Pinochet Has Died

Fox News | 12-10-06

[My Favorite Headache]

Hell has a new employee...Pinochet is dead at 91.

[RightCenter]

I don't think anyone's saying that. You're creating a false distinction, that if anyone's against the anti-communist authoritarian military dictatorship of Pinochet they're automatically for Allende's communism. That's just a fallacy.

[Melas]

Plus he left Chile a healthy capitalist economy. Neither all saint nor all sinner, Pinochet did handle the communists better than most and Chile is better off from his rule than it would have been from the same time under Allende, who planned to consolidate his marxist hold on the country and then to begin exporting it to the rest of South America. QDEP

You're falling into the same (il)logical trap that I'm reading elsehwere in this thread. Since Allende was evil, and Pinochet opposed him, then Pinochet must be good. Doesn't work that way. Allende every bit the commie and would-be dictator as portrayed on this thread. That is not in question.

However, just because Pinochet looks better when juxtoposed with Allende, doesn't mean that Pinochet was a good man. The brutal truth is that he MURDERED thousands to achieve his goals. He built a system of gulags modeled on the Soviets and used them ruthlessly against his political enemies. There is nothing about this man which is admirable.

[Diocletian]

Sorry, but we cannot remove ourselves from that time. You either stood with Allende or supported Pinochet. It's easy to sit back in 2006 in America and condemn everyone, but in 1973 Chile tough choices had to be made.

[RightCenter]

He may have not been Hitler, but he was far from a freedom-loving pro-democracy president.

[brothers4thID]

Trials.. trials you'll be holding. Sorry, fingers don't like me today.

[Danae]

He killed a LOT more average people than he did Commies. There are well documented accounts of many many average people, men women and children that simply disappeared into buildings known to be torture factories. The things that went on there would make Saddam proud.

Are you suggesting that these average people, just trying to live their lives, regardless of the political nature of the Government in power at the time, DESERVED that treatment? Did the average person in Iraq similarly deserve to lose their sons to Saddam's Torture chambers? Did the women, systematically raped, tortured and murdered in Iraq deserve that as well???

Pinochet was little different than Saddam, he used the same techniques to control his population. Did he prevent Communism in South America? Undoubtedly. But he was no hero.

Sorry, sometimes the ends do NOT justify the means.

[Melas]

Why are you so naively silly? The mothers should have raised their kids not to be little red book carrying commies.

So only the ideologically pure deserve to live now? Telling.

[GSlob]

Commies are not human. i was born and grew up in the thucking USSR, and thus speak from the first hand experience, christ or no christ.

[RightCenter]

Just because someone may have been communist, the state has a right to purge them? Don't you see how this is just Stalinism with an anti-communist face? Leave your trollish comments on DU, agent provocateur.

[RightCenter]

"When due process fails us, we really do live in a world of terror."

[muawiyah]

Not quite sure you understand your history here.

Pinochet, if he were, in fact, headed for Hell, would be put in charge of punishing the Commies, Socialists and Democrats.

[Diocletian]

Just because someone may have been communist, the state has a right to purge them?

Having been born in a communist country I'd say that in times of danger, such as 1970s Chile, I'd have no problem with the liquidation of communists.

[NormsRevenge]

Former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet salutes in Santiago, Chile, in this Friday, Aug. 23, 1996 file photo. Pinochet, who overthrew Chile's democratically elected Marxist president in a bloody coup and ruled this Andean nation for 17 years, died Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006 of complications following a heart attack. He was 91. (AP Photo/Santiago Llanquin, FILE)

[RightCenter]

That's what the Nazis thought, too.

[tyke]

This thread proves that Free Republic is teeming with left wingers posing as conservatives.

This thread proves that Free Republic is teeming with extremists who will quite willingly accept a government which would trash almost every part of the Constitution, and continue to do so for decades, should a government hostile to their political beliefs be elected by the people.

[NormsRevenge]

He outlived you know who at least..

Chile's General Augusto Pinochet (R) and Cuba's leader Fidel Castro stand next to each other in Santiago during the government of Socialist President Salvador Allende in this undated file photo. Pinochet, who ruled Chile from 1973-1990 and spent his old age fighting human rights, fraud and corruption charges, died on December 10, 2006 a week after suffering a heart attack, Chilean television reported. He was 91. REUTERS/Stringer/Files (CHILE)

[Diocletian]

And they were right when it came to Communists.

[NeoCaveman]

He may have not been Hitler, but he was far from a freedom-loving pro-democracy president.

Did he not leave power voluntarily, setting up a democracy?

[He Rides A White Horse]

Having been born in a communist country I'd say that in times of danger, such as 1970s Chile, I'd have no problem with the liquidation of communists.

Especailly when communists have demostrated time and time again that they have no problem with lquidating any and all perceived threats. On massive scales that are mindboggling....

[Alter Kaker]

What I think you don't understand is that the coup was an enormous strategic mistake. It legitimized leftism in Latin America -- it sent the message that the United States and anti-Communists are just corrupt, tinpot junta leaders with a tendency towards murder.

The US may have succeeded in eliminating Allende with the 1973 coup (a unnecessarily messy way of removing an unpopular democratically-elected leader) but by doing so it succeeded in making Allende a popular hero across Latin America. And now what? Today, I think as a direct consequence, we're not talking about one vaguely socialist government, we're talking about Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Peru, Argentina and Bolivia. It makes no sense to win a country but lose a continent.