The Evil That Men Do

Augusto Pinochet wasn't elected to power in October, 1973.   He and his allies machine-gunned their  way in.  And bombed the palace of the President of Chile, a guy who happened to be an elected leader who had made the mistake of thinking that, even though he was a Marxist, he was entitled to hold power by having won more votes in an election than his opponents.  

Old Augusto and his pack had thousands of people round up and tortured (waterboarded and electrocuted) and often shot or marched out to the Arcuna desert to die in some squallid camp.  He was a first-class tyrant, but of course an "honorable man" because he did all his terror, of course,  in the name of anti-Communism. 

   In 1981 or 82, the late Jeane Kirkpatrick flew to Santiago.  The first female US Ambassador to the United Nations  offered Augusto a powdered cheek for Pinochet to kiss in front of the world's press.  She told the press that the dictator was a man of "strength".   "Evil" would have been a better word.   I'm sure Fidel Castro, who came to power in Cuba in not unlike fashion in 1959, has strength, too.  Since she was starting up a "good neighbor" kissing booth for dictators why didn't she stop for a smooch with Fidel on the way back to Washington?    Needles to say, I hate to speak ill of the dead, honestly, but I remember seeing Ambassador Kirkpatrick  do that and it still sickens me today.       

 All in the name of anti-Communism.   

Harrison Sailsbury once wrote that "It doesn't matter to a man who has his genitals attached to electric wires whether the  torturers inflicting pain on him represent a totalatarian or authoritarian regime."

    You see, in those bleak Cold War days, elections only mattered in the Western Hemisphere...well,  when we wanted them to matter.  Our President Nixon, with a foreign policy then provided by "Kissinger and Associates", sought to subvert the government of Salvador Allende. While Henry the K  may not have led the coup, he must have given ample assurances to business and military leaders in Santiago that such a coup would not be left without US support. 

Chile was a pawn game in our chess match with Moscow and Havana.   The game may be over but people in South America remember some of the moves we took in said game. The next time anyone wonders why leftist regimes often hostile to the USA and free trade are elected to power  in places like Venezuela, Brazil  and Bolivia, don't forget that these people haven't forgotten our complicity with Old Augusto and his fascists in a neighboring country.  

   Kissinger reportedly told the outgoing US Ambassador to Chile that "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." 

 What an endorsement for one-person/one vote!

History and Chile's long-standing commitment to democracy eventually caught up to Augusto.  He lost the leadership of his country in 1989 and became a Senator for Life to avoid prosecution.   The new government didn't have the stomach or the support to make him face justice.   He was arrested by the British in 1999 and sent to Madrid for killing some Spainards.  By then he was too sickly to be put on trial and his adversaries showed more respect for common decency then he ever would have to someone who bloodied one of his supporters.  He was let go.  Controversy in Chile kept him from going to jail.  He died in a decent and clean bed, I'll bet, surrrounded by his family and the cheers of the people who supported him.   Many supported him, thisis true,and those who opposed him were not all blameless in matterss of political activity themselves perhaps.  But there comes a point when right and wrong have to enter into things and what this man did to his country was plain wrong, no matter what he tried peddling after the jig was up.      

Marc Cooper of the LA Times sums it up in an editorial today:

"But much about the Pinochet period remains unknown and unresolved. And while the civilian government now in power has shown little if no appetite to pursue these matters, Chile will never right itself until the full truth is known. No one knows for sure, just to cite one example, the origin of the millions that Pinochet stashed in secret foreign accounts. Illicit arms sales? Or drugs? Or both? And who else was involved with Pinochet in these scandals?



"Likewise, there are still literally hundreds of unsolved political murders and disappearances. And an equal or greater number of former associates and beneficiaries of the Pinochet regime, guilty of a long list of human rights and criminal violations, remain unaccountable.



"The death of any individual diminishes us all. There can be no celebration of Pinochet's demise, nor any mourning. The only appropriate response is to redouble efforts to uncover, review and sort out all the dirty work of his dictatorship — and then bury it forever with its execrable author."