Originally Posted by Blade

Let's see - and you regret the US cooperation with stalin during WWII, who in the murder depatment makes suharto like the rankest of amateurs?

Originally Posted by Daybreaker

I think the problem (which exists for perfectly good and logical reasons) is that we have no actual rules about who we'll deal with and who we'll support. There's actually no rule against America supporting a dictatorship if that's what gets the job done. As in the case of Stalin or Hitler, it's often just a choice between two or more pretty bad options anyway. Stalin would be ranked somewhere on the list of the Top Five Murderous Dictators of the 20th Century, but Hitler is number one with a bullet. It's not like anybody thinks we should have backed Hitler to stop Stalin (not anybody that people take very seriously anyway), so I think that we can sort of look back and go, "Well, that makes sense. Kind of."

But it only makes sense to back a mass-murdering dictator even temporarily if it accomplishes some further goal, and that goal should always be (in this order) the betterment (defined as the further guaranteeing of all rights in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence) of the American people, and then the rest of the world. The logic is, dictatorships rarely support democracies, so we need to make our first priority keeping ourselves free. Therefore, we should never support a dictatorship in America (or for Americans), but it may be strategically necessary to support one somewhere else, briefly.

The problem is when it gets to the mass-murder stage. All dictatorships are not equal -- hypothetically, a benevolent dictatorship is possible -- but a mass-murdering dictatorship is by definition not benevolent. I really think we're supposed to be against that, as a country. The whole mass-murder thing. We've learned our lesson since our own genocidal campaign against the Indians. At least, I think we have. I know I don't want a repeat of that, 'cause personally, I think we'd be a lot better off as a country right now with a little more Native American influence, just as one example of how mass-murder sucks.

So I think that there should be some kind of basic guideline, at least, for which kind of government we'll deal with and under what circumstances. Obviously it can't be a hard rule 'cause international politics are always giving rise to situations that nobody anticipated and unpleasant alliances can't be taken off the table. But since we're actually the most powerful nation on Earth, I think we can probably afford to be picky about who we get into power -- or more precisely, about who we get killed.