Our fascist son-of-a-bitch

From Dodgeblogium, to Harry’s Place, to this, from today’s Observer:

Not the least of the casualties of the Iraq war is the death of anti-fascism. Patriots could oppose Bush and Blair by saying that it wasn’t in Britain’s interests to follow America. Liberals could put the UN first and insist that the United States proved its claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the court of world opinion. Adherents to both perspectives were free to tell fascism’s victims, ‘We’re sorry to leave you under a tyranny and realise that many more of you will die, but that’s your problem.’

The Left, which has been formally committed to the Enlightenment ideal of universal freedom for two centuries, couldn’t bring itself to be as honest. Instead millions abandoned their comrades in Iraq and engaged in mass evasion. If you think that it was asking too much to expect it to listen to people in Iraq when they said there was no other way of ending 35 years of oppression, consider the sequel. Years after the war, the Kurdish survivors of genocide and groups from communists through to conventional democrats had the right to expect fraternal support against the insurgency by the remnants of the Baath Party. They are being met with indifference or active hostility because they have committed the unforgivable sin of cooperating with the Americans. For the first time in its history the Left has nothing to say to the victims of fascism.

Or, as I recall Mark Steyn putting it in a recent piece, the left now echoes Cold War anti-Communist and pro-any-other-anti-Communist USA in saying: “Saddam Hussein may be a son-of-a-bitch but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.”