I have seen many documentaries/news reports chronicling how the United States financially supported many corrupt immoral depraved extortionist despotic mercenary non-Soviet sewer-vomit trash dictators all over the world during the Cold War. Has anyone compiled a list of such dictators the U.S. did NOT support financially during the Cold War? If yes please tell me where this list is so that I can show it to friends, co-workers, etc.
Thank-you!!
Jimmy Carter
I don’t have a list but Mao in China and Hoxha in Albania could be the start of one…
Idi Amin?
Oh, and Khadafi too, IIRC.
And Castro.
Well, I’m not a Cold War History Expert, nor have I seen a list of the sort you are looking for. But…why do you want such a list? Are you showing it to people who think that there is something wrong with supporting “corrupt immoral depraved extortionist despotic mercenary non-Soviet sewer-vomit trash dictators” to gain an advantage in war? Do these people also think it was a mistake to support the Soviet Union in the second world war? Do they think the world would be better off if we didn’t support those dictators and then lost the cold war? Are they armchair strategists who think that they can win wars by being nice and supporting only “nice” regimes? I don’t think you need your list to counter these people’s views, but then I don’t know thier views or if this is what you are trying to do.
Rockmotteller, I doubt motives make any difference to the question, or to the answers… In fact, they don’t matter at all, AFICT. Why are you hijacking this?
Hmmm. You are right. Perhaps I read too much into the OP. Didn’t mean to hijack, if that’s what I did, so consider the thread unhijacked.
I think the OP probably meant “non-Communist”, not “non-Soviet”. Obviously there were a gajillion Communist but non-Soviet dictators that we didn’t much like (there still are at least two).
As it happens, however, I can’t imagine compiling a list, even restricted to non-Communists, of dictators that we did or didn’t support. Most countries in the world outside of western Europe, Japan, the United States, and the former British dominions were dictatorships during much of the 1945-1990 period. There must have been hundreds of dictators. And what does “supported financially” mean–does it include any kind of trade agreement or humanitarian assistance, or is it restricted to direct military aid? At any rate, I know of no such list.
Thanks, Rockmotteller. As it happens, I’m kinda interested in the answer, myself.
What degree of support are we going for here? Would the Iranian arms deals count as supporting Iran?
This is not as easy to answer as one might suppose, we could do with some more criteria from the OP.
There have been lots of dictators the US did not support, maybe tolerated but that’s somewhat differant matter.
The main issue from the OP perspective is wether or not such dictators were generally evil in human rights abuses etc.
It’s a question of degrees really, where do you draw the line ?
Is General Musharraf supposed to be in a similar group to, say, Papa’Doc’ Duvalier.
These would be at near opposite ends of the evil spectrum I’d guess, both are responsible for classic dictatorial acts, but no-one would say the former was anything like as evil as the latter.
Here is a sample of others,
General Suharto
Muammer Qadaffi
Slobodan Milosovic
Ho Chi Minh
Juan Peron
Pol Pot
Idi Amin
Marshall Tito
Ayotollah Khomeini
Jean Bokassa
Nicolai Ceasescu
Kim Il Sung
Kamuzu Banda
Joseph Seku
Charles Taylor
General Zia
Danial Arap Moi
Haile Mengistu
Robert Mugabe
Jonas Savimbe
Hassan Al Turabai
Some of these, like Suharto, were in fact useful to the US but were discarded when they lost their usefulness, others not mentioned, such as Enva Hoxha and Najivbulla were on the Soviet side of the cold war and were merely puppets, others like Musharraf and Assad switched sides, and Jonas Savimbe carried out most of his brutal acts whilst acting as an insurgency against the recognised ‘government’ though there was not too much to choose between them.
Other notables not included woud be the Burmese Junta, every bit as horrible and brutal as the aforementioned but regarded as a collective of evil and not having a public face.
One notable was a regime that was democratic to a minority of it’s population, but as far as the rest were concerned it was a dictatorship, South Africa - in it’s apartheid years had many leaders and given the insidious nature of its opression, can be considered a pretty awful system.
Here is a list of dictators that were at one time or another, regarded as friendly to the US.
http://funkiness.com/dictators/
I notice that one all time classic that is not on that list, that was a great ally and yet the became the worst enemy is of course Joseph Stalin.
Actually, didn’t the US help Tito out a few times, despite the fact that he was a communist?
Another example of how difficult it is to assign pro-anti US dictatorship lables to various regimes.
Marshall Tito played both ends against the middle, as did Pakistan, Iraq and even India to an extent.
The question, written by a wannabee Michael Moore, was rhetorical.
The phrase ‘corrupt immoral depraved extortionist despotic mercenary non-Soviet sewer-vomit trash dictators’ is hardly likely to be used by an open minded person interested in an objective debate.
My original reply was a piss-take… as jklann said, there’s a difference between ‘communist’ and ‘Soviet’.
tconrad wants to show his friends, co-workers etc…
You can choose your friends.
I pity his co-workers.
Agree with mascaroni’s observation. While there were many tough choices to be made during the Cold War, the OP is not written to suggest that an objective discussion is desired.
Did the US support Gen. Franco?