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: I seems that the US and Britain made quite a
: few mistakes during and after WWII. So they
: supported the Communists in Vietnam. They
: also backed up Tito in Yugoslavia instead of
: King Peter. Later they supported Lon Nol
: instead of Prince Sihanouk in Cambodia. And
: they failed to stand up for Shah Reza
: Pahlavi in Iran. And of course they
: supported Karzai instead of Zahir Shah in
: Afghanistan. The Americans seem to have
: problems with supporting Kings. Perhaps they
: have some revolutionary romantic idea that
: Kings are always bad and everyone who is
: against the King is good.

I think that Robert's point is a valid one. The United States, while not minding getting into bed with monarchs when it suits the perceived national interest (the US installed the Shah before failing to save him), there has always been a discomfort with monarchy on the part of US policy makers. In the mid-1990s, Madeleine Albright (I forget whether this was when she was UN ambassador or Secretary of State) was asked about the possibility of supporting restorations in former Warsaw Pact states said, "We don't do kings." The Afghanistan situation, in which the US effectively stopped the Lloya Jirga from restoring Zahir Shah, demonstrates that this is a bipartisan antipathy.