Isn't that how we ended up with Mubarak in Egypt and Khaddafi in Libya in the first place? We decided that totalitarianism was OK as long as they did business with us.
In the real world, your only choices are the bad choice, or the even worse choice, we choose the bad choice.
We where once allied with Stalin during WWII. In the real world you have to deal with the devil to get things done.
Gaddaffi was a bastard from the start, who was supporting the USSR and sponsoring anti-western terrorists in the begining, until 9-11 and America’s response to it persuaded him that being a terrorist supporting asshat on the global stage would get him killed if he didn’t pack it in. Gaddaffi was never what you might have called ‘our son-of-a-bitch’....