We did not kill "our stooge". We gave the green light to those who wanted to depose him, but he was not supposed to be killed.
My position is that the political party to which you give allegiance your whole adult life is indicative of the man. I have no reason to believe he was a better man than Diem, I do not know enough in detail from unbiased sources about either. At that time, there was every reason to believe that Vietnam would be Stalinist, since that was the kind of Communism Ho had served.
I consider advertising one's allegiance to Communism as roughly the same as announcing an allegiance to Nazism.
Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were among the greatest mass murderers of all time. There is no comparison to people like Marcos, and, of course, we promoted democracy in Nicaragua and El Salvador, which are still functioning democracies. Sometimes, it may have been a toss up, but, for example, while Mao created a nightmare in China, the Kuomintang created a more moderate, albeit authoritarian, regime in Taiwan, and it permitted greater freedoms and improved people's material lot much sooner than the mainland. More than that, while even recently the Communists were willing to fire on pro- democracy students, and will not democratize, Taiwan has democratized.
Yes, totalitarianism is mostly destroyed, but that had a good deal to do with us and our willingness to compete with and contain them. It is still true that authoritarian regimes have generally been more moderate and capable of reform.
As for your last paragraph, it is factually "challenged". We supported Castro when he came to power, it was only after he declared himself a Communist and allied with the Soviet Union that we became hostile. Similarly with the Sandanistas: we first gave them aid, until it was apparent that they intended to set up a dictatorship allied with Cuba. As for the rights of the repressed in "client regimes", we supported the Social Democrats and land reform in El Salvador; we pressed Taiwan on democratic reforms; we supported the removal of Marcos in favor of renewed democracy in the Phillippines; and in other ways have tried to promote reform, directly or indirectly. |
