When Will We Learn?

During the Cold War we jumped into bed will all sorts of baddies under the presupposition that we were confronting a greater evil. This was dubious logic, but understandable in the context. Ronald Reagan famously called Mobutu Sese Seku "a voice of good sense and good will" when he was neither. He was a murderous tyrant who ruled by chaos and kleptocracy. he stood for everything the United States is supposed to oppose, but his putative anticommunism made him an ally. It was a noxious policy then. But those days are gone, and with them such crass opportunist reductionism, right?

Not so fast. Condoleeza Rice recently referred to Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang as a "good friend." The question is, a good friend of whom? because he certainly is not a good friend of his countrymen. In 1996 oil was discovered in what was then a nation in dire economic straits. Since then, the country has enjoyed one of the highest per capita incomes on the continent, yet the people subsist in abject poverty. Obiang has siphoned off millions of the country's oil revenues in the familiar pattern of kleptocracy and patronage. Obiang is a ruthless dictator who steals from his hopelessly poor people, tolerates no dissent, imprisons and tortures his critics, and operates a skewed judicial system. Senator Carl Levin and the Washington Post have both spoken out about this shameful moment. It is time far more individuals and groups do. There is no excuse.