Tunisia, Dictatorships and Terrorism

Ben Ali, the ousted dictator cum president of Tunisia was tolerated, and even welcomed, by western democracies during his 23-year regime. The same tolerance can be seen in the fact that the West continues to "support" Qadaffi in Libya, Mubarak in Egypt, and the systems in place in the Gulf region.
Why?
Surely, the West has not really approved of the supression of political and personal rights that keeps these dictators afloat. Surely, the West would prefer freer, more democratic states in North Africa and the Gulf.
Yet time and again, they are tolerated, even welcomed into the community of nations, much as Pinochet was in Chile, after Allende was overthrown with the help of the American CIA in the 1970s.
Is there something in these rightist regimes that makes democratic states feel more secure? We tolerated Franco in Spain and a whole region of repression in eastern Europe for forty years after World War II, while doing our best to get rid of leftist regimes in South and Central America, and in Asia.
Does democracy lean right? Probably. Does it approve of repression or torture or controlled media or exaggerated accumulations of personal wealth by rightist dictators and their cronies? Probably not, if we look at our own systems of government that guarantee freedom of the press, personal freedom and careful control of police entities so that personal liberties are maintained.
This past weekend, after the popular overthrow of Ben Ali in Tunisia, there were opinion pieces in Europe and America noting that he had been tolerated because his rightist regime cracked down on Al-Qaida and other Muslim terrorist groups. He did that. But, when he came to power in 1987, where was Al-Qaida? It wasn't even on the map back then.
When the American CIA decided it had had enough of Allende's popular leftist regime in Chile, where was Muslim terrorism? It didn't exist in Chile then and it still does not.
Perhaps in North Africa, where leftist terrorists have threatened to overpower several governments, especially in Algeria, and where rightist dictators have ruthlessly suppressed their adherents, we westerners have looked the other way, feeling more comfortable with dictators than with the possibility of extremist control of North Africa, especially in Egypt, whose fall into Al-Qaida hands would threaten the very existence of Israel.
But, now we have the inspiring spectacle of a popular overthrow of a rightist regime in Tunisia, something that the West thought impossible, always fearing a takeover by leftist Muslim fundamentalists instead. Other dictators in the region are surely wary, fearing that they may be the next targets. In Libya over the weekend, no mention was made of Ben Ali's ouster in the government-controlled press or television. But, Qadaffi knows the youth of his country are restless, and so does the King of Morocco and Egypt's Mubarak. Their young, educated populations are restless for what they see on the internet - more freedom and greater personal wealth.
The results are not in yet in Tunisia. We don't know if the promised elections will produce a democratically inclined president and government or just more of the same from Ben Ali's party, which still exists even though he's gone.
Perhaps a little more active support from America and Europe would help the people of North Africa to achieve their goal of personal freedom and representative government. Popular French political analysts are already saying that America got one up on France by commenting early in support of the young Tunisians who made a "jasmine revolution" as they call it.
But, we all need to be aware of our rightist tendencies, and remember that educated people more often than not make the right decision, given the chance.