Or so we kept telling ourselves, all the while supporting such champions of freedom as (a partial list, off the top of my head):

Chiang Kai-Shek
Francisco Franco
Antonio Salazar
Syngman Rhee
Park Chung-Hee
Ngo Dinh Diem
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Ferdinand Marcos
Suharto
Saddam Hussein (yes, that Saddam Hussein)
Zia ul-Haq
Fulgencio Batista
Rafael Trujillo
Anastasio Somoza
Omar Torrijos
Augusto Pinochet

I’m sure there were more, whose names escape me at the moment. Sure, these guys were all sons of bitches, but at least they were, in Cordell Hull’s famous words about Trujillo, “our sons of bitches.” Unfortunately, the rest of the world also recognized them as our sons of bitches.

Leader of the Free World, my ass.