Posted on 12/10/2006 9:46:26 AM PST by My Favorite Headache
Hell has a new employee...Pinochet is dead at 91.
I hope it was all worth it for him.
To quote a very prominent Republican Governor of California,
"Hasta la vista, baby"
Using your logic, we'd say, "Stopping Hitler, Good Stalin!"
Just because Stalin was necessary at a certain juncture in history to stop a greater threat doesn't mean he wasn't a cold blooded murderer who's frying in hell.
Pinochet is similar. I don't know enough about the complexities of the situation, but I think it's safe to say that even if he was necessary for a certain amount of time, he's a murderer and an evil man.
Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, at the behest of his government and the wishes of the Chilean people, came out of retirement to stop Salvador Allende's coommunist takeover and killed those who support him. To this day, the Chilean people talked proudly of the day Pinochet overthrew Allende. even the Marxists of his time commented that Pinochet saved Chile. After 26 years, he willingly stepped down and allowed Chile to become a democratic country.
He was doing what he thought was right. But even all of that will not save him if the Lord deems him unworthy. His soul is in God's hand now.
I'm grateful for what he did on behalf of the free world. But I can not say where he is now. If he is to be in heaven ofr hell, so be it. The Lord decides and I shall not be so arrogant as to disagree with Him.
What you call naive idealism, I call principles. Yep, they're written in stone, black and white, and I do my absolute best to uphold them. When I fail to do so, and at times I do because I'm only human, I pray to God Almighty for forgiveness. Heaven help me if I decide that moral relativism offers a better path.
By the same token you should join the far left in condemning the U.S. in every single war it has ever fought, because there's always been at least "one case" where some of our soldiers did something to civilians that we're not proud of. By your reasoning that makes the U.S. army "murderers," and renders all the good accomplished they've accomplished in every previous war moot.
Oh please. That's utter nonsense. We're all aware that the military is comprised of individuals, both good and bad. When a soldier or soldiers goes off the reservation, disobeys orders and kills an innocent, we charge those responsible and punish them appropriately. The entire U.S. Army is not to blame.
Now, if you're trying to say that Pinochet isn't personally to blame for any of the murders that are attributed to him and his regime, I'm all ears. I'm calling BS and saying that with thousands dead that there is virtually no chance that they were all killed without his direction.
Well said,whether its Communists or Islamic terrorists,wars of national survival are not pretty
Machiavelli understood that moral absolutes have no place when it comes to survival of the nation.The allies understood that in WWII and people need to understand that today
Did Pinochet stay in power too long ? maybe
were some Innocent people killed in the war ? certainly
but how many people condemning the man have lived under a communist regime?
he did what was needed at the time to prevent a communist takeover, he was not a saint but not quite a villain either
Democracy is NOT inherently well-equipped to combat radical idealogies like Bolshevism, particularly when it enables a bolshevist political party to get elected through its own processes as happened with Allende. A temporary autocrat is often the unfortunate but necessary consequence of that circumstance. His role usually consists of three stages: 1. Defeat the ideological threat and oust it from power. This is the coup or civil war stage, and often entails forcefully ousting properly elected yet nonetheless evil factions from power, e.g. communists.
2. Form a stable non-democratic pro-market regime in its place. This stage is usually autocratic, but by necessity to ensure that the threat defeated in stage 1 does not return.
3. Prepare for transition to democratic government.
The process requires success in all three stages to work, but history demonstrates that it DOES work. And though it is less than ideal in the 1st and 2nd stages, it is immeasurably better than the alternative that would've occured had the ideological regime been allowed to remain unchallenged.
Pinochet's Chile is, incidentally, a strong example of this process bearing out. He ousted the communists by coup, solidified his own regime to a sufficient level that it would prevent their return, then set up a peaceful transition process that produced the current Chilean system of government. Franco followed a similar pattern in Spain with bloody results during the civil war, but ultimate success in defeating a communist attempt to gain a foothold in western europe.
Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who also died earlier this week, used to have a saying about dealing with right wing and left wing dictators in foreign policy. Left wing dictators are ideologically driven try to remake the world in their image by exporting that ideology. This was true of Stalin and Mao in the past. It is true of Hugo Chavez today. And it was true of what Salvador Allende intended to do to Chile in 1973. It is impossible for the U.S. to coexist with left wing dictators, because they themselves desire the U.S.' ultimate defeat.
Some right wing dictators are different though. They often come to power for the explicit purpose of defeating an emerging left wing threat. They can be autocratic while in power, but since they're not driven by an impulse to export their ideological system onto the world they are also open to an eventual transition back to democracy. The U.S. can deal with these types, and often they make regional valuable allies and buffer states against left wing regimes in their vicinity. Again, Franco during the Cold War and Pinochet amidst marxist revolutionary movements in Latin America are prime examples of where the U.S. rightfully sided with the conservative dictator against a far more dangerous left wing threat.
Anyone know how many people were killed under Castro regime?
We must all try to uphold them. I have no objections to that. The difference is in trying to uphold them, you are projecting a worldview that simply is not realistic. As I noted, even the United States during its best intentioned wars and efforts (e.g. WWII) had soldiers that acted in less than Christian manners. You're absolutist view would not permit us to describe the U.S. effort during WWII as a good thing (or the current U.S. fight against islamofascism for that matter, due to events like Abu Gharib). And yes, I do call that naive and self defeating.
When I fail to do so, and at times I do because I'm only human, I pray to God Almighty for forgiveness.
From what I understand, so did Pinochet himself. Only a couple of weeks ago he appeared on his balcony, accepted responsibility for the wrongs comitted on his watch, and asked for God's forgiveness. But he also reiterated the necessity of his coup to prevent a much greater evil from taking hold, and given the record of Allende's insidious marxism he was justified in that position.
There's a reason for that time lag. A totalitarian state must first ensure that the common population is disarmed before committing large-scale atrocities, and so it needs a relatively quiet period, followed by gun registration and confiscation (as the USSR did in 1929) before engaging in real large-scale killing (as the USSR engaged in in the 1930's
Are you claiming that Pinochet was the father of democracy in Chile?
No. How's that Cuban democracy? I hear they have 100% literacy, free health care and 100% turnout at every election.
Chile has a democracy now but its restoration was not as a result of Pinochet's desire or policies.
So America pressured him and he stepped aside? How's that working with Castro? Or the mullahs in Iran?
If he was such a democrat as you claim, why didn't he get out sooner and stand for elections as a candidate?
Where did I claim he was such a democrat? Between Pinochet and Castro, I choose Castro. Pinochet is not a saint, I still choose him over Castro.
Yeah, Mother Theresa should have stopped the Commies.
No, he was trying to preserve liberty for the majority of Chileans, which is a whole different thing
Pure democracy means that if 50%+1 vote to strip you of your property and your life, then that's it. The results of that are visible in Zimbabwe, among other places
In liberty, you can retain the fruits of your work without it being arbitrarily taken away. You can choose what you do for a living, without being assigned. And you can dare to hope your kids will have a better life. Under Pinochet, you had good cause to be afraid if you were attempting to undermine Pinochet's rule, and could get on with your life if you stayed out of that sphere.
As I've said before, Pinochet was better for the lives of the average Chilean than Allende would have been
Did you even read the sentence you responded to?
I'm not deying that he might have been necessary, but to ignore his human rights abuses is essentially to say they didn't matter, which is totally wrong.
I would make the argument that a Constitutional Republic (the Founders did not establish a Democracy in the US, for good reasons), is only stable if the majority of voters are property-owning members of the middle class. If the voting majority are the uneducated poor, then elections turn into contests between competing bands of looters.
South Korea is a reasonably stable republic because it now has a large middle class. Zimbabwe is a starving basket case because the voting majority put looters into office
You clearly have missed learning of the "democratic" principle of "One man, one vote, one time."
Chavez seems to be the latest notable player of that game.
I am not for democracy. Dislike the idea intensely
I like the idea of a Constitutional Republic as a viable way to establish an environment where people can live, work, and raise families without fear that what they worked for all their lives will be confiscated, and they and their children will be enslaved into service to the Almighty State.
Democracy is not an end in itself. The institutions of a Constitutional Republic are simply one of the better workable means by which liberty may be secured
There's a thing called incarcerating criminals and subversives.
CIA assassination squad. I have nothing against taking out Allende through some sort of internal coup. What I have against is what Pinochet did afterwards to his own people.
"...the guy may have been a SOB but he fought the Communists on their terms and won"
Exactly. This is the only way to beat the commies once they are in the revolution stage they were at when Pinochet purged them from the earth. The consequences of not doing so would have typical of other communist revolutions of that century.
Keep your eyes on Venezuela...
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