Too often I notice when a nation in the global south is targeted by the imperialists there are all sorts of people rushing to proclaim "critical support" for the said nation, even if it has no left-wing bent at all or is openly anti-communist. There are two problems with this.
First, all support should be critical support. Uncritical support is anti-Marxist and against the spirit of "ruthless criticism of all things". It breeds dogmatism which is poisonous to critical thinking. There is a reason why Mao railed so hard against dogmatism.
Second, it frames the discussion as to whether the said country is good or not, which is not the point of the political line. We do not support global south countries like Iran just because, especially if they are not socialist. We should not be centring the governments that are affected, but the imperialist actions themselves.
I see discussions about this where people end up talking over one another. After seeing someone proclaim 'critical support', someone else will point out said countries faults and as to why they are worthy of support. The first person will then say that because that country is under attack we should support them. These discussions usually go nowhere because both people are technically right, it's just that they are misunderstanding each other.
This is where my idea of replacing "Critical support to countries affected by US imperialism" with "Unconditional opposition to US imperialism in all its forms" comes in. The second slogan allows a lot more flexibility in thinking, instead of committing to supporting countries, you commit to opposing imperialism and nothing more. Your support for various reactionary anti-imperialist causes starts and ends with their opposition to imperialism. As soon as they stop you stop supporting them. If they do awful things you don't have to support them on that basis as it's not relevant to opposing imperialism.
What do you think?
I think you are missing the point of what I was saying. My main point is that our positions here should stem from anti-imperialism first and foremost. This means that it doesn't matter whether the government is good or not. We can all agree that while Saddam was a piece of shit, his country being invaded by the US was worth opposing.
I have seen a tendency from many people who proclaim critical support, to try to make the target state look good. For example, with Belarus, before the protests, everyone agreed that it was a capitalist country in the Russian sphere of influence and was not socialist. The protests did not change this. But people changed their views on Belarus. Now we have people praising Lukasheka for supposedly implementing socialist policies despite the fact that these policies are just state-owned corporations and a welfare state that is better than most eastern European countries. There are no planned elements of the Belarus economy. Same deal with Syria, people started trying to find good things that Assad did that they could use to justify support independent of anti-imperialism.
I think that Maoists have the best takes on this. They are able to support nations against imperialism, while at the same time recognising that said nations can in face be awful, and not socialist.