"Being united will defeat American imperialism. We met with the leaders of my party and they asked us for several measures and if necessary, we will close the embassy of the United States," Morales said. "We do not need the embassy of the United States."

Rob Kall: The US has a standard operating procedure when one of its dictators gets in trouble?  Could you describe that?

Noam Chomsky: Well, it's happened so many times it takes real effort not to see it.  So, let's take, just in recent years, Somoza and Nicaragua.  It was the Carter administration,  which is, you know, maybe the most human rights oriented administration. They supported Somoza right to the end after his troops literally had killed maybe forty thousand people.  

The US continued to support him when the business world turned against him, and it was going to be impossible to support him any longer.  The Carter administration tried to rescue the remnants of the regime, even rescue the hated National Guard, and move them elsewhere, and then try to reconstitute them.  And then Reagan came along and was forced to essentially reconstitute them and overthrow the new government.  That's Somoza.  A couple of years later, Duvalier in Haiti, another favorite dictator, came under internal threat.  Again, the US supported him (this is Reagan now) to the bitter end.  Finally the army turned against him, and then the Reagan Administration flew him out of the country with half the country's treasury on an air force plane, to Paris.  Marcos, in the Philippines, about the same time, same story. Mobutu in the Congo, Suharto in Indonesia. 

I mean this is just retainment. "If you have a favorite dictator, support him for as long as possible.  If it becomes impossible, send him off somewhere, and essentially try to reconstruct the old system."  That's pretty much what happened in Egypt.  The Obama administration supported Mubarak to the very end, practically the last minute, and finally even the army turned against him, and they realized they've got to ditch him.  So, they sent him off to Sharm El-Sheikh, and since then have been trying to reconstruct a regime that would somehow follow the same Neoliberal policies.  You know, they don't control everything, but that's certainly what they are trying to influence.  And, in the countries that really matter to the west, the oil dictatorships that the US has supported, the dictatorships have really harshly repressed any significant effort at reform, and the US has backed them all the way.  France did the same in Tunisia, which was its dependency.  They supported the dictator Ben Ali up to the point where it is becoming a joke, even after people were demonstrating, wildly demonstrating, in the streets.  But that's exactly the way powerful systems act.  

It shouldn't surprise us.  No system of power wants Democracy.  It is a threat to its interest.  I mean, of course they'll all talk about democracy, but you know everybody talks about democracy; Stalin talked about it, the Japanese Fascists talked about it, you know, everyone says democracy is great, but systems of power are not going to like it, because it erodes their power.  I mean, it is as simple as that. And, the evidence for it is just overwhelming.