We have a vile editorial [in the Washington Post] essentially endorsing Augusto Pinochet's reign of terror -- featuring an assassination on the streets of Washington, D.C. -- on (spurious) economic grounds. I recall comments from Milton Friedman to the effect that Chilean socialist Allende was preparing something horrendous that justified the bloody coup that removed him. It would follow that in principle Friedman and other such apologists are no more a libertarian than Henry Kissinger. Preemptive denial of liberty on such grounds is the oldest chestnut in the book of tyranny.Max also points us to this interesting essay on the bogus Chilean "economic miracle" that supposedly justifies the reign of terror. I've said it many times before, but I'll say it again: economic growth as normative priority is the claim of idiots and tyrants.
See, also, Glenn Greenwald's post today.
Also, take a look at Ariel Dorfman's piece in the NY Times (Dorfman, by the way, is a contributor to my forthcoming book on torture).
4 comments:
Its one thing to love your Porshe, but for thousands to be mourning in the streets indicates some serious moral issues.On sonia-belles blog she put it this way:"kill 3,000 future communist tyrants and your a Devil!" Crazy- naked- girl takes "pre-emptive" to a new level.
Yeah they really should have let Allende run things right into the ground with 500% inflation and then order protestors who lost their life savings shot in the streets. Either way shooting them would have been the job Pinochet would have been assigned as the head of the Chilean Armed Forces.
Make the hole deep and throw Saddam in after him, then dig up Somoza, sprinkle with the ashes of Pol Pot and then bury Castro up to his neck up top and feed him hershey bars.
Even if that had some basis in reality - that the democratically elected Allende's government would have led to 500% inflation - it hardly trumps dumping political opponents in garbage bags into the ocean from helicopters. Being ignorant and defending Pinochet is one thing. But knowing the history of Pinochet and Allende and then mocking Allende through your own made-up story about a would-be president who never had the chance to lead the country versus one who actually engaged in atrocities is simply morally backassward.
Well unless I've forgotten my history, Allende was elected in 1970 and served for three years before the coup on, coincidentally September 11, 1973. And he did, in fact, have a chance for three years to lead Chile even if the Chamber of Deputies never cared much for him.
It is true he never had the chance to do much more than, after a somewhat successful first year, drive the economy into the ground in concert with the disasterous drop in worldwide copper prices and falling agricultrual outputs massive increasing in the importation of foodstuffs and shortly before he was deposed a hyperinflation of 504% related to the freefall in the value of Chilean Peso and its fiat currency status.
Pinochet, is just one more in a long line of thugs permitted to exist by the U.S. as long as they did not act against our interests. This is our burden to bear. I find it ironic that the two presidents (Carter and Bush) that despised thugs and attempted to get our country not to treat with them are some of the most maligned in our history.
And now the failures of Carter and Bush and the perverse realpolitik of Kissenger may intertwine to empower the very type thugs they hated. I say we divorce ourselves from the practice of using folks with two horns and a tail simply because of expedience. That goes for the Saudis, the Syrians, the Chinese, the any number of tinhorn South and Central American Dictators, that crazy bastard in North Korea, and the Iranians.
I never suggested Allende's conduct trumps his successor's, only that it has the stink of inevitability when our country does not operate from a position of moral authority whether it tolerates Abu Gharib (new tenants and old) or author and creator of so many disappeared chileans.
One might speculate on the progress a Mosadeq might have made before Reza Shah's reinstallation, but both Pinochet's and Allende's unsuitability was demonstrably manifest.
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