Democracy, Hypocrisy

Saddam Hussein greeting U.S. special envoy Donald Rumsfeld

(Baghdad, 1983) 

Nearly a quarter century ago Murray Rothbard wrote* "Why the Intervention in Arabia?".  In it he ponders the contradiction of the U.S. supporting dictators in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia while Washington was claiming to be spreading "democracy":

"Saddam Hussein is a very bad man, the "Butcher of Baghdad." Absolutely, but he was just as much a butcher only the other day when he was our gallant ally against the terrible threat posed to the Gulf by the fanatical Shiites of Iran." 

...

U.S. Senator John Kerry dining with Assad

(Damascus, 2009 image The Telegraph)

Rothbard continues:

"The fanatical Shiites are still there, by the way, but they--as well as the Dictator of Syria, Hafez Assad, the Butcher of Hama--seem to have been magically transformed into our gallant allies against Saddam Hussein."

Fewer than three years after Kerry and Assad were dining together in Damascus the U.S. began allying with Syria's Muslim Brotherhood to topple Assad and his government.

According to the New York Times funding for Assad's opposition is coming from Turkey, Qatar, U.S. State Department, the C.I.A. and Saudi Arabia.

The victims of regime change in Iraq would ask if this policy of spreading "democracy" is underpinned by hypocrisy?

*Rothbard's article is published at Mises.org