We supported a lot of people to keep communists out of many countries. Not all were bastards, but a lot of them were. You are correct that America has gotten into bed with some pretty lousy characters over the past decades. Whether or not this was justified as a way of preventing Soviet totalitarianism from sweeping the planet is a whole argument in itself, and I don't have a clear answer even now.

I'd like to think that just because we supported thugs with money and arms against communist incursions did not mean that we were pretending they were good and moral leaders, and were sanctioning their rule. I'd like to think that at least our government held its nose while they did the necessary thing. I'd like to think that, but I doubt it.

My sympathies were with the citizens of these various Third World battlegrounds, given a crappy choice between a dictatorial goon or a Marxist tyranny. At least with the goon they had a chance for change if the guy died. The Communist Party was for all practical purposes immortal.

In any case, as you have often pointed out, just because we sometimes did the same bad thing as the U.N. is doing does not mean the U.N. is justified or off the hook for its benign treatment of totalitarians.

As for the various U.N. treaties, they aren't worth the paper they are printed on anyway. Even when they aren't specifically written to penalize America and the West, the thug nations will ignore them anyway, even if they signed them. At least we have the decency to refuse to sign if we don't want to abide by certain clauses.