Quote Originally Posted by Agent Miles View Post
Yes, the West should only do business with the nice people in the world. (sigh)

The despicables the USA "tolerated" had a shelf life that we recognized, having been revolutionaries ourselves, once. Taiwan, South Korea, Panama etc. may not have democracy because we are the puppet-masters, but they also didn't have some kind of Pol Pot butcher a third of their citizens. Some choices didn't have Utopia on the list.
Most Empires have only the justification that they are big and powerful and that's the end of it. The USA often goes on about the whole "land of the free" line and some people think that they should follow this.

Of course, they never have in their entire history and enjoyed the same methods of disenfranchising and when required killing those who don't want to join Team USA. Setting the bar as low as "hey - we didn't support killing 1/3 of the population" makes most of the things the British Empire did practically benign.