I'm curious about the distinction between "authoritarian" and "totalitarian" regimes. In most of the cases we've been discussing, "authoritarian" was simply a polite term for a totalitarian regime that happened to be nominally on our side.
In most post-colonial nations, the "authoritarian" regimes we supported were composed of feudal remnants who waved the anti-communist flag to con the US into supporting their personal quest to maintain possession of their "right" to loot and mismanage their countries into the ground. By playing along with their manipulations we inspired destructive insurgencies and created a reservoir of anti-American sentiment that persists today and will persist for generations. It has been demonstrated in case after case that the best ally a communist insurgency can possibly have is a good old corrupt, incompetent, dictator, and through our support of such dictators we unwittingly did more to create revolutionary situations in many countries than the KGB could ever have done.
I used to almost laugh at the absurdity of it all: the bastion of democracy paying some of the slimiest men on the face of the earth to establish single-party governments that, killed and tortured those with the temerity to advocate democratic change, and in many cases did more to consolidate their economies under state - meaning personal control - than the socialist parties ever advocated. Then we would sit around and wonder why their people wanted to burn our embassies and our flag.
Egypt is quasi-democratic, and the Muslim Brotherhood still threatens stability greatly...
The fastest way to bring the Moslem Brotherhood to the critical mass needed for a serious run at power would be to violently suppress dissent, outlaw opposition parties, and install a dictator whose strings were obviously pulled from abroad. People don't like those things, even - believe it or not - brown people. |
