Pretty much. Can you name some of the US backed dictators from the same period? I can: Mobutu, Barre, Banda, Eyadema, Boigny, El-Sadat, Smith, Selassie, Tubman, Franco, Oliviera, Osorio, Duvalier. That's just off the top of my head. The premise that we "cared" about the "freedom" of the Vietnamese people is absolutely ignorant. We cared about them having a pro-US government willing to sell off its country to the biggest game in town. We didn't care about them being free. To claim that in the face of the evidence available is ridiculous.
Wow, you can name a bunch of obscure dictators, gee whiz, you must automatically win, then...here, let me give you a free ticket too...its not good for anything, but guess what...
it's free.
I would say your Zinnish views show a liberal education, which indicates an over-education into what is not true... as a wise man once said, "Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." ...or in this case, not really applicable.
Why not name the [now] democracies we rebuilt, gave expertise to, funded, defended, still defend. South Korea ring any bells [ what have we gotten out of that? ]... you avoided telling me what we wanted in Vietnam so bad... the thought escape you perhaps, or is it tactical avoidance? What about Japan after WW2... or Turkey when the Brits could not handle it after the war, handed the baton over to us, and Truman then asked Congress for a cool $400 mil, sounds like chump change now, to fund Turkey and Greece from falling under communist control that was threatening... what did we get out of that?
How about the $13 bil, again chumpish sounding nowadays, to rebuild Western Europe... how many dictators did we install? There is no doubt that the US plays a power international game, none either that we have interests, but to think we are not on the side of freedom and liberties, individual rights... beyond being pretty cynical its pretty small thinking... don't have time to study real history? Local library out of good solid books? They giving a discount to take
Zinn-style hate-America-for-no-real reason classes these days?
Why not educate us on all those leaders you speak of, tell us what our other alternatives might have been, of all the angels just waiting in the wings to run things smoothly and fairly in some godforsaken parts of the world where things are not run like we like them to be, but where we have to deal with it, where we have enemies from all sides, some funded by those pesky commies...