Responding to this post, a reader writes, “Let’s not forget the international community of enablers — the folks who march against ‘Bush the War Criminal’ and threaten to arrest the pope while practically climbing into the laps of Castro, Mugabe, Chávez, Kim, and the rest of them. If I had a dime for every time I heard someone use that most disgusting of phrases in reference to the victims of dictators, ‘his people,’ I’d be a billionaire.”
Oh, yes. Well put. I remember the time in 2001 when the U.S. secretary of state, Colin Powell, said, “He’s done some good things for his people.” The “he” was Fidel Castro. The “good things,” of course, was bad enough — I imagine the secretary of state had fallen for Castroite myths about literacy, health care, and race relations. But the “his people”? Salt to the wound.