An inconvenient truth for the American left

By Thomas Lifson

There is a lot the media refuse to tell Americans about the way the war on terror is going. But one of the dirtiest of the dirty little secrets is that the local left in countries like Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan has turned against the American left, and is beginning to make common cause with America.

The New York Post's respected analyst Amir Taheri made this point earlier in a column this month.

BEFORE the U.S.-led inter ventions in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, much of the Middle Eastern Left shared the views of its U.S. and European counterparts with regard to America.

"We looked to the Left in the West and imitated it,"

says Awad Nasir, one of Iraq's best-known poets and a life-long Communist. "We heard from the United States and Western Europe that being Left meant being anti-American. So we were anti-American. And then we saw Americans coming from the other side of the world to save us from Saddam Hussein - something that our leftist friends and the Soviet Union would never contemplate." [....]

In the Middle East... a good part of the Left, while not especially enamored of the United States, sees it as an ally against Islamist and totalitarian pan-Arab movements

Getting George Soros and Chuck Schumer to admit that the US has become a progressive force in fighting real Islamofascism will be a tough sell. But those who live with the facts on the ground know it, and are beginning to be less shy about acting where their interests lie.

Taheri's column is full of insight and unreported information. Read the whole thing.

Hat tip: Joanne Mandel