Hi, liberal here. Let's see...
STALIN -- egotistical, manipulative sociopath and mass murderer. Not known for negotiating in good faith (see: Yalta).
POL POT -- brutal, culturally arrogant isolationist. Once you get past his wannabe-Mao thing, he was basically Pat Buchanan with guns.
HO CHI MIHN -- What would you have done in his position? I'm not saying he was a shining star of a man, but an awful lot of governments looked to the Soviets because of our mucking around in their politics.
FIDEL CASTRO -- Disillusioned lefty turned power-mad, obstinate blowhard. May, at one point, have been a good replacement for Fulgencio Batista, but has thoroughly impoverished a country that should be one of the richest in Latin America.
CHAIRMAN MAO -- World's worst case of Not Invented Here syndrome. Even the Chinese have backed away from him.
DANIEL ORTEGA -- There are two sides to every story. The fact that he's back in power again tells me that while someone like him needs to be watched carefully, the people of Nicaragua didn't seem to mind him all that much.
HUGO CHAVEZ -- Embarrassing publicity whore with delusions of godhood. I actually considered him tolerable until he got the right to rule by fiat, but now at the very least he needs to be reined in.
IDI AMIN -- Frightening, delusional, and sickening Third World Stalin wannabe. There is absolutely nothing at all to defend about this man.
ROBERT MUGABE -- corrupt, racist bastard who needs to be shot with a diamond bullet from Zimbabwean soil.
YASSER ARAFAT -- Did a lot of growing up over the last twenty years of his life. Far too complex a character to be on this list.
AYATOLLAH KHOMENEI -- Strange and freaky religious leader, and a direct product of US foreign policy (viz. Mossadegh and the return of the Shah, who wasn't wanted at all by the Iranian people).
HEZBOLLAH -- Religious zealots. Their cause may have made sense at one time, but they are driven entirely by propaganda phantoms.
HAMAS -- Incompetent and violent assholes who got the keys to the Palestinian kingdom (so to speak) and immediately shoved them up their asses. Otherwise more or less the same as Hezbollah.
OSAMA BIN LADEN -- Trust fund baby with guns; the living incarnation of Cobra Commander, only nowhere near as pathetic or ineffectual. And I want to know why he wasn't rotting in a cell in Colorado five years ago.
al-QAEDA -- A hydra of zealotry. And you know what we at FSTDT think of zealots.
VLADIMIR PUTIN -- Not the worst thing Russia's ever seen, but too authoritarian for his own good. Good thing the Russian constitution has presidential term limits.
LEONID BREZHNEV -- Useless party hack. The Ezra Taft Benson of the Soviet Union -- unfit to rule, but nobody bothered to replace him.
NIKITA KRUSCHEV -- A bit of a drama queen, but he did do a lot to remove Stalin's legacy from the Soviet Union (well, except for that Lysenkoism shit). Not exactly a good guy, but not a bad one either.
CHE GUEVERA -- I saw him on a T-shirt once. I really don't know much about him except that he was a far-left revolutionary in South America.
MUQTADA AL-SADR -- Not really our problem, but by mucking about in Iraq where we didn't really belong, we made him their problem. A very potent force for civil war in Iraq right now, but a martyr if we try to take him out.
THE IRA -- The cause was once just, but what's left of it has become a bunch of ineffectual thugs. (Can I include Ian Paisley as an equally nasty representative of the other side?)
ISLAM -- What about it? It's got its good side and its nasty side. For something like five hundred years, Islam was Western Civilization -- between the Islamic world and the Irish, there wouldn't be much to fire the Renaissance without them. As for the nasty side, well, if you had corrupt, totalitarian governments feeding you 800 year old propaganda about the West on a daily basis (along with blundering Western imperialism to back it up), you'd be blowing yourself up for Allah too.