Those Dictators We Love
White House press secretary Jay Carney offered a sharp rebuttal of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s op-ed in The New York Times recently by saying, “unlike Russia, the United States stands up for democratic values and human rights around the world.” History paints a somewhat different story. In contrast to President Barack Obama’s contention that the past 70 years of global security have been anchored by America’s “exceptionalism,” the United States has in fact never had a problem overthrowing democratically elected leaders or supporting the type of murderous thugs who valued human rights the same way people value real estate in Damascus these days. This time frame was, as legendary journalist John Pilger recently put it , “decades of militarism camouflaged as democracy.” In Southeast Asia, the most notorious American supported thug of the Cold War was Suharto, the iron-fisted tyrant of Indonesia. Suharto, flush with U.S. financial aid, rampaged against...