Stalin's support of Lysenko was a result of thinking Lysenko was actually able to drive agricultural growth.
Both mistakes led to mass deaths.
We still tend to attribute those deaths to those leaders, because their brutally authoritarian rule was what allowed those mistakes to go unchallenged and get fixed before they caused that level of harm.
Both of them also killed a lot of people maliciously and intentionally, but a large proportion of their death toll as a side-effect of their oppression, not the goal of it.
What is the analogue here for attributing the rise of alternative energy sources to Trump? Being too incompetent to avoid harm isn't the same as being too incompetent to avoid benefit, because your job is to create benefit.
It's Trump's job to create positive outcomes. If he creates positive outcomes by accident while trying to create negative ones, he should get panned for trying to create negative outcomes.
The number of Americans still believing this is baffling and saya everything about their history education.
"The previous 20 times we forced regime change ended up a net negative for the people in those countries, but surely this time it would've been different!".
Plenty of counter-examples, too. WWII. South Korea. Potentially Venezuela, mostly because we constrained our objectives.
I also don’t think it’s fair to constrain OP’s statement to “the people in those countries.” Regional impacts matter, too. An Iran that isn’t funding terrorist proxies everywhere could still be a net positive even if the average Iranian is no better off afterwards. (To be clear, I’m in no way supporting this stupid war.)
To even hint at those being in the same category of "regime change attempt" as Iran (2x), Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Congo is really desperate. Come on now. Not comparable and irrelevant.
…why are Japan and Germany not comparable to Iraq? We’re talking methods and outcomes, not motivations. All involved a wholesale invasion, occupation and supervised restructuring followed by disarmament.
For whom?
His belief that the jews were the problem was the issue. But Germany has still not recovered scientifically or technologically. He was just as wrong about jews as Mao was about sparrows, or Stalin about wheat.
I don't see the distinction you're trying to make. Millions died in all three cases.