This Tunisian girl’s blog is censored in Tunisia. She is risking her life to write it. 

Daniel Larison asks a question about the United States’ policy of “not taking sides” in this conflict:

Suppose instead that the administration might be able to work privately for an easing of the crackdown and addressing some of the protesters’ grievances, but that it could only do this by publicly appearing not to take sides. Would that make the administration’s public neutrality more acceptable? Is publicly taking sides intended to help the protesters, or mainly to take a self-satisfying, ineffective stand?

The point of taking a stand is this. That girl, and hundreds of millions like her in this region, have heard the United States say that we don’t take sides–that we don’t have a particularly strong feeling about scenes like this. That we insist upon freedom of expression for ourselves, but don’t much see why it should be important to her. 

Does my government seriously imagine that she–and everyone like her–will forget that we didn’t take her side? Al Qaeda says they’re on their side. Surely we do not want al Qaeda to be the loudest voice in their support?  

We know full well what’s going on in Tunisia–and they know we know it. How stupid could we possibly be to declare in public to the entire Tunisian people that we “don’t take sides” about this? 

One Tunisian lamented that Tunisia was no longer a police state, it had become a state run by the mafia. “Even the police report to the Family!” he exclaimed. With those at the top believed to be the worst offenders, and likely to remain in power, there are no checks in the system. The daughter of a former governor recounted that Belhassen Trabelsi flew into her father’s office in a rage — even throwing an elderly office clerk to the ground — after being asked to abide by laws requiring insurance coverage for his amusement park. Her father wrote a letter to President Ben Ali defending his decision and denouncing Trabelsi’s tactics. The letter was never answered, and he was removed from his post shortly thereafter. The GOT’s strong censorship of the press ensures that stories of familial corruption are not published. The Family’s corruption remains a red line that the press cross at their own peril.

Absolutely, fine, work behind the scenes to ease the crackdown. Use what influence we have in private diplomacy to persuade the government to address the protesters’ grievances. But it is stupid beyond stupid and craven beyond craven to fail to say, publicly, that the United States stands against this kind of corruption, stands against this kind of abuse, stands against the censorship of blogs like the Tunisian girl’s, stands against presidencies-for-life.  

I am against all of that. I believe every American is, if he or she thinks about it even for five seconds. And if you think our biggest worry is losing the support of the Tunisian government, think again: Ben Ali’s biggest worry is losing our support. He needs us more than we need him, believe me.

Declaring American support for the protesters, writes Larison, would ‘wreck a reasonably solid relationship with Tunisia for no discernible reason except that “we are in favor of democracy.”’

That sentence speaks for itself. The policy inspired by it speaks, unfortunately, to everyone in the world.