Re The modern world has two major defining characteristics - it doesn't have rulers, it has democracy, and it doesn't have faith, its has science.
Are you under the impression that the US, in its dignified war against archaic regimes, as the defender of the "modern", has never supported fascist rulers and religious regimes?
US has supported some of the most notorious rightwing autocracies in history, governments that have tortured, killed or otherwise maltreated large numbers of their citizens because of their dissenting political views, as in Turkey, Zaire, Chad, Pakistan, Morocco, Indonesia, Honduras, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, the Philippines, Cuba (under Batista), Nicaragua (under Somoza), Iran (under the Shah), and Portugal (under Salazar).
On the other hand, the US has opposed governments that strive for any kind of economic independence, or apply some significant portion of their budgets to not-for-profit public services such as (a) a populist military government as in Panama under Omar Torrijos (and even under Manuel Noriega), Egypt under Gamal Abdul Nasser, Peru under Juan Velasco, Portugal under the leftist military officers in the MFA, and Venezuela under Hugo Chavez; (b) a Christian socialist government as in Nicaragua under the Sandinistas; (c) a social democracy as in Chile under Salvador Allende, Jamaica under Michael Manley, Greece under Andreas Papandreou, Cyprus under Mihail Makarios, and the Dominican Republic under Juan Bosch; (d) an anticolonialist reform government as in the Congo under Patrice Lumumba; (e) a Marxist-Leninist government as in Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea; (f) an Islamic revolutionary order as in Libya under Omar Qaddafi; or even (g) a conservative militarist regime as in Iraq under Saddam Hussein if it should attempt an independent course on oil quotas and national development.
"US as fighter against enemies of the modern world" sounds all well and good, but the reality is that it is just another country operating under its own risk/benefit analyses. The US has supported some despicable regimes and brought down others for no reason other than them having elected a moderately left government.
This is not being anti-American but perhaps it is a little more objective and realist than most Americans are prepared to accept. |
