Gregory Scoblete of the RealClearWorld blog believes he’s discovered a contradiction in my writing. Last week, I posted in this space about a recent Brookings Institution survey that found a sharp rise in Arab support for the Iranian nuclear program. The cause of this newfound fervor in the Arab world for a Persian nuke is that it would be seen, rightly, as a finger in the eye of the West. Of all the reasons to be insouciant, never mind enthusiastic, about Iran getting the bomb, this has to be the most puerile and cynical. As I had argued in the past, there are many things that are popular in the Arab street that are fundamentally irrational and illiberal and that no American government could in good faith support as a policy matter merely because Arabs think we should, and the Brookings poll validates that contention. To take just one issue on which Arab and American public opinion diverge drastically, and which I always stress to liberals who obsess about how America is viewed on the “Arab Street”: the criminalization of homosexuality.

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Scoblete points to a column I wrote in April regarding the revolution that ousted Kyrgyz president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev. The United States had supported the Bakiyev regime to the hilt so as to protect its Transit Center at Manas, a crucial link in the supply chain for the war effort in Afghanistan. It had all the aspects of the classical “but he’s our son-of-a-bitch” relationship: tens of millions of dollars paid in what was essentially an extortion racket between us and the Russians, all the while Bakiyev jailed his opponents and shut down avenues of peaceful dissent. That uncritical support arrived with a cost, as I discovered on the streets of Bishkek in the days after the revolution. As I wrote at the time:

Soft-pedaling criticism of dictators who assist this or that American foreign policy objective, ­whether it be hosting a military base or supplying us with oil, may bring promised “stability,” but it is always illusory. As the behavior of Kurmanbek Bakiyev demonstrated, authoritarians are by their nature irrational and unpredictable. Worse, when an authoritarian regime falls, the people who take over naturally feel resentment toward anyone who supported those who oppressed them.

From this, Scoblete concludes: “Got it: we should worry about the trade off between authoritarian dictators and their put upon citizens unless those citizens happen to be Arabs, whose views are irrational, paranoid and ignorant and should thus be ignored.”

But Scoblete is mixing unrelated points, akin to comparing watermelons (a staple of Kyrgyzstan) and pistachios (for which Iran is famous). In his view, you either follow the dictates of “global publics” — an approach to which Scoblete seems to subscribe — or ignore them in the pursuit of some wicked, unilateralist, neocon agenda.

A brief examination of the substantive issues being polled would be useful. With respect to Kyrgyzstan, the US policy of near limitless support for Bakiyev directly harmed American national interests. In the aftermath of his ouster, we are left with a country led by former opposition figures rightly wary of American intentions, because America did little as they were being persecuted by a kleptocratic regime. Never mind the immorality of propping up a loathsome autocrat; the five years of American support for Bakiyev will redound harshly against “hard” American interests like bashing rights.

As for Arab public opinion on the Iranian nuclear program, there is widespread consensus, across the political spectrum in America (and the rest of the free world), that Iran should not have one. Of course, there is major disagreement about how this problem should be dealt with, but on the fundamental question of whether or not it is desirable for the regime to possesses nuclear weapons technology, only those on the hard left and paleoconservative right are unbothered by the prospect. There is no contradiction, none whatsoever, in arguing that Kyrgyz public opinion should be duly considered when it comes to our relations with a reviled dictator who abuses the citizens of that country, and that ever-capricious Arab public opinion should be duly ignored when it comes to Iran’s quest for a nuclear bomb.