you and Steven seem to be under the same misapprehension that these are "our dictators"
An American diplomat once said of Marcos "he may be a bastard, but he's our bastard". The Shah of Iran said to Kermit Roosevelt, who managed Operation Ajax, the coup that restored him to his throne that he owed his throne ""to God, my people, my army -- and to you."
In many - not all, but probably most - of the cases under discussion, the dictators were either installed by US action, restored to lost positions by US action, or sustained far beyond the point where they would otherwise have collapsed by US support. The responsibility is not (in most cases; there are exceptions) exclusively ours, but to the extent that it is ours, we should not hide from it. |
