> The only alternative to 'sham' governments imposed from outside are 'strong men'
Please be careful with that. In my country (brazil) we had a US-sponsored military dictatorship in the sixties-eighties that was both "strong men" and a "sham government", and it crushed a lot of the intellectual and cultural development happening in brazil at the time, all the while only preventing a very small risk that the country would turn communist. And today one of our most US-friendly presidents (Lula) is an ex revolutionary (and many people in his government were politically persecuted, exiled and tortured during the dictatorship).
It's really awful to think that this is still happening in other places around the world, and that fundamentally the american people do not see any major problem with the idea of interfering militarly in a government across the globe.
Please be careful with that. In my country (brazil) we had a US-sponsored military dictatorship in the sixties-eighties that was both "strong men" and a "sham government", and it crushed a lot of the intellectual and cultural development happening in brazil at the time, all the while only preventing a very small risk that the country would turn communist. And today one of our most US-friendly presidents (Lula) is an ex revolutionary (and many people in his government were politically persecuted, exiled and tortured during the dictatorship).
It's really awful to think that this is still happening in other places around the world, and that fundamentally the american people do not see any major problem with the idea of interfering militarly in a government across the globe.