"Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch"
About this Quote
Dirty realism dressed up as statecraft: Roosevelt’s alleged line about Anastasio Somoza works because it collapses moral judgment and strategic calculation into one blunt, profane sentence. The punch comes from the pivot on “but.” FDR concedes the obvious (Somoza is brutal) and then, with a possessive shrug, announces the real hierarchy of values: loyalty to U.S. interests outranks the cleanliness of U.S. partners. It’s not an excuse. It’s a claim of ownership.
The phrase “our son of a bitch” is doing the heavy lifting. “Our” turns a foreign dictator into an asset, almost a piece of equipment. It also spreads responsibility: if he’s “ours,” the empire can’t pretend innocence when his police do what strongmen do. The vulgarity matters because it strips away the official language of democracy promotion and reveals the transactional core of much hemispheric policy.
Context sharpens the cynicism. In the 1930s and 1940s, Washington’s overriding goals in Latin America were stability, anti-communism (or at least anti-radicalism), and control of strategic routes and resources. Nicaragua’s Somoza, backed by U.S.-trained forces and useful against leftist movements, fit the job description. The line signals a willingness to tolerate repression as long as the repression is geopolitically aligned.
It also prefigures a recurring American pattern: publicly idealistic rhetoric paired with privately pragmatic alliances. The quote endures because it’s a rare moment when the mask slips and power speaks in its native tongue.
The phrase “our son of a bitch” is doing the heavy lifting. “Our” turns a foreign dictator into an asset, almost a piece of equipment. It also spreads responsibility: if he’s “ours,” the empire can’t pretend innocence when his police do what strongmen do. The vulgarity matters because it strips away the official language of democracy promotion and reveals the transactional core of much hemispheric policy.
Context sharpens the cynicism. In the 1930s and 1940s, Washington’s overriding goals in Latin America were stability, anti-communism (or at least anti-radicalism), and control of strategic routes and resources. Nicaragua’s Somoza, backed by U.S.-trained forces and useful against leftist movements, fit the job description. The line signals a willingness to tolerate repression as long as the repression is geopolitically aligned.
It also prefigures a recurring American pattern: publicly idealistic rhetoric paired with privately pragmatic alliances. The quote endures because it’s a rare moment when the mask slips and power speaks in its native tongue.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: Wars of the Third Kind (Edward E. Rice, 2024) modern compilationISBN: 9780520378834 · ID: ucYGEQAAQBAJ
Evidence: ... Franklin D. Roosevelt to remark : “ Somoza may be a son - of - a - bitch , but he's our son - of - a - bitch . " 58 Indeed , in 1939 Roosevelt received him warmly in Washington , and while there Somoza was invited to address a joint ... Other candidates (1) Franklin D. Roosevelt (Franklin D. Roosevelt) compilation40.0% ut not much heart reagan had a good facsimile of a heart but not much of a brain |
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