What with current events, it would seem to be a good time for some of those pointy-headed PhD people to get busy and write an ‘annotated’ catalogue of all the dictators we’ve supported since WWII. It would be a bestseller! Let’s give it a try. First of course, there's Syngman Rhee in South Korea. He had collaborated big-time with the Japanese occupiers earlier, who, if memory serves, had been our enemies back then. By contrast, Kim Il Sung up north was a national hero who had fought the Japanese rulers.

Next door in Vietnam was a bewildering parade of Thieus, Diems, and Kys and many a rigged election to boot. Not much continuity, but each of those allies made off with a substantial bundle of bucks and reserved a seat on one of those helicopters winging away from Ho Chi Minh City –Oh, oh! Sorry- Saigon. Let’s skip Chiang Kai-Shek and the Colonels- they’re old hat. Remember our very best ‘friend du jour’ –Don Rumsfeld’s one-time bosom buddy- Saddam Hussein? We funded –and helped plan- his war against Iran, manufactured and supplied him with poison gas to smite those nasties that wanted to run their own country. No helicopter ride for him, although he did end up airborne. By the way, that so-called spider hole is a fiction, apparently thought up to entertain the folks back home.

Speaking of Iran, let’s not forget that fella’ on the Peacock Throne, pre-revolution. He had been a croupier or some such in Vegas when the CIA found him, saw he was ‘just the ticket’, and, after assassinating his democratically-elected predecessor –Mohammed Mossadegh, who had nationalized the Iranian oil industry how dare he!), anointed him Shah. Reza Pahlavi did have that much-desired quality of being far-sighted –conveniently looking beyond his starving people to cover his consort (I forgot the Persian word for that) with diamonds, rubies, and pearls. They say he threw the best parties ever (wonder where he got the money), with the finest scotch and champagne flowing like water –all that in a Moslem country too! Courageous of him.

Closer to home –the Caribbean, South and Central America- the list of our dictators is just too long to include here. Most, like Papa Doc and Baby Doc, learned ‘democracy’ at the CIA’s spook seminary –the University of the Americas- down in Georgia. Noriega, the ‘Savior of Panama’ will have to suffice. Unhappily, after a falling-out with his handlers when a drug deal went bad, he’s now in jail somewhere, or at one of those usual Miami Mansions with the rest of them. He was conquered and captured in one of our major, post WWII military victories when the Army trained loudspeakers at his stronghold along the Canal and blasted him out with rock music, 24/7.

Noriega’s fine in his place, but the pointy-heads will have to bring us up to date with our highly paid (2+ billion a year) bulwark against the infidel and favorite Middle East ‘peace’ middleman who, after some 32 years of friendship, finally ‘walked like an Egyptian’. Now it’s time for some of those annotations that PhD people love –the graphs, pie charts, and those mind-numbing rows of numbers. They’re important. Body counts of young Americans, told they were ‘bringing democracy’ to recalcitrant oil and commodity-rich small countries; our nation teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, with crushing unemployment for millions. Failing bridges, crumbling roads, an antiquated healthcare system enormously profitable for drug manufacturers and insurance companies. America’s children scoring below their peers in Burkina Faso in math and science. Where have all those overseas billions gone?

How about to trillion dollar wars to help out our ‘friends’, listed above? Problem is, people just aren’t as ignorant as they used to be. They look out the window in Gaza, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen and see American drones killing their children. They don’t like it -would you? - reject the variety of ‘democracy’ on offer, and begin Twittering. For long decades we’ve poured money in the insatiable maws of imperial wars, these dictators and Israel. Their lobbyists and collaborators prowl the halls of Congress with one motto on their lips: ‘So what’s the problem? They (that’s us) can always borrow more from China!”

Will it ever end?