delayed or cancelled. Countless appointments missed. The point is, if these circumstances seem trivial in the PAD's eyes, how can the movement ever expect others, never mind the whole world, to appreciate its own situation? Understanding works both ways. If the PAD wants others' sympathy, it has to give it out. It's as simple as that.

The PAD's latest, most provocative and controversial strategy may yet prove effective. With the military caught in the middle and reluctant to use force either to end the airport blockade or remove the current government, Somchai Wongsawat's administration is looking like a bigger lame duck by the hour. But whatever the outcome of the Suvarnabhumi siege, the PAD will not get the only thing that is as important as Somchai's resignation - public understanding and sympathy.

This is not civil disobedience. It's the PAD holding travellers hostage. It's the PAD's leaders telling their loyal followers that if someone inflicts harm on you, it's okay to get even at the expense of innocent others. The airport seizure caused more trouble to people whose sympathy the PAD had sought than the politicians the movement has tried to dislodge. The travellers suffered real human ordeals. Somchai and his government are only dealt political blows. How the PAD measures the plight of these two groups goes a long way to telling us its principles and ideologies. Having fought Thaksin Shinawatra and his alleged nominees by standing firm on the issue of conflicts of interests, the PAD has found itself in serious danger of being unravelled ideologically through conflicting values.

Whereas the government and Thaksin must be smiling, the real price the PAD is paying is not the dwindling sympathy from neutrals or the ammunition the airport affair has given its critics. "I'm so saddened and disappointed," said a man who only weeks ago went in and out of Government House on a daily basis to support the movement. "I'm sorry I joined this rally." He had watched the PAD cross the line before and tried to understand the "necessity". This time it was simply too much.

It is people like him who are the real cost of the Suvarnabhumi strategy. But the biggest price to pay may be from those PAD members joining the airport blockade or cheering the move back to Government House. The leaders have won their unquestioned loyalty, but risk blurring their consciences once and for all.

The PAD used to be a political movement that did the wrong things for the right reasons. It's impossible to consider the airport seizure to be morally right because it affects hundreds of thousands of innocent people - the passengers, their relatives, friends, or business partners. That damage cannot be translated into financial figures. That nobody got hurt in the airport drama doesn't mean there is no pain.

The PAD leaders claim they are abandoning "Ahimsa" (non-violence and non-aggression) because its members have become victims and nobody is helping. That is all right as long as what happened on Tuesday is shrouded with proclaimed noble goals. When the action is explained in the simplest terms - "We want you to resign or a large number of innocent travellers won't be going home" - what is the difference between that and holding innocent passers-by at knife-point to force a police officer to lay down his gun?