The US has a weird habit of supporting shitty regimes for short term, small gains. Then being shocked when they turn out to be big problems in the medium term.

The US has a weird habit of supporting shitty regimes for short term, small gains. Then being shocked when they turn out to be big problems in the medium term. You tell me: would you rather have a slightly more self interested democracy in Pakistan OR continue with a totally self interested, money hole, dictatorship that hid Osama Bin Laden? You see the exact same thing in Saudi: short term small gains and long term enormous costs. And the inverse with (say) India: refusing to bow to all US demands means the world's largest democracy is basically rejected in favour of its theocratic military junta neighbour... I actually think this is the last remnants of secrecy in government: in few other areas can the executive secretly do dumb shit. But they can here. So they do. But that does not make it any less dumb...