Yglesias and Atrios talk about US support for 'bad guys.'
...The question is, thus, whether or not this posture of creating a mostly arbitrary class of "bad guy" that we're going to take down with our awesome powers of snubbing accomplishes anything meaningful. Obama's contention is "no." Bush's contention is "yes" but he has absolutely nothing to show for it....
....The frustrating thing is that the media plays along, designating "bad guys" as whoever the US government is designating a bad guy that week, while perpetuating the notion that the "bad guy" designation is linked to some sort of human rights badness when in fact it's just because they're bastards, but not our bastards...
Is it simply a "mostly arbitrary class of "bad guy?"" I don't think so. Atrios notes how they are "their bastards." But there is more to it than that. Certainly the vast majority of dictatorial regimes the United States has supported over the last century, and nowhere more so than Latin American, have been fundamentally right wing, quite favourable to U.S. economic interests. In Latin America while there have been countless more right wing regimes in Latin America than left wing counterparts, many of them far more murderous than Castro, it is the Castros, and Chavezes, Ortegas popular narratives refer to as the greatest villains in the region. Why is it the names of Trujillo, Somoza, Vidella, Machado, Rios Montt, Stroessner are hardly known (to name just a few)? Even moderate leftists - Allende, Bosch for example - have been portrayed as extremists when U.S. economic interests have been challenged.
Of course geo-political concerns have played a role in who becomes a bad guy in the eyes of a U.S. administration. However, while it is certainly overly simplistic to state it in such terms, it is nevertheless not much of a stretch to claim the overriding determinant has always been ideological and if you're left, you are not one of "their bastards." Now of course the fact that the US, like all great superpowers acts virtually in its own self-interest, especially regarding economic concerns, isn't exactly an earth-shattering revelation. Nevertheless referring to the class of bad guys the US has supported as "mostly abritrary" or simply "our bastards" goes a way in demonstrating how even many progressive commentators within the United States fail to appreciate the degree to which American foreign policy - including amoung Democrats - is looked upon as very right wing.
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