Kissinger and Chile The Myth That Will Not Die

American Enterprise Institute ^ | October 31, 2003 | By Mark Falcoff

[B-Chan]

Killing an enemy that’s trying to destroy one’s country isn’t mass murder. It’s the duty of every soldier. As for torture: all torture is not created equal. Assume hypothetically that a terrorist has hidden a bomb in a randomly-selected school building. The terrorist is then captured. Five minutes remain on the bomb’s timer. The sneering terrorist is questioned, but refuses to divulge the bomb's location. Physical torture is the only option left. By torturing this one man a police officer can save a thousand innocent lives,

Q. Is it more moral for him to:

A. Torture the location of the bomb out of the terrorist, or
B. Allow it to detonate and kill a thousand kids?

[TaxRelief]

"A"

[GoGophers]

Killing an enemy that’s trying to destroy one’s country isn’t mass murder.

Killing thousands of people without providing them with a trial is mass murder.

[GoGophers]

Who says that Pinochet’s officers didn’t?

Right. They rounded up thousands of dissidents in the days immediately following the coup and provided them with trial.

By the way, do you still believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus?

A court can consist of as little as one officer.

If you have citizens in custody, then why wouldn't you grant them a trial?

[GoGophers]

As for torture: all torture is not created equal. Assume hypothetically that a terrorist has hidden a bomb in a randomly-selected school building. The terrorist is then captured. Five minutes remain on the bomb’s timer. The sneering terrorist is questioned, but refuses to divulge the bomb's location. Physical torture is the only option left.

Interesting scenario but not even remotely analogous to the situation in Chile.

[GoGophers]

"F" for logic

[FreedomPoster]

FWIW, Rummel puts the middle-of-the-range number for Pinochet at around 10,000.

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.TAB16A.1.GIF

Shorten the URL for the main site; it's very worthwhile, should be bookmarked.

I like to compare the numbers for Pinochet/Chile with Castro/Cuba, which shows nearly an order of magnitude more deaths with only 3/5ths the population. And, as you note, Pinochet eventually turned things over to a representative republican government. We're, What?, 44 years into Castro?

Was Pinochet a tyrant? Sure, at some level. And Cuba demonstrates that it could have been much worse.

[FreedomPoster]

And of course Rummel doesn't attempt to define how many were done in without any pretense of a trial. He's looking at a larger picture, obviously.

[FreedomPoster]

See the link in my post 2-3 above. Tens of thousands seems an exaggeration per Rummel, as well.

[GoGophers]

Was Pinochet a tyrant?

Pinochet was and Castro is a tyrant.

[TaxRelief]

"Manuel Vargas Llosa, president of the IFL, wrote in the Cato policy report of January 2003 that 'for a liberal, a dictatorship is never in any case, justifiable' and therefore the Pinochet government in Chile was only 'a beneficent accident.'

This kind of ideological blindness to economic reality makes me very glad I'm a conservative, not a liberal -- in the Vargas Llosa sense any more than in the Ted Kennedy (D.-Mass) sense. President Agosto Pinochet (1973-89) took over at a time of civil war in Chile, when businessmen were being assassinated by leftist thugs.

Today, Chile is, with the partial exception of Alvaro Uribe's Colombia, the only economic success story in Latin America, scoring 42 out of 45 on an economic freedom progress chart prepared by Suarez-Mier.

Almost none of that success has been produced by the democratically elected presidents since 1990, and indeed the socialist presidency of Ricardo Lagos has seen substantial backsliding in Chilean labor law, which will inevitably cause a drop-off in foreign investment and a decline in economic performance if it is not rapidly reversed.

The progress was made under Pinochet, and Vargas Llosa is guilty of a monstrous distortion of the truth in denying him credit for it."

--Martin Hutchinson, UPI Business and Economics Editor

---

UPI-Chile remembers coup of 1973

SANTIAGO, Chile (UPI) -- Minutes before 9 a.m., Sept. 11, 1973, the employees of United Press International began another day of work, unaware that they would soon witness one of the turning points in Chilean history.

[excerpted] ...As the battle for La Moneda continued, Allende and the military each issued communiques by radio. Allende swore he would not surrender, while Pinochet's forces said if he would give up, they would give him an airplane to take him and his family to any place abroad he wished.[more, the whole article is a good read]

By Fernando Lepé-Huili, United Press International

---

There is no doubt that atrocities took place. Chile needs to heal and the world needs to learn the lesson: Generals must control their troops at all times.

Defense: Pinochet never ordered executions, kidnappings

Gen. Augusto Pinochet never ordered executions or kidnappings and can't be tried for any alleged crimes because he is immune from prosecution, an attorney for the former military ruler told Chile's Supreme Court on Thursday.

Attorney Ricardo Rivadeneira insisted that the military junta then ruling Chile, not Pinochet, created the military unit known as the "Caravan of Death," which allegedly dragged 72 jailed dissidents from their cells and executed them shortly after Pinochet seized power in 1973 coup that toppled socialist President Salvador Allende. ...more

[TaxRelief]

The Facts from Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation:

Appendix II
Statistics¹

Table 1

DECISIONS MADE BY THE COMMISSION

Victims of human rights violations	2,115
Victims of political violence	164
TOTAL NUMBER OF VICTIMS	2,279
Cases in which the Commission could not come to conviction	641
TOTAL NUMBER OF CASES	2,920
In addition, the Commission received 508 cases which did not fit within its mandate and 449 in which only a name was provided and hence there was no basis for carrying out an investigation.

1. These statistics had to be prepared two days before completing the report. During those two days the Commission made some further decisions on cases, and hence these statistics might vary slightly (one percent) from the data themselves.

Table 2

VICTIMS OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

Victims of government agents or persons at their service

A. Killed
	In war tribunals	59	2.8%
	During protests	93	4.4%
	During alleged escape attempts	101	4.8%
	Other executions and deaths by torture	815	38.5%
	TOTAL KILLED	1,068	50.5%
B. Disappeared after arrest		957	45.2%

Victims of politically motivated private citizens

	Killed	90	4.3%
	SUB-TOTAL OF VICTIMS	2,115	100.0%

Victims of political violence

	Killed in 1973	87	53.0%
	Killed in protests	38	23.2%
	Killed during gun battles, etc.	39	23.8%
	SUB-TOTAL OF VICTIMS	164	100.0%
	TOTAL OF VICTIMS	2,279

Table 3

VICTIMS BY MARITAL STATUS

Single	960	42.1%
Married	1,172	51.5%
Widowed	12	0.5%
Unspecified	135	5.9%
TOTAL	2,279	100.0%

Table 4

VICTIMS BY GENDER

Female	126	5.5%
Male	2,153	94.5%
TOTAL	2,279	100.0%

Table 5

VICTIMS BY NATIONALITY

Chilean	2,228	97.76%
Spanish	5	0.22%
Argentinean	4	0.18%
Ecuadorian	4	0.18%
French	3	0.13%
Uruguayan	3	0.13%
Bolivian	3	0.13%
North American	3	0.13%
Chilean-French	2	0.09%
Brazilian	2	0.09%
Peruvian	1	0.04%
Venezuelan	1	0.04%
Mexican	1	0.04%
Italian	1	0.04%
Austrian	1	0.04%
Czech	1	0.04%
Vietnamese	1	0.04%
Chilean-Argentinean	1	0.04%
Chilean-Bolivian	1	0.04%
Chilean-British	1	0.04%
Unspecified	12	0.53%
TOTAL	2,279	100.00%

Table 6

VICTIMS BY AGE

Under 16	49	2.1%
16–20	269	11.8%
21–25	557	24.4%
26–30	512	22.4%
31–35	287	12.6%
36–40	152	6.7%
41–45	164	7.2%
46–50	97	4.3%
51–55	53	2.3%
56–60	34	1.5%
61–65	15	0.7%
66–70	8	0.4%
71–75	3	0.1%
Over 75	2	0.1%
Age unspecified	77	3.4%
TOTAL	2,279	100.0%

Table 7

VICTIMS BY POLITICAL ACTIVITY

Socialist party	405	17.8%
MIR	384	16.9%
Communist party	353	15.5%
MAPU	24	1.0%
FPMR	19	0.8%
Radical party	15	0.7%
Christian Democrat party	7	0.3%
Christian Left	5	0.2%
National party	4	0.2%
Other parties	15	0.7%
Not known to be politically active	1,048	46.0%
TOTAL	2,279	100.0%

Table 8	VICTIMS BY REGION AND YEAR
Place and date of death for those killed and of arrest for those who disappeared after arrest

Year	Metropolitan Region	Other Regions	Other Countries	TOTAL
1973	514	747	0	1,261
1974	244	62	3	309
1975	8 [sic]	28	4	119
1976	122	8	9	139
1977	7	13	5	25
1978	7	2	0	9
1979	10	3	0	13
1980	11	4	0	15
1981	20	14	2	36
1982	8	0	0	8
1983	67	15	0	82
1984	50	24	0	74
1985	38	12	0	50
1986	45	5	0	50
1987	31	3	0	34
1988	16	11	0	27
1989	19	7	0	26
1990	2	0	0	2
TOTAL	1,298	958	23	2,279

Table 9

VICTIMS BY OCCUPATION

Professional people	207
Administrators, managers, and high-level officials	45
Employees	305
Workers and peasants	686
Self-employed workers	314
Students	324
Armed Forces and Security Forces	132
Other occupations	226
Occupation unknown	40
TOTAL	2,279

Occupational Breakdown
Professional people	207	Nurses	2
Lawyers	13	Engineers	37
Architects	5	Doctors	24
Social Workers	5	Journalists	10
Building contractors	9	Professors	20
Teachers	71	Religious	3
Economists	3	Sociologists	5
Administrators, managers, and high-level officials	45	Private employees	305
Administrators	33	Secretaries	11
Business people	12	Other employees	294
Workers and small farmers	686	Self-employed	314
Domestic servants (maids)	3	Farmers	59
Carpenters	14	Artisans	61
Small farmers	65	Merchants	102
Drivers	33	Self-employed	85
Workers	571	Artists	7
Students	324	Armed Forces and Security Forces	132
Elementary school	17	Navy	3
High school	48	Police	69
University	165	Air Force	3
Others	94	Investigative Police	7
		DINA	1
Other occupations	226	Army	37
Homemakers	17	Unspecified	12
Other kinds of work	130
Unemployed	48	No information	40
Retired	17
Did not work	14
TOTAL			2,279

[Huber]

Here's an interesting book on Pinochet: Pinochet's Economists - The Chicago School of Economics in Chile by Juan Gabriel Valdez.