The Left hates Pinochet precisely because Pinochet defeated the Communists in Chile. How can you have no appreciation for that?
Obviously, it was good that Chile did not become a Soviet satellite because of his coup
Oh, okay, so you do see the very good thing that Pinochet did for Chile, and the Americas generally, by crushing the communists there.
...but Pinochet was brutal despot.
Well yes, I suppose he was brutal to communists, but don't you see the virtue in brutalizing communists when the alternative is a communist dictatorship?
It seems to me that Pinochet is similar to the Shah of Iran in this regard. The Shah was hard on radical Islamists the way Pinochet was hard on Communists. I guess you could despise the Shah for this, but in hindsight we easily see the virtue in those oppressive policies, and we are reasonable to think that it would have been preferable to have the Shah around now instead of the current very dangerous regime. I suspect that your feelings about Pinochet would be less confused if we could somehow experience how things would have been without him.
Allende was also bad, but Pinochet was no improvement from a human rights perspective.
True only if you're not able distinguish the relative of virtue of brutalizing Communists versus brutalizing innocent members of the "bourgeoisie". That sounds harsh, but there is such a thing as reality.
Pinochet was simply amendable enough to accept ideas for reform.
But isn't this kind of flexibility the kind of thing that separates Pinochet from your typical iron-fisted despot?
And how many evil despots step down willingly to hand power over to a democratically elected civilian government? Pinochet proved that he was in a different and distinctly less evil category than a Castro or a Stalin when he did that.
It's my firm belief that as the WOT continues, we will have to go much farther than Pinochet had to. If we don't, we will lose. Considering how many Americans are squeamish about fighting our enemy effectively, the outcome is far from certain. Our SCOTUS is already telling us that we can only interrogate the enemy in ways that have never worked and that we must accord him "rights" that he is not legally entitled to -- islamic terrorism's staunchest allies are in our media and the democratic party -- and worst of all, fully half our citizenry apparently believes that if you are attacked by an armed thug on a dark street, your response should be to call your lawyer and have him send a cease and desist letter to him. Luckily for Chile, Pinochet did not live in that kind of dreamland. As you can see from some of the responses on this thread, we are not so fortunate.