[pmoriarty]

"Franco also wasn't and isn't universally abhorred; many Spaniards still admire Franco for whatever reasons, and there are large monuments and contemporary political rallies by fairly ordinary people honoring his memory."

Many Germans still admire Hitler, many Russians still admire Stalin, and many Chinese still admire Mao.

In Mongolia, Ghenghis Khan is admired as a great leader of their nation, and the negative things said of him are considered to be exaggerations or lies made up the people he fought with.

It seems no matter what a dictator does, or how many atrocities he commits, there'll always be people that admire and defend him.

[scottlocklin]

Your point being? Point and sputter isn't much of an argument, even with great goblins like the ones you mention above.

Franco by any sane measure, was a much lesser goblin. As was his next door neighbor Salazar. For their times, and particularly considering their situations, they were fairly reasonable leaders. Which is probably why they were integrated into NATO.

[andrepd]

Which is probably why they were integrated into NATO.

They were integrated into NATO for the same reason that Fulgêncio Batista was propped up by the US, or the Iranian Shah, or the guy that overthrew Jacobo Arbenz. That reason is: the US benefited economically and militarily from that situation, and any other considerations (moral, ethical, the well-being of the people, whether it was democratic) simply did not enter the equation one way or the other. Who cares if Arbenz was democratically elected and his land reforms lifted millions out of poverty, the United Fruit Company was making less money for their owners after some inhumane exploitation was outlawed so in comes the US coup, etc etc.

You simply cannot argue morality or democracy when discussing this.

[scottlocklin]

I simply can argue morality when discussing this, actually, and just did. Again, point and sputter isn't an argument, and your argument will appear absurd in a few decades, as "point and sputter" at Napoleon was among Victorian gentlemen in the UK.

I didn't say anything about democracy, and confounding this word with the word "morality" is pretty ... questionable. That was one of the points that Solzhenitsyn made very well; go read his speech to Harvard.

The US picked Franco as an Ally, yes, because it served US interests. The US also allied with a lot of unsavory spanish speaking dictators in latin america; mostly for the same reason -they saw generalissimo types as a lesser evil to communist revolutionaries. All things considered, it was a reasonable thing to do. Communist body counts were considerably higher than all of these put together.

[icebraining]

Spain only joined NATO in '82, years after Franco's death, already in the democratic era.