Essay: Marcos, Baby Doc - Why Not the Rest?

The falls of Ferdinand Marcos and "Baby Doc" Duvalier have inspired a flurry of agitation with the simple theme, Let's do the same elsewhere, everywhere. The hit-wish list is breathtakingly long, including South Korea, Indonesia, Pakistan and many others. Just pull the plug of U.S. support for all these nasty dictators, so goes the argument, and democracy will flourish.

This represents a naive view of democracy, of the extent of U.S. power and of the nature of different regimes too easily swept up under the label "right-wing dictatorships" (or, with special enthusiasm, "tyrannies").

Some critics blame the U.S. for the existence...

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