Posted on 12/10/2006 9:46:26 AM PST by My Favorite Headache
Hell has a new employee...Pinochet is dead at 91.
"Pinochet didn't kill in the name of war, civil or otherwise. His regime murdered innocents. Teachers, students, journalists, and anyone else who would dare to disagree with him. It slays me that you hate the USSR so much, yet idolize a man who embodies the same evil, and inflicted the same terrors on this people just on a smaller scale."
Thank you!
A can't believe some people on FR would think Pinochet is some kind of a "hero." Yes, he was against communists, and communism is evil. But so are all of the ideologies of dictators and totalitarians.
Loving Pinochet and hating Chavez reminds me of liberals who love Stalin but hate Hitler.
Please see the absurdity of this position.
Right, so when the enemy puts down their rifles and bombs and goes home to dinner you are not allowed to go after them, you have to wait until the next time they pick up a rifle. Going after these people in a time of war is the equivalent of striking at the command post behind the lines during a traditional war. You are destorying the command, contorl, and leadership units. Now, all that being said, yes, I am willing to acknowledge that there were probably innocent people involved, I just dont buy the story that the peace loving Chilean marxists were rudely woken up one night by an evil general who had paranoid phantasies that they were doing to turn the country into a marxist dictatorship and soviet client state.
So, in the end, you and I are a a point where it comes down to weather the end ever justifies the means. I believe that in certain extreme circumstances that it does. For example, if a known pedophile got off on a techinicality, I would have no problem with a vigilinate mob killind him.. and extreme example... just as during a war with marxist revolutionaries sponsored by the soviets I am willing to pass on the means a little bit if it means saving millions in south america from death and starvation at the hands of stalinists.
Exactly! ;-)
Read this for an analysis of the Allende apologists - halfway down - because you are sounding like the shills for the Left. Allende - the Castro loving politician - has been deified by the lying left and I do not come to FR to read more of that garbage!
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/horowitz073002.asp
Does anyone just realize how similar Pinochet was to Saddam Hussein, in some ways? He may not have killed in the scale and with the same cruelty as Saddam did, but they were both dictators of the same stripe.
On a traditional battlefield, you kill the enemy combatants, you do not set up a roving court and try each gut while he is shooting at you before you shoot back. And here, just because the soldiers aren't wearning uniforms, you don't go around with a judge before you kill them. You strike the enemy where they are and you take them out.
How many did he kill? How does that show he didn't tread carefully?
Okay, so if I condemn Pinochet, I'm in love with Allende? Don't pull that fallacy on me. I couldn't care less if the CIA had engineered a coup and assassinated Allende. That doesn't make Pinochet's crimes any less wrong.
No, what I am saying is that the Pinochet was at war with soviet funded marxists, and he treated it as a war and attacked and killed the enemy to win the battle. That he only had to kill 3,000 to win the battle shows that they were a minority, and that the Chilean people did not want to become a soviet client state.
Are you implying that the US was behind the coup? If so, do you have any hard evidence to support this assertion?
But how can you sure that he only killed enemies and threats? Are there documents that support that most of the people he killed were enemies? Oh wait, no, because he usually didn't have trials for them!
I see. You're right, we'll never see eye to eye. I believe that the end never justifies the means, and I abhor vigilantism. Unlike you, I would have no problem imprisoning your vigilante mob for life without possibility of parole.
A long, long time ago, when God still hadn't called to me, and I called myself an atheist I believed that the ends sometimes justified the means. I know better now.
RC, I won't dispute that hearts cant be changed; look at the apostle Paul, after all. HOWEVER, you are speaking in the spiritual realm, whereas I am not.
We can pray for such people, we can hope for their redemption, and we can evangelize ourselves, but that doesnt lessen our mandate to perform our worldly duties.
I dont proclaim Pinochet to be a great spiritual leader, but he served the Chilean people by protecting them from a grave, sweeping, and worldly threat. Would the communists have succeeded in Chile, would the Chilean people even have maintained their right to even be Christians? It is doubtful.
In a world where we are labled infidels and marked for death for our faith, I see my duty to protect my family and neighbors as intervening to my spiritual duty to try to convert those who would kill us.
Dont get me wrong, I will try to be both, but if it comes down to where I am forced to just pick one... I am always going to shoot first AND THEN hope that somewhere down the line somebody had a "come to Jesus meeting" with them before they showed up on your doorstep w/ a bomb and evil intentions.
Truly. But that doesn't excuse murder from the state. Lee Kuan Yew was a much better anti-communist ally to the West than Pinochet was.
Why does everyone in the media mispronounce Pinochet's name? They pronounce it as though it were French. While Pinochet may have originally been a French name, it's pronounced the Spanish way.
"You've heard about The Kirkpatrick Doctrine ----it holds that right-wing dictatorships can evolve into democratic governments far more easily that left-wing dictatorships which need major efforts and sacrifice such as a sustained Cold war - and occasionally hot war."
Even if that is true, why bother defending a dictatorship? I just cannot see the reason in that.
Left-wing dictatorship - WRONG
Right-wing dictatorship - WRONG
I can only defend democratic institutions. Dictatorships, no matter what ideology they are, are ALL wrong.
That sounds awful. Thank goodness Pinochet prevented that by performing a bloody military coup that totally subverted the Chilean constitution and turned Chile into a dictatorship.
If not for Pinochet, there might have been decades of political repression, torture, secret police, disappearances, and government-sponsored terror. Chile really dodged a bullet.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.