Pinochet: Apparently Not So Bad
Writing in the Harvard Crimson, Ryan M. McCaffrey, co-editor of the conservative Harvard Salient, says that the world "mourns" the passing of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and that Pinochet wasn't really so bad. In fact, he was just misunderstood.
Writes McCaffrey,
Pinochet...
was a criminal, murderer, and thief—or so the headlines ubiquitous in the mainstream media would have us believe. Pinochet, however, is a man misunderstood by many, and the distortion of facts surrounding his rise to and fall from power is a great injustice of our times.
"Or so the mainstream media would have us believe." I like that part.
Here's McCaffrey's description of how Pinochet came to power:
Finally, with many certain that a coup was inevitable given the hyperinflation (a paycheck from one week could not even afford bread in the next week), starvation, recession, and extreme civil unrest, General Augusto Pinochet took power on Sept. 11, 1973.
Pinochet "took power." Nice. No mention of the CIA, related assassinations, Richard Nixon's instructions to Henry Kissinger that Kissinger devise a plan to topple Allende....
To McCaffrey, Pinochet was a justifiable response to Allende's Cuban-style socialism.
If Allende had been able to continue to advance his extreme socialist agenda, he could well have caused far more death and misery than the 3000 people Pinochet is responsible for murdering.
Well, we'll never know now, will we?
What's remarkable about McCaffrey's writing is how casually he justifies overthrowing a democratically elected government in a foreign country on the grounds of economic capitalism. This is the definition of American arrogance, and particularly given what's happening in the world at the moment, it suggests that humility regarding intervention in the domestic affairs of other countries has not sunk in at the
Harvard Salient.
McCaffrey's conclusion:
The twentieth century saw more than its fair share of both wicked men, and individuals who countered their iniquity with crusades of justice. Pinochet, I believe, was a bit of both, but for the most part one of the latter. Pinochet—a devout and caring Christian man with an understanding of the dangers of radical socialism—deserves the respect from democrats the world around for his fight for freedom from tyranny in South America.
A devout and caring Christian man....
Somewhere, Pinochet is laughing through his hellfire, and the souls of the disappeared weep.
