Western foreign policy, when push comes to shove: Democracy sacrificed for Stability?

[Idaho]

The US supported groups of insurgents operating under warlords in Afghanistan, against the Soviets.

Once these warlords became a movement - the Taliban - the US distrusted them. And instead supported other groups of insurgents operating under (opium funded) warlords to oust them. It continues to prop up Karzai - a corrupt, incompetant and paranoid fool who no-one outside his paid up clique would touch with a bargepole.

I brought up Korea on a thread a while back. A similar thing happened then. The US was deeply suspicious of the socialist North Koreans. A group who became odder and more secretive once they had been marginalised by the US, and violently repressed by the South Korean President - Rhee - himself a classic US selection of "our man".

South and Central America was riven with "our men". Almost all corrupt and desperately unpopular and usually undemocratic despots and tyrants. Some of whom were actually sponsored by the US to overthrow democratic governments.

The US talks a lot about democracy - but in truth they are absolutely terrified of it. Because, strangely enough, poor and abused populaces in other parts of the world, with other cultures, have the odd habit of electing people who they believe represent their interests, rather than that of the US military or economy.

The biggest mistake of this century will be seen by historians as the first Bush election. Leaders around the world saw the voting irregularities and rigging as a carte blanche for the legitimization of electoral rigging. If it's ok in the US, then it's ok here.

The question that this thread has hanging in the breeze is "what is stability?" and does it really differ from acendant western interest?