Politics & Power Quote by Anthony Weiner

America’s foreign-policy sin, Weiner argues, isn’t hypocrisy in the abstract; it’s a specific, repeatable convenience: picking the dictator who creates the fewest headaches for Washington. The line has the blunt, slightly ungainly cadence of a politician thinking out loud, which is part of its force. He’s not offering a grand theory so much as naming a habit everyone in the room recognizes but prefers to sanitize with words like “stability” and “strategic interests.”

The key phrase is “least troublesome to us.” It’s a confession about the real unit of moral calculation: not human rights, not democratic legitimacy, but friction. “Troublesome” doesn’t mean brutal; it means unpredictable, costly, capable of disrupting oil flows, counterterror partnerships, basing rights, or electoral optics at home. By folding “Democratic or Republican administrations alike” into the indictment, Weiner tries to strip the critique of partisan refuge. This isn’t one party’s scandal; it’s bipartisan muscle memory.

Subtextually, he’s pointing at the way America repeatedly trades long-term legitimacy for short-term manageability: backing “our” strongman because he keeps a lid on enemies and refugees, then acting surprised when repression radicalizes opposition and the blowback arrives on a later president’s watch. “That should not be the way we view things” is less a policy prescription than a plea to change the lens: from a transactional worldview to a values-based one. It’s also a warning that the “least troublesome” despot is still a despot - and that moral outsourcing doesn’t stay offshore.