Not at all in fact US policy is to have those dictators destroyed not supported, if you were to compare strategy it would be similar to putting up Puppet Governments in Latin America in the 1970's like Pinochet to keep them under a tight leash instead of uncontrolled elements like the Dictators in the Middle East unfortunately they discovered they were far less worse than the Extremists.
I don't agree. On several things. What you're saying is the old people in the middle east don't know how to live in democracy. If they don't have western backed dictators in power, they have radical fundamentalists. But american policy is to make governments open to its influence. And open to us companies. Doesn't matter if it's dictators or fundamentalists or whatever in power. Not to remove dictators and spread democracy or prevent worst people getting in power. Saddam was a major us ally in the region for a long time. Before he tried to interfere with western control of kuwait. Iran had a democracy before they tried to nationalize their oil company. The west immediately moved to prevent that and get an obedient dictator in power. When the population rebelled against him the west helped saddam attack iran. Even helped iraq use chemical weapons in the war. Afghanistan had a more or less progressive society before the us funded, trained and supported fundamentalists destroy the country. Support for saudi arabia and their oppressive regime is well known. And so is the spread of their radical ideology in the region. You know building terrorist training camps in other countries with the consent of the west. And in all these countries and many others one of the first things done is remove moderate forces. Send them to prison, terrorize them or kill them and their family. Not very fair to now say it's their own fault. In latin america it was the same thing. The excuse used to go there was the same used in the middle east: russians, socialists and communists. So there was huge support for dictators there too. But countries in latin america managed to integrate and cooperate between themselves and resist us control up to some point. So now you see some progress there. Though the us still tries to interfere like they did with the coup against chavez for example.
I think we might be agreeing but interpreting it differently, in the end I meant that they are supporting Dictators that benefit US interests, the list of examples you used illustrate that the name changes but the concept is the same we must take out the bogeyman and build up a puppet state to support our internationals.
As for the old people in the Middle East it's not that they don't recognize democracy it's just that their democracy leans towards fundamentalist elements and if it does not and people try to introduce modernist elements more chaos occurs from the radical elements who disagree, the citizens there just want a semblance of normalcy to their daily lives instead of fearing bomb runs. Your right about Saddam he was strong US ally until their interests diverged.
The main difference between the Middle East and the Latin American dictatorships were that the rebel forces in Latin America remained internal in their conflicts and rarely spread out to target the Western backed powers, those of the Middle East also include external targets to their list, primarily toward those groups that are supporting the civil war in their countries, to this day there are still many people in Latin America that do no like the United States because of all the atrocities it supported over there in the past and Western influence has declined over the years except for a few holdouts which is why were starting to see some growth as many countries align to China.
If a person loses their brothers sisters and parents to bombing runs by Western Powers and has basically nothing to live for then they have no reason not to join those fundamentalists and declare war (Jihad) on those that made their life crap.
Following that line of reasoning one can understand the even us calling ISIS cowards could be retorted by saying Americans Use drones, bomb their homes and don't even see the people they are harming innocent civilians or not, weapons make the army and it's like fighting with a stick against a rocket when comparing weaponry.
