Volume 34, Number 13 · August 13, 1987
Marcos and Morality
By Ian Buruma
Waltzing with a Dictator: The Marcoses and the Making of American Policy
by Raymond Bonner
Times Books, 533 pp., $19.95
Raymond Bonner, an ex–Marine Corps officer, worked for Ralph Nader, wrote an indictment of US policy in El Salvador, and annoyed his boss at The New York Times for being too sympathetic to the Sandinistas. He has been consistent and courageous in his idealism. Inside his book are photographs of some of his principal villains. There are Ronald Reagan, looking like an aging hairdresser, Richard Nixon, grinning awkwardly like a parent at a teen-age dance, Henry Kissinger, like your friendly delicatessen owner, all three in Filipino shirts dancing with the evil princess, Imelda Marcos. There are Meldy and Ferdie warbling a pop song into a microphone belonging to 'Jessie's Light and Sound System.' There is George Shultz, like a dancing bear with flowers around his neck, kissing the evil princess, and then US Ambassador Armacost ('Ourmarcos') shaking hands with the dictator. Across a White House table from the evil princess sits Jimmy Carter's assistant secretary of state Richard Holbrooke, with the eager beam in his eye of the best kid in class, no doubt crushing human rights policies under his shiny brogues.
Review, 4372 words
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