Ah, I see. (#167)
tacitus (User Info) Posted on: Tue Jun 8th, 2004 at 09:22:39 PM EST
Of course, we had no alliance with South Africa at all, so let's discard that.

It was Reagan who finally coaxed Marcos to leave the Philippines in lieu of deeply violent repression, so I'm not sure what your gripe is there, especially considering that the four Presidents before Reagan also maintained the alliance with that regime.

As for the rest, there's really little question but that supporting anticommunist forces was, at bottom, the right thing to do, with one exception. As a rule of thumb, their crimes paled next to the assured horrors of communist rule; furthermore, we simply could not afford to give further ground to Soviet influence. (The only place where I'd agree we should have withheld support was Guatemala, where the regime descended into outright genocide against the Mayans. This, however, was the exception rather than the rule among our allies.) Finally, I again note that in this, Reagan did nothing that every one of his postwar predecessors had not done. Your true complaint is with American policy -- specifically, American opposition to communism -- rather than Reagan per se.