> Are you saying that you think that Ho Chi Minh was better than Nguyen
> Van Thieu, that Mao Zedong was better than Chang Kaishek, and that
> Kim Il Sung was better than Syngman Rhee?
>
> Brad DeLong
Brad, I don't think these are the right questions. Generally speaking, any attack by one country on another leads to the political system in the country under attack becoming harsher. Some degree of this is sometimes genuinely necessary for the country's survival. For instance, during World War II, the US was not a model of democracy. Yet even your bete noire, Noam Chomsky, has said, "I thought there was some justification for that under the wartime conditions."
However, opportunistic political leaders almost always use an attack on their country to consolidate their power and make the country more authoritarian than necessary. People who oppose this are called dupes or sympathizers of the attackers or traitors. (Obviously, we can see this process clearly in the United States today.) If the attacks are brutal enough, the only political system that can survive in the country resisting attack is generally an extremely brutal one itself.
It's perfectly appropriate to criticize these brutal systems. But it's a mistake to assume that countries that have been attacked would have inevitably been as brutal if they hadn't been attacked. If countries have some space to breath, different people usually come to power. And in your examples, even if the same individuals had ended up in power, they wouldn't have been able to be as brutal as they were, since they couldn't have persuaded enough other people that brutality was necessary.
Most importantly for this discussion, I find it a little... weird... when political types from aggressor groups criticize the governments of the countries they attacked. For instance, I think the Bush administration has gone way overboard with the PATRIOT Act. Nevertheless, I wouldn't really listen to a member of Al-Qaeda criticizing our policies towards detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Likewise, I think the hysteria whipped up by the Israeli right wing that led to the assassination of Rabin was awful. But I wouldn't be too impressed if Israel were criticized for it by a member of Hamas.
So, when you ask these questions -- particularly the one about Ho Chi Minh -- it sounds to me like (if the Soviet Union still existed in 2003) a member of the Politburo asking, "Are you saying that you think Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden were better than Hafizullah Amin?"
Of course, the answer would be: no, not really -- but it's likely that Afghanistan would have been a much nicer place and wouldn't have ruled by Mullah Omar in 2001 if the Soviet Union hadn't invaded and torn it to shreds. Similar answers can be given to your questions regarding Vietnam, and, to a lesser extent, China and North Korea.
Do you see what I'm getting at?