[danabrams]

Maduro, Castro, and Saddam Hussein are/were bad. Castro and Hussein, at least, committed murders to maintain power and Maduro pulled a coup after he lost an election.

Whether they were worth removing is another question, but if you could flip a switch and magically replace them with something better (with no cost and a guarantee the replacement would not be a murderous authoritarian) you would of course do it.

[jmyeet]

In 1988, Saddam Hussein dropped nerve gas on Kurds. Saddam was then a US ally and a foil against Iran. The US had propped up that war killing millions of Iraqis and Iranians for almost a decade for basically a net zero outcome. Why was Iran an enemy? Because the US deposed the democratically elected government in 1953 becasue they threatened to nationalize their own oil reserves.

Do you see a pattern here? Like at all?

The key point is that Saddam could drop nerve gas on Iraqi citizens and it still didn't change him being a US ally (and puppet). We don't care about someone being "bad". We never have. Saddam only ceased to become an ally when he invaded Kuwait and threatened our truly regional ally, Saudi Arabia.

All Castro did was overthrow Batisa, another US ally, and nationalize Cuban assets.

Hungary is a member of NATO and a US ally despite Viktor Orban essentially overthrowing democracy and genuinely being bad.

We helped overthrow Basher Al-Asaad. The al-asaads were former US allies too by the way. Why? Because now they were bad. Who is the new Syrian president? A man by the name of Ahmed al-Sharaa. Who is that you might ask? A former al-Qaeda leader, you know the guys were the Big Bad [tm] for 9/11. But that's OK, he (allegedly) cut ties with al-Aqeda in 2016 so all is forgiven. Let's not look too deeply into 15 or the 19 9/11 hijackers being Saudi.

Here's the lesson: whenever the US says someone is being punished, bombed, sanctioned, invaded or whatever because they're "bad" know that it's a lie. I mean they might be bad. But that's never the reason for whatever the latest punitive action is. Always, always, always the reason is become the interests of US foreign policy or Western companies is being threatened.

[energy123]

It's wild to claim Saddam was a US ally just two years before Iraq invaded Kuwait against US demands and got bombed by the US in the Gulf War. You are confusing offshore balancing between Iraq and Iran during the Iran-Iraq war with "ally". You need to look up the definitions of these words.

And to claim Assad was a US ally is even more outrageous, where to even start. He was a Russian ally and a Hezbollah ally, not a US ally. All of his military equipment came from Russia. All of his air support came from Russia. He allowed Iranian arms to flow to Hezbollah and was supported on the ground in Syria by Hezbollah. And he is now hiding in Russia playing video games after killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. He and the US had a common foe in ISIS for a period, but they were otherwise antagonistic over the duration of the civil war.

[esalman]

Are we rewriting history here?

Saddam was a de facto US ally till 1988. The relationship ended with the end of their mutual interests.

US sent terrorism suspects to Bashar regime to be tortured after 9/11.

Yeah eventually both relationships fell out but all the vile things both did happened under US watch, and US only stepped in when political/economic clash happened.

[energy123]

We are adhering to definitions of words. The US engaged in classic offshore balancing by backing Iraq when Iran gained the momentum on the frontline. There was no alliance between Iraq and the US.

[nswest23]

waiting for details on how "backing Iraq" is materially different from an "alliance" with Iraq...I'm hesitant to throw yet _another_ word into the mix but there's an entire wikipedia page on US "support" for Iraq.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq...

[esalman]

I guess the Gaza war is also an offshore balancing.

[markus_zhang]

As the late venerable Sir Humphrey Appleby said, politics is not about good or evil, but to survive to the next century.

[mcv]

I don't think anyone disagrees that the US is extremely hypocritical. The US has a long history of overthrowing democracies and supporting dictators, all in the name of "democracy" (oil, mostly).

That doesn't make Maduro a good guy, though. Nor Castro. Nor Batista, for that matter. And Orban is widely seen as Putin's ally in the EU. Most Europeans would rather be rid of him, but you can't just kick a country out of the EU, unfortunately.

Or Trump. He's as bad as the others. He'd certainly like to be. He wants to turn the US into the same kind of dictatorship.

[terio]

> All Castro did was overthrow Batisa, another US ally, and nationalize Cuban assets.

That's not all. Castro also executed thousands creating a terror regime, nationalized American assets, funded and aided guerrillas in Latin America and Africa, aligned himself with the Soviet Union and caused the Missiles Crisis. He replaced a brutal dictatorship with another brutal dictatorship, a communist one, and ran the Cuban economy into the ground.

[xg15]

> Castro also executed thousands creating a terror regime

...so naturally, the solution is to make the life of the people under that regime even worse by sanctioning the country?

> nationalized American assets, funded and aided guerrillas in Latin America and Africa, aligned himself with the Soviet Union and caused the Missiles Crisis.

in other words, did things that threatened American interests.

[jmyeet]

You don't know history.

The so-called Cuban Missile Crisis didn't begin on October 16, 1962. Nor did it begin when the Soviet Union put missiles on Cuban territory. It began when the US put nuclear missiles (Jupiter MRBMs) in Turkey, mere hundreds of miles from Moscow. Those were quietly removed months after the crisis because of a secret agreement between JFK and Khrushchev.

And yes, Cuba nationalized assets. As I said. You say that like it's a bad thing. Why is the US doing colonialism and imperialism a good thing that needs to be defended exactly?

And let's say Batista and Castro were both brutal dictatorships (which is what you said), why is one bad and one good? Why is one an ally and another a mortal enemy? You're making my point: the US does not and never has cared about people being bad or doing bad things. It's purely about economic interests. That's it.

Oh and Castro's involvement in Latin America? I'm sorry, what? From overthrowing the government in Guatemala in 1954 at the behest of a US fruit company to propping up Pinochet in Chile to Noriega in Nicaragua to El Salvador to Columbia and so on, let's compare Castro's impact and legacy to that of the US and see who has done the most harm, shall we?

The Cuban economy suffered because the US starved it. But of course Castro gets the blame for that too.

[Aloisius]

> In Turkey, mere hundreds of miles from Moscow.

They were over 1200 miles away from Moscow, near Izmir, Turkey.

That's a couple hundred miles closer to Moscow than the Thor missiles that were in England.

[xg15]

Yes, but the point is that sanctions don't get rid of those people, they're just collective punishment on the population. (Plus are used for propaganda if the blame for an economic crisis in a country is put entirely on its regime or economic system and the fact that the country is currently under sanctions is conveniently omitted. See again: Cuba, Venezuela)

At the end of the day the purpose of sanctions is to deliberately worsen the quality of life of the population in the sanctioned country. That can't be a tool for good.

[charlescearl]

The uncritical, unfounded, white supremacist equivalence of the names of Global South heads of state that share nothing other than their inclusion in the never-ending spectacle of a collapsing and always fascist empire’s hitlist. I’m reminded of how this abomination of a country relentlessly linked Marcus Garvey (Black nationalist and Capitalist) and W.E.B. DuBois (Black pan-Africanist and eventually communist) both with the label “Bolshevik” and “Communist threat” as justification for surveillance, incarceration.

This “dictator” meme, played out for the last 100 plus years is tired and tiring especially in a place that has a higher incarceration rate than USSR in the 1930s ( or Cuba ) and is currently snatching up folk for the crime of speaking Spanish, while US Southern Command blows up Venezuelan fisherman for the crime of feeding their families.