Editorial Board
When It Makes Sense to Give a Dictator Medical Sanctuary: View
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Should Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, be allowed to come to the U.S. for medical treatment? Yes. But with one big condition: That he resign first and not go home again.
Offering medical harbor to dictators can come with a price, as the hostage crisis that followed the Carter administration’s 1979 decision to admit the ailing and deposed Shah of Iran so painfully demonstrated. But Saleh is no Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and Yemen is no Iran. In fact, a more useful analogy can be found in Tunisia.