You may well be right.
NEW YORK - Chile’s former strongman, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, is the Great Satan for leftists everywhere.
This week, Pinochet, now a Chilean senator, was arrested in London, where he had gone for back surgery. Britain held the 82-year old retired general after a Spanish judge sought to have Pinochet extradited to Spain to face charges of ‘genocide, torture, and other crimes’ rising from the disappearance of Spanish marxists during Chile’s ‘dirty war’ of the 1970’s.
Ironically, Cuba’s communist caudillo, Fidel Castro, whose firing squads have executed thousands, and whose prisons are notorious for vicious torture of political prisoners, was being feted in Spain at the very same time the warrant was issued for Pinochet.
Communists and their little step-sisters, socialists, are making a great hue and cry that Chilean security forces killed 2,000- 3,000 marxists during the 70’s dirty war. This sudden and touching concern for human rights comes from a party that murdered 80 MILLION people this century and has never even repented its monstrous crimes.
Had Allende’s communist cemented their hold on Chile, thousands of ‘bourgeois’ and ‘enemies of the people’ would have been executed - as they were in Cuba.
Britain is holding Senator Pinochet in violation of the diplomatic passport he carries. Tony Blair’s new socialist government is obviously more concerned with ideological revenge than diplomatic convention. And talk about ‘perfidious Albion.’ During the Falklands War, Gen Pinochet aided Britain, and saved many British lives, even allowing Britain’s SAS commandos to operate against Argentina from Chile. So much for British gratitude.
Beside the shocking illegality of his detention by Britain, the charges levelled against Pinochet by the Spanish judge and the left-leaning media are untrue - or distorted.
In 1973, army commander Pinochet overthrew Marxist Salvador Allende, who was turning Chile onto a Stalinist state. Pinochet, backed by the US and Britain, led the subsequent war against marxist terrorists. All urban wars are dirty and bloody. Look at Northern Ireland, Israel’s war against Palestinians, or Algeria.
Marxist urban rebels tried to overthrow Chile’s government, using bombings, assassinations, kidnapping and guerrilla assaults. Chile, and neighboring Argentina, suffered a reign of terror and faced near anarchy as communist guerillas attempted, in their own words, to ‘destroy the capitalist state. ‘
Chilean and Argentine security forces were ordered to fight an all-out war against the communist rebels. Terror against terror. In the process, some innocent people were arrested, tortured or disappeared. But most victims were not innocents. They were mainly marxist guerillas and terrorists,or part of the marxist support network, that included students, and marxist clergy and nuns.
The soldiers finally won these bloody wars, restoring peace to Chile and Argentina. Today, thanks to - and because of - victory in these conflicts, Chile and Argentina are proud, prosperous democracies. The soldiers who did the necessary dirty work to make this possible are often accused of crimes, and shunned by society they saved.
Pinochet’s sweeping free market reforms transformed Chile from a socialist disaster into Latin America’s fastest growing economy. Once Chile was politically stable and economically booming, Pinochet returned Chile to full democracy. He resigned from the military and became a senator.
The charges against Pinochet are preposterous. The Spanish judge has no grounds to demand arrest. Genocide deals with eradication of whole peoples, not a few thousand marxist revolutionaries in an urban terror war. Russia just murdered 100,000 Chechens. Serbs killed 300,000 civilians in Bosnia and Kosova. Where are the warrants for ex-communist Yeltsin and current communists Milosevic? Or Castro?
Final irony. If Pinochet had failed and Allende survived, Chile would not be a democracy today, but a Stalinist police state like Cuba, with no human rights, no democracy, and thousands of political prisoners.
Pinochet’s triumphant success in Chile reminds leftists of communism’s great crimes and abject failures. That’s why they hate him so much.
Pinochet saved Chile and restored democracy. He deserves salutes, not arrest.