Was Cold war a very dirty business for both the US and USSR? like was intervention always possible for both?

Liberals tend to apologize for the Soviet behavior and concentrate on the American. It is very true that the Americans supported dictators and colonialists that they would normally have not been caught dead with just because they were anti-Communist. But the Communists did the same thing with religious terrorists (I'm thinking Islamic terrorists that were almost as anti-Communist as they were anti-Western) to create chaotic conditions (especially in the Middle East and Central Asia) in the hope small cells of Communists would be able to take over in the chaos. In the long run the Soviets did more harm when they destabilized sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia in the 1970. These areas are still unstable and the cause of most of the world's current problems. We are still paying for the Soviet "dirty business" during the latter part of the Cold War today.