You are at the lever of a train junction, there is an oncoming train, you pull the lever and 1 worker dies, you don't pull it and 5 die. What do you do? Bearing in mind that inaction is as much of a choice as pulling the lever. It is a simple calculation of utilitarianism, it is better to pick the lesser of 2 evils and it is in fact narrow minded not to see why this is the right thing to do. Such decisions have to be made, so if neocons are the most evil thing "evar" then it cannot be said they were indecisive.

Compare South Vietnam with South Korea. At one point South Korea was considered as much of a dictatorship as South Vietnam, but during the 50s America was not as fearful in bombing targes in North Korea to cripple the country in defense of this despotism since the red terror would have prevented the despotism from evolving into the democracy it is today.

If the US was really the head of a capitalist imperialist empire then surely every nation which has been opened up for trade, especially those in such a forceful manner as South Korea, would be little more than vassal states pillaged for their resources and slave labour. Instead we see communist states exploiting their own people for their own business interests in the global market. Clearly the regimes you support are not all flowers and candy.

So now I view Afghanistan and Iraq and the emerging economics of China and all it's hanger ons and am proud to see the exact same thing happening again. History is repeating itself and as long as we do not pull out their economic and democratic development can begin a lifetime earlier. Once every square mile on this planet is under the jurisdiction of a liberal democracy, essentially, we will have world peace. Why does that shock you?