America's Love-Affair With Dastardly Dictators

We really ought to have a dictator of our own because, apparently, we love them [to death]. Our dictator d'jour is Pakistan's General Musharraf. The Bush Administration has funded this dictator to the tune of $5 billion. How much is in his Swiss bank account?

Why do we love dictators? Do we secretly have a love-affair with strong men? Do we subliminally long for a king? Our history seems to prove it. Look at the list of dictators that the U.S. Government has funded to prop-up their power-hold on the people of their nations:

Pervez Musharraf
Saddam Hussein
Shah of Iran
Augusto Pinochet
Suharto
Anastasio Somoza
Stroessner
Hugo Banzer
Saud family
Noriega
Papa Doc, Baby Doc
Trujillo
Fulgencio Batista
Armas
Fuentes
Montt

...to name the most obvious.

Why would a nation, the world's first democracy, a nation that fought a bitter war to gain its independence from a ruthless monarch, prop-up other sordid scoundrels around the world? For those of us who have paid atention in our history classes, we know. Which is precicely the problem for America: their history classes were most often a boring babble of dates and names which posed few challenges to the intellect. A nation of history-illiterates is the prize of scoundrels and other ignoble leaders.