>>There really isn't much to say, because all of it was by and large indefensible. And you don't have to go that far back in history, either, to find mind boggling abuses of power. Oliver North and the Iran Contra affair with the gun smuggling, drug dealing, CIA's clandestine war "business model" that pushed Nicaragua pretty much over the edge and into an abyss of death squads and the trampling of even the most basic human rights. Begs the question: How does a country that came up with the Marshall Plan for Europe turn around and goes on a destructive binge like this in Central America? Does it have something to do with the race and/or ethnicity of the people in the receiving end? Whatever the case, the stated goal with both actions was to stop the spread of communism. Same goal but wildly different methods.
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>Europe had the advantage of having the Soviet Union against which to show up a good face. South America had no such thing, so no propagandistic, people pampering action was needed. It was all up for grabs the easier way.

Maybe so. I suspect, though, that it had more to do with the fact that the white ruling class of the U.S. came mostly originally from Europe, and it is a pretty tougher to flog your distant relatives than it is to stomp unrelated people. you would think, one would think, that the results of communism stopping actions in Latin America would have been much better if the U.S. had set up a good rather than a horrible example of how people are treated under the North American system. Is it any wonder that Venezuela, Bolivia and many other countries are now leaning heavily to the left.