Pinochet Has Died

Fox News | 12-10-06

[My Favorite Headache]

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

[RightCenter]

Fujimori never had to do acts as heinous as Pinochet did to crack down upon communism in Peru.

[fish hawk]

(and Jimma Carter)

[RightCenter]

True, but sometimes tactics are so heinous so as to make the other factors moot. There are more civilized ways to put down communists in times of insurgencies.

[SauronOfMordor]

Stable? Allende was elected. Allende's predecessor was elected. His predecessor was elected... Chile had a functioning Democratic system, and given Allende's unpopularity, that should have been used to remove him

If the voting majority democratically decides that you and yours needs to go to the gas chambers, are you going to go along with the majority decision?

What would have happened if Allende had stayed in power, as occurred wherever raving communists come to power, would have been the mass liquidation of the middle class.

[Levante]

"Also remember that communism is responsible for close to 100 million deaths throughout the 20th century. "

A little fact completely ignored/buried by the MSM.

I heard a news report on one of the alphabet news networks a few weeks ago about Cambodia. The reporter stated this nation suffered from a "brutal dictatorship." Stupid bastard obviously couldn't say the words "brutal COMMUNIST dictatorship."

[CitadelArmyJag]

Come on... I think you are struggling to distinguish the two. Are you honestly of the belief that the wholesale incineration of tens and tens and tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children -not to mention the abhorrent effects of the residual radiation after the fact- is somehow less heinous then the death of 2,000 suspected guerillas without due process?

I dont even think you can argue that with a straight face (one of the benefits of voicing an argument from behind a keyboard I suppose.)

[Professor Kill]

Chile wound up with a vibrant economy and a level of oppression and deaths that pales in comparison to anything the marxists would have done.

That really sums up why we won't agree about Pinochet's legacy: in you view, anything Pinochet did is excused by the hypothetical danger of Allende. Rapes, torture, disappearances, repression, all the horrors can be waved aside with an "it could have been worse".

Maybe Allende was going to go beyond socialism and embrace Communism. Maybe Chile would have turned into a brutal Marxist state. We don't know, because Pinochet beat him to the punch and turned Chile into a brutal military dictatorship instead.

I believe Chile is a relative success today in spite of Pinochet's inhumanity, not because of it.

[Professor Kill]

I don't understand your point.

[CitadelArmyJag]

You have to admit there were more "civilized" ways of ending WWII as well, werent there... but it was effective and is acceptable to you because of the context. You believe, and rightly so, that lives were saved.

The same is true of Pinochet and Chile.

[RightCenter]

Well, at the very least, the U.S's act was during an act of open war, it was an open act, and in its own way it wasn't much different from simply mass-bombing the city. Kind of like Dresden. And, well, I'm not about to condemn the use of bombers in wartime.

What Pinochet did, ignoring the numbers for a moment, what he did was turn against his own people by supporting death squads and underhandedly waging war, without checks or balances.

So the two acts are pretty different.

[SauronOfMordor]

That excuses nothing. Atrocity is atrocity. Wrongness is wrongness. Don't advocate moral relativism.

If a burgler breaks into my house at 2am, one school of morality would argue that my only moral choice is to put do everything possible to avoid killing him, even if that puts me and my family at risk.

I am not enrolled at that school. There are times when survival cancels the finer aspects of moral philosophy

[RightCenter]

Probably, but I also believe that using aerial bombing in warfare is different from using death squads and the tactics that Pinochet used. I think that's the majority of opinion, too- it's more humane to bomb during wartime than to round up innocents, falsely charge them, and kill them.

I'm not saying that all of the 3000 were innocent. But some were. And they died because of Pinochet's tactics.

[GodGunsGuts]

No, the world lost the man who prevented Chile from becoming a country-sized Communist prison camp like Cuba. It is you who have been reading too many books and articles by Leftist liars. Go back to the DU...loser.

[Rodney King]

You're talking as if the only two choices could have been a nightmare Marxist state under Allende or the sort of military dictatorship Pinochet created.

Yes, I am. What is your alternate solution?

[RightCenter]

Yes, but there's a difference between shooting that burglar with a taser or disabling him in some other way, and torturing that burglar before execution with a chainsaw.

[rogator]

"Oh ya, cocaine trafficking, weapons production, he was a great hero..."

Do you have a source for this statement?

[RightCenter]

Something along the lines of mass jailings instead of mass killings. And less use of paramilitary forces to execute suspected communists and more use of legitimate military units to find, capture, and try suspects in courts or at least military tribunals.

[FreedomPoster]

>>>>They should sell Pinochet T-shirts now like they do with Che.

>>I love to yell, "Viva Pinochet!" at Che t-shirt wearers at anti-war rallies.

I once had the opportunity to nicely abuse a Che t-shirt wearer, while I was wearing my Reagan Che t-shirt, like this one:

The story: I was doing take out at the local Indian place, and while I'm waiting for my order, notice three college age, or just thereafter, folks, apparently a couple and another guy. Guy with the gal is wearing a Che t-shirt.

On the way out, I wander by their table, and say "Good evening! Since you're wearing a Che t-shirt, I couldn't resist pointing out my version of that, since it's brand new. By the way, our side won! And Che is dead, and the Soviet Union is no more! Y'all have a good night!"

Guy and the gal looked like deer in the headlights. The other guy "got it", and was LOL, as I exited the scene.

[FreedomPoster]

>>I love to yell, "Viva Pinochet!" at Che t-shirt wearers at anti-war rallies.

Oh, and thanks, I'm going to use that, the next time I see a Che shirt-wearer, and I'm not wearing Reagan Che.

[paulat]

...and your point is????