Hey, we allied with Stalin in WWII. We did that to defeat Hitler. Stalin was absolutely as evil as Hitler, but we allied with him to defeat an evil, Nazism, that was more of direct threat to the world. That's what a lot of diplomacy is....taking the best of two bad alternatives. To say we're evil because we ally with some disreputable people from time to time is standing reality on its head. And if we're evil because we, the country, make mistakes, then you're expecting perfection. Humans aren't perfect. They make mistakes. That does not make them evil.
Creative editing on your part, let’s look at that section again including the WHOLE sentence:
backing the Shah
backing Marcos
backing Duvalier
we backed a lot of really bad people during the Cold War
This was WWII, and by and large they weren’t the lesser of two evils. We could have backed good people in those countries, but during the Cold War our rule was pretty simple “anybody that doesn’t take money from Russia is AOK in our book”. And understand that unlike WWII these people we were backing were fighting against their own people, there was no common enemy, they wanted to keep power. When you’re keeping blood thirsty dictators in power because you’re afraid their replacements MIGHT side with Russia that’s pretty close to evil. And I didn’t say “we” are evil, I said our government (which isn’t us) did some evil things. I’m not expecting perfection, I’m pointing out that if one thinks of the government and people as one entity (which you shouldn’t) one could look at the things our government has done and conclude (incorrectly) the America as a whole is evil.