I think many people of vietnam, cambodia, laos, indonesia, angola, nicaragua, grenada, most of the middle east, afghanistan, pakistan [1] and so on would strongly disagree. Potentially lesser evil out of 2 evils ain't no good choice.

[1] http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html

Most of these countries (or regions) never took up capitalism, free markets, and liberalism. Being partners on either side of a proxy war obviously didn't help.

So they deserved it then? Please keep in mind you're talking about many innocent bystanders being killed as an outcome of US foreign policy.

I don't think it's entirely black and white in the other direction either but your comment strikes me as crass and indifferent towards human life, dehumanizing, confusing people with their larger society and government.

The classic example of a generally stable and democratic country being overthrown into illiberalism and mass murder by the US is Chile, which was missing from that list.

Would not call 73's chile stable, unless you consider current venezuela a stable country which i do not.

.. and there's the other half of the false dichotomy: if you're not with "us", you're against us.

It's interesting that you choose to use the word "management" here - we in other countries are not left to make our own decisions, they're "managed".

If, you believe what you say. If you believe Russia releasing hacks and influencing US elections -- how is that any different than what the US does?

If you believe all that, you have to consider the results of Putin's Russia: Oligarchy & Nationalization, direct imperialism (Ukraine), the support of extremists/facists in foreign countries...

Yes, Putin's Russia is terrible, and exporting problems. They're a contributor to the Syrian mess as well.

That doesn't make it OK for the US to do it as well! This is what I meant by "false dichotomy". If anything, the US (and especially UK) use of domestic surveillance and extraterritorial interference makes it harder for us to argue that Russia should not do those things either.

Whether the US is a force for good is a completely different argument than whether it's untrustworthy and/or undemocratic.

#1, Yes, I specifically called out his argument as being hollow, and supported only by an appeal to "everyone knows" - he's self selecting his audience.

Even within that audience which implicitly accepts the government is more directly engaged in protection of sovereignty via clandestine means against it's own citizens -- that audience should probably consider the goals of the sources.