[bullseyebarb]

Originally Posted by Billcat

If there were any consistency to the USA sticking to its principles and only supporting democracies, or even leaders edging towards democracies, I might well agree with you. However, we have not done so. We have very generously supported all sorts of criminal and corrupt dictatorships, sometimes even against those within their country who were seeking democracy. Noriega, the Shah of Iran, the Saudi royals, Pinochet, Vietnam's Diem and Thieu, Saddam Hussein, and the ugly list goes on and on. We've not fooled much of anyone, save for those who uncritically believe only what they are asked to. That's why most of the country and most of the world believes that the USA is currently headed in the wrong direction.

As a patriotic American, I beleive that we should always practice what we preach. In the long term, it would help to spread our values to other countries, it would restore much of the trust our government has lost at home, and it would help to restore the world's good opinion of the USA.

I agree entirely. I have never liked the policy of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Always comes back to bite. However, in reality needs must when the devil drives. It's also fair to say that the facts gets skewed many a time. Just one example would be the widespread belief that the U.S. sold weapons to Saddam during the Iran/Iraq war. We didn't - although we did provide some satellite intelligence. The U.S. did tilt diplomatically toward Saddam during those eight years, because he was fighting against the regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini and our government believed Saddam to be the lesser of two evils. We didn't support Bin Laden either when he was in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets in the 1980's, although a lot of people think we did.