George Galloway is no friend of the Arab world It was this philosophy that led him to stand before Saddam Hussein in 1994 and utter those infamous words:"Sir I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability, and I want you to know that we are with you, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-Quds [until victory, until Jerusalem]." And it is this philosophy that led him to oppose so vociferously not just the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but also the 2001 intervention in Afghanistan after 9/11, and of course last year's intervention in Libya. No matter that it is the Taliban who are now responsible for fully four-fifths of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, according to the United Nations. It is Nato, according to Mr Galloway, that bears true responsibility. No matter that those same insurgents are guilty of throwing acid in the faces of girls who go to school, and stringing up children suspected of "spying" for the government. Afghans have a legitimate right, says Mr Galloway, to resist foreign occupation and determine their own future. The same narrative has been in evidence in his opposition to last year's "imperialist war" in Libya. The Libyans should be the ones to decide their own destiny, he insists, free from foreign interference. No matter that when ordinary Libyans tried to do just that, their leader responded with such murderous brutality that a failure by Nato to intervene would most certainly have led to the collapse of that pro-democracy uprising and the maintenance of Gaddafi's autocratic rule. Likewise in Syria. "Hands off!" cries Mr Galloway. But what does "hands off" really mean? In effect, it means leaving the Syrian people to stew in their own juice. Even in Iraq, a war disastrous both in its timing and its execution, Mr Galloway's pious opposition has a very obvious, and very unsavoury, flip side. This then, is the reality of the man now leading this "Bradford spring." He claims to be a champion of democracy. Indeed, for the sixth time in his career, he has been its direct beneficiary. But just how well would his policies for North Africa and the Middle East really help the people living there to fulfil their democratic ambitions? The answer, of course, is not at all. "All it takes for evil to triumph," Edmund Burke once famously remarked, "is for good men to do nothing." And Mr Galloway is not even a good man. George Grant is a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society