I simply deny the assertion that dictators who wanted good results and got them were rare exceptions. Citation needed.

Admittedly, dictators have frequently presided over atrocities, unlike democratic rulers who have never presided over atrocities such as slavery, genocide, or more recently, say the Iraq war, Vietnam, or in an ongoing sense, the drug war or factory farming.

Human life is bloody. Power pushes the perceived responsibility for that brute fact onto the powerful. People are often scum, but avoiding power doesn't actually remove their responsibility. Practically every American can save lives for amounts of money which are fairly minor to them. What are the relevant differences between them and French aristocrats who could have done the same? I see one difference. The French aristocrats lived in a Malthusian world where tehy couldn't really have impacted total global suffering with the local efforts available?

How is G.W. Bush more corrupt than the people who elected him. He seems to care more for the third world poor than they do, and not obviously less for rule of law or the welfare of the US.

Playing fast and loose with geopolitical realities, (Iraq is only slightly about oil, for instance) I'd like to conclude with the observation that even when you yourself, as a middle class American, don't get your hands bloody as cheap oil etc corrupt you, it is possible that you are saved from bloody hands by an elected representative who you hired to do the job.