The Shah may have been no Boy Scout, but he was our non-Boy Scout, and he was vastly more democratic than what replaced him.
When you are dealing with a bunch of nimrods who think that the appropriate response to the rape of a sister is to murder the sister...well, the Boy Scout Handbook doesn't have a chapter on how to deal with people like that. The Shah was trying to bring Iran into the modern age, and certain elements of Iranian society needed to be beaten into the modern age.
"The Shah was trying to bring Iran into the modern age, and certain elements of Iranian society needed to be beaten into the modern age."
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Exactly. The enemies of the Shah were the very extremist Islamists we are battling today. If our fine president Carter had supported the Shah and helped him stay in power and defeat the Islamist movement lead by the Ayatollah, the Islamists may very well not have been able to get as strong as they are today. The Ayatollah taking power in Iran gave them a springboard to spread their ideology and terrorism.