The great Johann Hari weighs in on the Iran democracy movement, and the strange disinclination of many on the left to muster much enthusiasm for it:
The students of Iran are trying to foment a second Iranian revolution - one in favour of human rights and democracy - and, to my dismay, the very people who should be on their side are more interested in slating George W. Bush...There is a reason the students in Tiananmen Square built a replica of the Statue of Liberty. There is a reason the Iranian students are so pro-American. They see that US support - and perhaps intervention - might be the only way of breaking the stultifying deadlock they find themselves in.
The US, they know, is not always bad; its people want to do good in the world and its power provides it with the opportunity to do great things. Yet because the Iranian students do not fit into the increasingly popular public view of US-bad, opponents-of-US-good, they are being ignored.
When they do achieve freedom of speech and travel, they will ask what we did to help them. Worryingly, as things stand right now only Amnesty International and George W. Bush - of all people - will be able to say that they backed the cause.