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Rest in Peace, PinochetThe news of Pinochet’s death should have taken nobody by surprise. He was an ailing old man of ninety-one, living in prison or under secure house arrest, and with the country he helped to preserve from the Red Menace now led and represented on the world stage by glib, effete busybodies. It’s a miracle he held out as long as he did. Yet this was hardly the first miracle contained within his remarkable life. When, in 1970, Chile elected as its President that Castro wannabe, that Guerra fan-boy Salvadore Allende, many feared the emergence of a second Cuba, albeit one possessed of considerable natural resources and a powerful industrial base. Enough trees were felled to give any modern environmentalist a heart attack, to print all those reams of articles in the Nation and Newsweak giving dire warnings of failed American interventions. Revolutions only go one way, we were told. Once a nation tastes the fruits of the Socialist utopia, even if these fruits turn out to be both bitter and rotten, it will never turn back. The Chilean people surprised our own ineffectual do-gooders. In particular, one Roman Catholic soldier, Pinochet, did. As his nation descended into the economic chaos which ever follows the Communists in their tracks, he took advantage of his control of the army and ousted Allende on 11th September 1973. This was a truly Chilean counter-revolution. Plenty has been written about his despotic methods and his reliance on CIA money. Suffice to say, in both he compares well to his Red adversaries. He executed several thousand Communist activists, whose bloodthirsty class-war rhetoric made them little more than conspirators to commit mass murder, alongside banditry, theft and rapine. Pinochet was mercy personified compared to them. As to the charge that he was an American puppet because the CIA spent, at most, $11m to bolster anti-Allende figures in Chile, such amounts of money are pocket change in the game of international espionage and covert regime change. How much did the British Communist Party receive from the Kremlin? We will never know for certain, but a rough estimate might be arrived at after considering how a state as vast and rapacious as the Soviet one could fail to provide even the most basic welfare services to its citizens. Did not the money collected but not disbursed line the pockets of many of precisely those Western malcontents who then chose to criticise American imperialism? Pinochet’s economic policies rescued the Chileans from the misery and uncertainty granted to them by the hyper-inflationary Allendite early seventies, while his harsh, militaristic style of governance returned the streets to order to an extent practically unseen in Latin America. Yet, despite his background or perhaps because of it, he was no self-aggrandising military adventurer. The duties of the Chilean government were to be carried out in Chile, not by expanding the Comintern in Europe or indulging in Messianic missions in Africa. He was an anti-imperialist in a way that his lefty critics cannot even comprehend. In 1990, he resigned (remaining head of the Army and a Senator-for-life) as President, after it became clear that he could not succeed in a referendum he had set up. We have seen countless other dictators fix results in such elections or simply forget about them and hope the international community does as well. Pinochet had no interest in show elections, however. His aim had been to restore law and order to Chile, and he had no intention of jeopardising it to remain in office. Alongside Cromwell and Franco, Pinochet belongs in that select category of leaders who state upfront what they seek power for and leave gracefully when their time comes. Apparently, “a Chilean government spokesman said that General Pinochet would not have a state funeral but would be buried with military honours tomorrow.” Looking at the vain-glorious dreamers the Chilean state now honours, The General would have had it no other way. Posted by Alex Zeka on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 12:59 PM in Obituaries Comments:2
Posted by Matra on December 12, 2006, 04:44 PM | # Pinochet also held a referendum in the late 70s in which he got something like 70% of the vote. Let us also remember how the great man was brutally kidnapped and humiliated by New Labour. (The Spanish judge who tried to extradite him to Spain says he will continue to try get Pinochet convicted for his so-called atrocities). We can only hope that some day Tony Blair will be similarly arrested for his far greater crimes against Serbs and Iraqis - not to mention against his own people. 3
Posted by Alex Zeka on December 12, 2006, 05:12 PM | # KM, I’ve taken a look at your obit. You must be the only paleocon still able to get printed in the mainstream media. 4
Posted by john ray on December 13, 2006, 05:38 AM | # There is a very good bit of sarcasm here about the media hatred of the too-successful Chilean General Pinochet. It is often forgotten that the world-transforming free market reforms instituted by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were in fact pioneered some years earlier by Augusto Pinochet. It is also usually forgotten that Pinochet overthrew the Marxist President Allende in response to a request from the Chilean Parliament—not unlike the way Cromwell and Fairfax overthrew the tyrannical King Charles I in response to a request from the English Parliament (You won’t read THAT in the newspapers!). I also have an article about Pinochet on Political Correctness Watch today. 5
Posted by Election Summary on December 13, 2006, 06:43 AM | # It is also usually forgotten that Pinochet overthrew the Marxist President Allende in response to a request from the Chilean Parliament The overthrow of Allende was a CIA operation approved by Kissinger. Kissinger was probably Nixon’s personal “Genius-Jew adviser”, that is, his handler sent from Jewry. 6
Posted by Election Summary on December 13, 2006, 06:46 AM | # Btw, the problem with Allende from Jewry’s perspective wasn’t that he was “Marxist”, but that he was a nationalist who planned to nationalize foreign assets (meaning primarily American assets, including its hefty Jewish portion). This is intolerable in America’s backyard. 7
Posted by Alex Zeka on December 13, 2006, 10:07 AM | # ES, The highest estimate I’ve seen for CIA help to anti-Allende forces is $11 million. Could one buy a revolution for that sort of money? Experience would suggest not. 8
Posted by Lurker (Mk II) on December 13, 2006, 01:25 PM | # Why is that bastard Ray back here spreading his nonsense? I thought he’d been banned for life. Is this site now so dead that the king of all egotists has to be allowed to swarm all over it again? 9
Posted by Joker on December 13, 2006, 04:44 PM | # This is strange From Wikipedia Allende does not sound that bad at all. 10
Posted by karlmagnus on December 13, 2006, 11:01 PM | # Joker, everybody believed such things in 1933. Allende was indeed that bad; just because somebody’s an anti-Semitic eugenicist doesn’t stop him being loathsome in other ways. Alex, I didn’t know you worked for a Breakingviews subscriber; apparently the average earnings of their readership are $500K. That’s all I want, to be average…. 11
Posted by Election Summary on December 14, 2006, 12:00 AM | # ES, The highest estimate I’ve seen for CIA help to anti-Allende forces is $11 million. Could one buy a revolution for that sort of money? Experience would suggest not. What were the Cedar, Bulldozer, Orange, Tulip, Rose revolutions? Relatively inexpensive CIA operations. Anecdotal evidence has it that they cost in the area of several tens of millions apiece. Experience thus demonstrates that CIA can pull off revolutions for pittances. Without getting into a drawn-out discussion, CIA interventions include difference-making qualitative and full-spectrum support, that’s how I’d summarize it. They’ve got it down to a *science*. Yes, you can plot revolution scientifically the same way you can engineer a bridge. 12
Posted by Matra on December 14, 2006, 12:21 AM | # Allende had already overplayed his hand. The coup would’ve happened without CIA support. Anyway it all turned out well for civilised Chileans. The only bad thing about it was that we in the West got stuck with Ariel Dorfman and all those other leftist exiles. 13
Posted by Al Ross on December 14, 2006, 12:36 AM | # CIA support may have been valuable but not necessarily essential for Pinochet’s successful coup. This is because most White Chileans feel comfortable with a strong army presence, due to the fact that, historically, it was the army that they relied upon to protect them from uprisings by indigenous people. 14
Posted by Fred Scrooby on December 14, 2006, 02:00 AM | #
I wonder who Bush’s could’ve been ... I’ve got it! Jonah Goldberg! 15
Posted by Fred Scrooby on December 14, 2006, 02:06 AM | #
Look at Karl, serving mammon so blatantly and at the Christmas season too! Control yourself, man! 16
Posted by Retew on December 14, 2006, 06:55 AM | # Matra wrote; Let us also remember how the great man was brutally kidnapped and humiliated by New Labour. (The Spanish judge who tried to extradite him to Spain says he will continue to try get Pinochet convicted for his so-called atrocities). We can only hope that some day Tony Blair will be similarly arrested for his far greater crimes against Serbs and Iraqis - not to mention against his own people. ========================================== I admit to some qualms about the kidnapping when he was in Britain for a back operation (he was apparently an Anglophile), but it should not be forgotten that Spain tried to extradite *Pinochet because of the deaths in Chilean custody of Spanish citizens, not Chilean ones (at least two British citizens were also tortured in Chile under Pinochet’s watch, including the doctor who treated my father for cancer at one point). From my more sympathetic point of view, Allende tried to do too much too soon and without really building popular support amongst the more prosperous sections of the Chilean populace for the measures he was attempting to introduce. I hope Hugo Chavez has learnt from his example. * To his credit, on a previous visit to the UK he agreed to appear on British television to be interviewed about his presidency and what he was trying to achieve. I don’t recall the interview in any detail except his comment that he believed the country’s survival was in danger when Allende was in power. Next entry: Future abrupt reductions in the summer Arctic sea ice Previous entry: Leftist White Supremacy: not in my name |
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Posted by karlmagnus on December 12, 2006, 03:03 PM | #
Alex, that’s the first decent obit of Pinochet I’ve seen. I wrote one for Breakingviews.com pointing out that Chile had lost the plot since he left, but it concentrated on economic policy and had to be mealy-mouthed—one must earn ones crust!