Yes, of course, and the US has made other kinds of mistakes and will continue to.
But mistakes and even directly supporing bad leaders are not inconsistent with the motivation for world order, because better alternatives are not always possible.
It'd have been much easier to support Saddam than to thwart him, right?
The US could overhtrow House of Saud, and see what happens?
There are no perfectly good options.
The firts rule of the inrenational order is 'order'. Stability generally comes before most things, because withouut it, there will be pain, and probably worse outcomes.
Saudi Arabia has bad internal politics, but, they are actually a pretty good actor on the international scene. They are a 'positive player'. Moreover, internally, they are ultra Orthodox, but not completely lunatic and finally, they are making progress.
Pinochet was not a nice man, but yes, 'look at history' he was the better choice given the alternative Allende who was going to bring crypto-Communism (and an authoritarian one) to Chile. And we didn't know he'd be such a jerk either. And of course, he was a jerk, but not completely Tyrannical. Certainly not as bad as Fidel or Vladimir.
Saddam was tolerable until he invaded Kuwait, and then went completley insane.
Even Gaddafi was eventually pushed to reform; The West started to accept him and his thuggery so long as he was not being an international nutjob, but that went out the window when he threatened genocide.
There is no magical way to install democracy in most places obviously, and the system is fairly messy, but it's far, far more noble to be on the 'free and open' side, than the totalitarian major powers such as China and Russia, particularly as of late.
It really takes a special kind of delusion to not get this.
The delusion is not new. Long after Stalin mass murdered millions of his own people, he was still hugely influential among Communists worldwide. Becuase in WW2 they were an 'Allied' state, we didn't push the propaganda against him, and he had many supporters even literally among the Scientists on the Manhatten project, which is ultimately how the Russians got the bomb so quickly: leaks by American scientist supporters of a global mass murderer, hypnotized by his ideology and glorification of 'the other way'.
Many in academia supported Stalin, much the way people still like to wax on about moral relatavism today, using straw man arguments such as the assumption of moral absolutism (aka somehow the West is superior in every way, which nobody is suggesting), or that there are not cultural nuances, which there are.
80 years after WW2, the US is still the pillar, which is probably not so good frankly Europe, Japan and S. Korea (and others) really need to step up to the plate, but it is what it is.
Go ahead and read the CCP document in the article, it's frightening. Nobody could legimately support it. It's a nakedly blatant statement of Orwellian total power.
But mistakes and even directly supporing bad leaders are not inconsistent with the motivation for world order, because better alternatives are not always possible.
It'd have been much easier to support Saddam than to thwart him, right?
The US could overhtrow House of Saud, and see what happens?
There are no perfectly good options.
The firts rule of the inrenational order is 'order'. Stability generally comes before most things, because withouut it, there will be pain, and probably worse outcomes.
Saudi Arabia has bad internal politics, but, they are actually a pretty good actor on the international scene. They are a 'positive player'. Moreover, internally, they are ultra Orthodox, but not completely lunatic and finally, they are making progress.
Pinochet was not a nice man, but yes, 'look at history' he was the better choice given the alternative Allende who was going to bring crypto-Communism (and an authoritarian one) to Chile. And we didn't know he'd be such a jerk either. And of course, he was a jerk, but not completely Tyrannical. Certainly not as bad as Fidel or Vladimir.
Saddam was tolerable until he invaded Kuwait, and then went completley insane.
Even Gaddafi was eventually pushed to reform; The West started to accept him and his thuggery so long as he was not being an international nutjob, but that went out the window when he threatened genocide.
There is no magical way to install democracy in most places obviously, and the system is fairly messy, but it's far, far more noble to be on the 'free and open' side, than the totalitarian major powers such as China and Russia, particularly as of late.
It really takes a special kind of delusion to not get this.
The delusion is not new. Long after Stalin mass murdered millions of his own people, he was still hugely influential among Communists worldwide. Becuase in WW2 they were an 'Allied' state, we didn't push the propaganda against him, and he had many supporters even literally among the Scientists on the Manhatten project, which is ultimately how the Russians got the bomb so quickly: leaks by American scientist supporters of a global mass murderer, hypnotized by his ideology and glorification of 'the other way'.
Many in academia supported Stalin, much the way people still like to wax on about moral relatavism today, using straw man arguments such as the assumption of moral absolutism (aka somehow the West is superior in every way, which nobody is suggesting), or that there are not cultural nuances, which there are.
80 years after WW2, the US is still the pillar, which is probably not so good frankly Europe, Japan and S. Korea (and others) really need to step up to the plate, but it is what it is.
Go ahead and read the CCP document in the article, it's frightening. Nobody could legimately support it. It's a nakedly blatant statement of Orwellian total power.
FYI I'm not American.