As a leftist--a pragmatic one--I've had no problem deciding which side to support in the Arab spring. When ordinary people go into the street to overthrow a brutal dictator with tanks, I hope they succeed. I find it sad that a few people on the Left support the tyrants, but then some people are daft.
I'm not talking about pacifists. They oppose violence and war as a matter of principle, and I respect that. I'm talking about flat-out support for tyrants like Gaddafi.
Two of the leading Gaddafi loyalists are people I long admired--and I was wrong to do so. Cynthia McKinney has celebrated the vicious 40-year reign of Gaddafi in many venues in the Middle East, including Libyan television. Celebrating Gaddafi seems to have become her new profession. Hugo Chavez is on the net with a video I've watched in which he claims that the fall of Tripoli's Green square happened not in Libya but in Qatar, where it was staged with actors.
McKinney and Chavez are, of course, trapped in ideologies that make it impossible for the United States to be on the right side of an issue even by accident.
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