As far as the Cold War and us propping up "anti-communist" dictators,
We fully supported Suharto in Indonesia in 1965 when he massacred large numbers of communist party members, as well as ethnic Chinese. Including handing over lists of party members. I had a former boss who, when I told him about this, said, sometimes you have to be tough. Alright, if you think this might be justifiable in some circumstances, did those particular circumstances apply?
And we view it through that lense of ideology, but again, a lot of it was just killing of ethnic Chinese. A whole lot more is going on than just the preferred one-dimensional ideology we're focused and fixated on.
This was during the heyday of Lyndon Johnson. So, if we're going to criticize Reagan as I do, we can just as well criticize Johnson. It's the shared assumptions of the Cold War, deferring to the military establishment, all of that.