An Arab Tiananmen

In more sense than one. The same level of demonstrations, the same fissure in the regime, the same partial defection of the military. Perhaps thousands are dead already, but democracy may yet be the winner.

The only thing that democratic countries can do at the moment is make it clear that there will be no return to the easy days when Gaddafi shmoozed about with European leaders like Blair, Brown, Sarkozy, and Berlusconi. A Tiananmen massacre should be punished with Tiananmen sanctions, at the very least.

One other point the fact that this uprising now threatens to topple one of the Arab worlds most extreme regimes shows that all this talk of the Arab uprising being a Islamist terror-supporting fifth-column is pure nonsense.