This democracy?
Park Chung-hee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
No, this [now ] democracy...as, if I remember correctly, I put it. South Korea - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yep... sounds just like a democracy we helped "rebuild".
Well...one has to wonder aloud, "Is South Korea a democracy now... or not?"
Yes...no? Yes it is.
What about its neighbor to the North, huh? Better or worse? The one the US didn't back. On average a foot shorter than their southern cousins. I guess with a socialist mentality, perhaps its better to be smaller, thinner, less healthy, tortured or dead, is it?
Who said we installed them? We
backed dictators. Here's a famous one:
Francisco Franco - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Franco was around before we ever started backing Europeans...so, what exactly is your point? Does your side even really have one? You cake and eat it, too, folks. How is it that, in dealing with the world as we find it, we, the US, always end up being the bad guys? You have some better way perhaps? No, liberals have a silly utopian vision that is, well, one of the more juvenile, yet extremely dangerous, views of the world.
The same thing we wanted in the Philippines by supporting the Aquinos - pro-US governments that wouldn't have an issue selling cheap resources to the US. Again, the Cold War was about money. The Russians didn't care about "freedom" either. They cared about trade and pro-USSR governments even if it came at the cost of millions dying. :shrug:
Know any government or country that is not pro-itself do you? Where are all these angels in power that you are dreaming of, eh? Would not last very long. Most get over such youthful visions after middle school, especially if they get some solid history instruction in high school...but then some revert to such silliness in college, where taught to view America from a one sided, left leaning, rah! rah! plodding obliviousness to the actualities of a real, not a dreamed of, world.
How is the Philippines doing, anyhow? Anything like North Korea? Have they prospered at all with the evil influence of the US constantly over their shoulder?
I already have. Your nearly illiterate understanding of cold war politics is shinning through. Now, I know names like "Franco" and "Park" sound "obscure" to somebody who has never even taken a course in basic Cold War politics, but it's
really hard to argue that "Vietnamese freedom" was important when we couldn't have cared less about the other 100-300 million people living under US backed dictatorships. Again, that you don't know them - doesn't mean they weren't there. Then again, I can't blame you for not knowing them. You actually believe the Cold War was about morality.