Guest column by Kim Ives, published in Haiti Liberté weekly, edition of April 10, 2013.

A chorus of outrage is building against former Haitian president Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier as he sits in the dock of a Haitian court, charged with crimes against humanity during his 15-year rule. However, the U.S. government remains strangely and completely silent. A 40-year-old trove of diplomatic cables, newly unearthed by WikiLeaks and reported exclusively here by Haiti Liberté, helps explain why.

It is a phenomenon rarely noted that virtually every left-wing government since the Second World War, almost all of them elected, has faced vicious, sometimes violent, obstruction by its enemies both internal and foreign. Many were overthrown. As Henry Kissinger explained just before the American-backed coup against Salvador Allende in Chile, "The issues are too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."

Not surprisingly, the histories of all such governments have, for better or worse, been deeply influenced by such hostile interventions.

A lot has been said about Syria since the popular uprising started in March 2011.

In what follows I present 10 myths that have been circulating around since the very beginning. Many of these myths are, unfortunately, still being reinforced by many Western journalists and left-leaning anti-imperialism activists.

1. The United States and its allies have been supplying arms to the Syrian armed opposition.

2. The fighting that has been taking place in Syria has an entirely sectarian nature and as such can be accurately described as a civil war.