If you are installing a fascist dictatorship, to prevent a socialist dictatorship, you do nothing good.
Stopping the killings is good. Did anyone suggest to hold an election?
And if you are conversant with that, you also know it was not merely combatants and terrorists that were rounded up and killed.
There were tons of labor union organizer types, professor and teacher types, writers, and other such. No excuses for that. If it was VC or Jihadi types, I get it. But they were killing political opponents. That just no good. George Washington never rounded up and murdered people he knew had tory sympathies..
And again, Obama did what he did to hurt America, but this was nothing America should be proud of what the CIA did down there.
TO #34. The killing of non-communists or lesser activists is precisely what we objected to, as well as the executions in general. There was no real need for that as most of the guerrillas had been killed in the initial fighting though Allende’s private militia and his communist armed youth did constitute the bulk of the armed resistance to the coup.
As for the VC, when I was a journalist in So. Vietnam and Cambodia, I found captured No. Vietnamese officers and soldiers to be fonts of useful information (both historical and as it turns out, also military) because I asked them questions no one else had.
VC defectors were fascinating people and their stories about how they became disillusioned by the promises and lies of the VC cadre are worthy of many books. The US Govt (MACV and JUSPAO did just that in many brochures and reports, esp. Principal Reports).
I prefer to talk to a live but captured or defector enemy because a dead one can’t give you useful information.
However, on the battlefield, kill the bastards and take a few prisoners.
Further comment on #34 re trying to hold elections. Allende fixed the votes in his presidential win, which I believe was only by less than PERCENT of the total votes.
If I recall correctly, the Un. of San Carlos or another Santiago university did a major analysis of the Allende election win and proved that he had cheated, either by ballot stuffing or preventing people from voting. It might be in the “White Book on Chile” that the Pinochet government issued about 1975.
While not necessarily the best source on the coup re voting, because it was issued by the junta, from what I saw the university analysis of the election fraud by Allende was well documents.
If anyone knows who did that study, please let me know.