by SCOTT SHANE
(Once in a while, the centrist liberal media in the US goes on a soul searching trip and a somewhat true picture of Uncle Sam emerges. The following is one of those articles. Ed.)
The apocryphal comment about a foreign strongman often attributed to Franklin Delano Roosevelt sums it up nicely: he may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.
History is rich with precedents. In 1959, there was Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, darling of American corporations and organized crime, fleeing with an ill-gotten fortune of $300 million as Fidel Castro’s troops reached Havana.
In 1979, it was Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, abandoning the throne in the face of a revolt two years after President Jimmy Carter toasted his country as “an island of stability.”
In 1986, the turn came for Ferdinand Marcos, ousted by the Philippines’ People Power movement five years after Vice President George H. W. Bush told him at a luncheon: “We love your adherence to democratic principles and to the democratic process.”
The New York Times for more