America: Training Ground for Dictators?

(Photo: The California National Guard)

Foreign Policy examines America’s role as a training ground for those who would plot coups around the world.  For example, Yahya Jammeh, current president of the Gambia, reportedly attended a military police training course in the U.S. prior to his 1994 bloodless coup:

Jammeh promised that his would be a “coup with a difference” and that he would stand down “as soon as we have set things right.” Eighteen years later, he is still in power.

In addition to brutal crackdowns on the opposition and the press, Jammeh has become known for his eccentricities, including promoting a banana-and-herb cure for AIDS and rounding up those suspected of sorcery. After he was re-elected in 2011 to a fourth term in a widely criticized election, His Excellency the President Sheik Professor Alhaji Doctor Yahya Jammeh, as he calls himself, told his critics they could “go to hell” and vowed to rule for a billion years.

Plotters from Mali, Haiti, Honduras, Panama, Guatemala, and Bolivia also make the list.