This is such a better post than that last one, Michael. I'm with alot of people who commented on that saying that there's no need to link such nihilistic crap. No offense.

But, yeah, this is great. Pinochet's a bastard. Maybe as bad as Saddam. Nearly up there with Pol Pot, Stalin, and Hitler. And the Marc Cooper stuff is wonderful.

And yet, would Chile have been better off under Allende? There are Chileans who think not, and history certainly does not give one much hope for socialist regimes headed towards communism. The easy condemnation of Pinochet has always struck me as a copout, especially as Chile is not in bad shape these days. Compare to Cuba. But then, while I recall being told that Stalin made "mistakes", I doubt that anyone on the left will be so kind to Pinochet. There is a double standard here.

chuck,
"easy condemnation of Pinochet has always struck me as a copout, especially as Chile is not in bad shape these days."

How much of Chile's current situation is due to Pinochet and how much of it is due to actions taken since he left office? Dictatorships tend to screw up the economy of their nations no matter what the ideology they use.

Pinochet was a bastard. But can you argue with the results?

More to the point, Allende had the bad luck to take power during the Cold War. You know, back when we were constantly 15 minutes away from Ragnorok? All the "Bottled Sunshine" on both sides sitting on hair-trigger alert... The CIA certainly chose poorly in who replaced him, but there was no way Allende was going to stay in power back then.

Who would you rather have as the boss of you? A socialist who is committed to democracy? Or a fascist who promises to strangle even the memory of democracy?

I am not an Allendista. I could write a lengthy post about what I think is/was wrong with him. The details and tone would be different, though. He didn't kill people. And he was not a communist. (Although many of his freaky supporters were.)

A certain kind of leftist makes excuses for Fidel Castro. Fulgencio Batista was a bastard. Yes. And so what? That's no excuse for Castro. And Allende is no excuse for Pinochet. (A Chilean Castro would not have been an excuse for Pinochet.)

Pinochet murdered the friends and family of a friend of mine. (I'm referring to Marc Cooper here.) He did not do so in the name of freedom or democracy. But he did murder people who were committed to those things. You don't have to be an Allendista to be against that.

"And he was not a communist. (Although many of his freaky supporters were.)"

Agreed. I can even imagine a scenario where Allende ended up murdered by some of those freaky supporters.

I am not excusing the ugly crimes committed by Pinochet, but I don't think that Allende was some sort of saint, and it is possible that Pinochet's regime was actually better than what might have transpired. We can't know, of course, but not everything is a clearcut conflict between the white and black hats.

I will point out that Chile today is a democracy, so Pinochet failed "to strangle even the memory of democracy." As to the fascist/socialist divide, fascist propaganda has always struck me as quite socialist in tone. I have come to regard fascism as a peculiar variant of radical socialism. Mussolini began as communist, after all.

To me, the important political distinction is Liberty, with all it's accoutrements of free speech, open discussion, and freedom from arbitrary arrest and execution. Pinochet clearly fails this test. But it is not obvious to me that the Allende government was headed towards anything better.

Chuck

Chuck,

I don't see this in a black hat/white hat sort of way either. Chile was extremely polarized in the early 1970s. A moderate person like me would have had to hide under the bed. The difference is that only one side would have busted down my door to haul me away if I didn't toe the line.

'And he was not a communist. (Although many of his freaky supporters were.)'

My mind isn't made up on this subject, but I think the civil war that Pinochet averted would have killed many, many times more than he did. Allende's freaky supporters were capable of killing millions.

Leftists seem over the top, hyper-emotional on this subject for some reason. Its as if things were going swimmingly in chile when pinochet took over. Pinochet killed maybe 5-10000. Communists would have killed how many?

Raymond,

Let's turn it around and see how it reads.

"Right-wingers seem over the top, hyper-emotional on this subject for some reason. Its as if things were going swimmingly in Cuba when Castro took over."

Let's try it this way instead.

Castro is a bastard. Period. Full stop.

Pinochet is a bastard. Period. Full stop.

There. I like that.

Michael,

I suspect that the other side would have come through the door at some point. Moderates are so, so vulnerable in revolutionary situations.

I think that the point of your original post was that Pinochet did commit crimes, and that the time has come for Chileans to put him on trial. I find myself strangely torn on this topic, given that I agree that he committed crimes. The straight forward approach is simply, yes, let's try the man and let the chips fall where they may. But some Chileans may see him as a savior, and they may even be right.

My only concern is this makes it less likely that dictators will choose to step down in a non-violent manner, but on the other hand... I hope they fry the bastard and send him to hell we he belongs. And let it be said by everyone and everywhere, that this is the fate of all tyrants.

By the way, why is no one pushing to try Gorbachev for his crimes? Just wondering...

Derek

I'd like to point out the old aphorism that those who don't learn from history are destined to repeat it. In the Finnish Civil War of 1918, when the Finnish Red Guard managed to overthrow the bourgeois, but constitutionally legitimate, Finnish Senate and establish only the second socialist regime in the world after the Soviet Union's, the reaction of the nationalist White Army was swift and decisive, akin to Pinochet's reaction: although enjoying a clear majority, the reds were routed by the superior organizational skills of Mannerheim, which brought the life of that regime to an end within four months.

But what followed was a mistake that would haunt the Finnish right-wing for the next two decades, until World War 2. Thousands of Red Guard leaders were executed as traitors to Finland (they had formed alliances with Russian troops based in Finland), and as murderers. All of these executed people, however, left behind families, loved ones and children, who eventually grew up in an independent Finland, knowing full well that their own government had executed their parents and other family members. The mass executions only served to exacerbate social division, and increase the appeal of communist ideology.

(By the thirties, Finnish society had become so polarized that some historians suggest that Finland was ripe for another civil war. Finland was saved, however, by Stalin's incredible blunder, when he invaded Finland in 1939 and wound up unifying the whole nation against a common enemy.)

Yet the fundamental mistake by the Finnish White Army has been repeated by right-wing nationalists in Spain, Argentina, Chile, etc., all of whom over-reacted in the aftermath. The winning side's ability to unite a nation after such a bloodbath becomes limited.

All the more reason why we should marvel at the prescience of such leaders as Abraham Lincoln, who chose to pardon Confederate soldiers, or that of Desmond Tutu, who formed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in lieu of prosecutions of apartheid offenders. Both leaders wound up ensuring that the rift had a better possibility of healing. If there is something to fault Pinochet on, I'd say it was his limited understanding of how to handle the aftermath of his actions. And while I do support the cause of anti-communism, I find that the troubles he is facing now are due to his own lack of prescience as a leader.

Yes, Pinochet was a horrible bastard. And he was a US puppet. Will the puppeteers ever face "justice"? Of course not. Kissinger is still invited on cable news as a respected statesman. Until this changes most of this will remain a bad joke.

Operationally, "crimes" can be defined are those acts that anger the powerful. Hence Saddam is a criminal mass murdererer while Pinochet and Suharto are staunch anti-communist allies.

Bill Clinton on Suharto: "our kind of guy."

Who would you rather have as the boss of you? A socialist who is committed to democracy? Or a fascist who promises to strangle even the memory of democracy?

Why do people keep repeating this silly platitude? Pinochet made no such "promise", and in fact he stepped down from power only after losing in an election.

Anti-communism is as good a cause as anti-fascism. But as Christopher Hitchens said in The Atlantic Monthly, be very choosy about what kind of anti-communist you are.

It also matters what kind of anti-fascist you are. After all, Stalin was an anti-fascist. At least sometimes he was. But it really wasn't good enough, was it?

David: Pinochet made no such "promise"

According to Garcia Marquez he did. What's so hard to believe about that? He later changed his mind under pressure. Good. Ghaddafi has made similar noise lately. That doesn't excuse past behavior.

Come on. You lived in Chile. You know what a bastard he was.

Anyway, the whole point of my post in the first place was to draw attention to what I think is an excellent point by Marc Cooper. Americans are quicker to acknowledge bad behavior by other Americans that Chileans recently were. Let's not weaken his point by not acknowledging bad Chilean behavior ourselves.

I don't mean to knock Chile by making this point, and I don't think Marc Cooper does either. I've been to Chile and so far it's my favorite place in the world to visit. It's hard not to fall in love with both the land and the people. Marc even married into Chile. I could live there myself, and someday maybe I will. It's crossed my mind more than once.

Michael,

I have no doubt that someone claimed Pinochet made such a "promise." I just think there's little reason to believe he actually said it. As an observer of Pinochet, I have no reason to believe that quote is real. In your heart of hearts, Michael, I doubt you'd even put money on it.

But if your basic point is that Pinochet was an SOB, I wouldn't argue with that. But things turned out ok in Chile, and Pinochet should be given some credit for that.

David: But if your basic point is that Pinochet was an SOB, I wouldn't argue with that.

Let's just agree to agree on that point and call it good for now.

Pinochet was ghastly. And I honestly don't know what would have happened under an Allende government and neither does anyone else. I would have been happier with a U. S. government that didn't support Pinochet and other repressive authoritarians around the world and I felt that way at the time. But it was a policy that remained remarkably consistent throughout the Cold War with presidents of both parties. Autre temps autre moeurs.

I also have to admit that I'm happier with revolutionary America than I ever was with the status quoist America of most of my life.

When tyrants tremble, sick with fear, And hear their death-knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near,
How can I keep from singing?

I hope we can follow through with it.

Michael, first of all, thanks for the link and the kind words.

When it comes to discussing the Allende vs. Pinochet years, the Pinochet defenders seem destined to write in the subjunctive case. Let's stick to what actually happened. In the first three years of the Pinochet regime, Pinochet had congress dissolved, opposition political parties were banned, torture was institutionalized, people were forcibly exiled, the regime's opponents who weren't being exiled, tortured or disappeared were being incarcerated in a series of encampments such as Dawson Island.

In addition, Pinochet had La DINA, his secret police go after his enemies and kill them outside of Chile. In 1974, General Prats, Pinochet's predecessor as Commander of the Army was blown up along with his wife in Buenos Aires by a car bomb so pwerful that it was estimated that it sent the car five stories high. In 1975, La DINA hired the services of an Italian neo-fascist named Stefano Della Chiae to shoot Bernardo Leighton, the cofounder of Chile's Christian Democrat Party on the streets of Rome. Leighton and his wife both survived.

Far and away, however, the most notorious example of these acts of extraterritorial terrorism was the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington, DC in 1976 (which Michael linked to above). One of the men convicted of the act (in Chile, no less) was Manuel Contreras, the head of La DINA who had breakfast nearly every day with Pinochet in his office at La Moneda. Contreras, who was also in the military at the time and thus Pinochet's subordinate in chain of command stated under oath that he engaged in any activities only on Pinochet's express orders and knowledge.

None of these things took place in the three years that Allende was in power. This is not an endorsement of Allende, but a discussion of the facts.

Sam,

Oddly enough, dictatorships over the last 30 or 40 years have generally been better at implementing market reforms (when the mood strikes) than liberal democratic regimes, simply because they don't generally give a rat's ass about whether or not the reforms are popular. To be fair, being a SOB doesn't guarantee reform - ask Marcos about that.

But if you look at all of the Asian Tigers, excepting pre-handover Hong Kong, the periods of massive economic growth have occured either under authoritarian governments or functionally one-party democracies.

Chile actually did make a lot of headway in economic structure during Pinochet.

It doesn't make him any less of an SOB, but I at least wanted to clarify how he was being such a bastard.

Not to hijack your comment threads, but I also want to point people to this article in that bastion of leftism, The Economist which comes from the time that Pinochet was arrested in England. Here's the money quote:

For further evidence, go to a source of the time: The Economist, non-Chilean but firmly critical of Allende and what its then Chile specialist was later to entitle his savagely critical book, “Chile’s Marxist Experiment”. That title was in fact overblown. Allende’s economics were, approximately, Marxist and certainly disastrous. Not so the political system he ran. The opposition press and parties carried on. So did elections, and even in March 1973 the regime could win only 44% of the vote for Congress. Still, this paper was deeply suspicious, and the more so—in those days of raging cold war—because of Allende’s friendship with Fidel Castro. Twice it sent its specialist for long visits. He wrote a six-page report in March 1972, one of five pages in October 1973, a month after the coup. The second time, our man clearly had free access to the regime and its evidence against Allende. But even in 1972 he talked widely to enemies of the Allende government. Both his reports damned it. Both produced mild versions of some charges now laid against Allende: for instance (1973), of Cubans training his personal guard, or guerrillas “tolerated” by the government, (though the actual ones our reporter met were a fairly hopeless, partly Amerindian group, more like Mexico’s Zapatists than the strike force of revolution). But what did this ferocious critic of Allende’s regime say of its now alleged political tortures or killings? Not a word. [my emphasis]

As for the myth that Pinochet restored democracy in Chile, consider this [Adobe Acrobat Reader required]:

On October 5, 1988, a yes-no plebiscite was held to decide on the continued rule of Augusto Pinochet for another 8 years. He lost, but late into that day's night, his spokesman was still issuing misleading interim reports about the vote counting. Following an after-midnight meeting of Pinochet with the Junta members, the government finally conceded its defeat. In October of 2000, the Chilean television broadcast an interview with former Air Force General Fernando Matthei, one of the participants in that meeting [and the Air Force's representative on the junta]. General Matthei confirmed what had been widely suspected up to that time: that Pinochet had refused to accept the results and had wanted to pull out the troops but the other commanders-in-chief did not support him.

Another aspect of the legacy of Pinochet's rule is the military is not directly answerable to civilian authority. The president cannot replace the commander-in-chief. The senate has nine senators appointed and some are appointed by the military.

This extends to some economic issues as well. Allende nationalized the copper industry and Pinochet kept it nationalized. The resulting company, CODELCO, under Chile's constitution drafted by Pinochet's regime is required to earmark 10% of their earnings to the military. The current president (a minister under Allende's regime) wants to privatize CODELCO. The odds of that occurring, given the makeup of the senate seems unlikely.

Michael, thanks for indulging me. I certainly didn't mean to hijack the comments.

Thanks, Randy. No apology necessary.

Point take michael. What do you think of Castro's antics in venezuela these days?

Interesting subject, interesting debate.

Raymond,

Actually, your comment does remind me of something relevant to the Pinochet debate (there's no real debating the facts of the case, only the intentions that lead up to the end of Allende's government).

A great deal of conventional wisdom at the time argued that Latin American countries couldn't be democratic (too patriarchial, no tradition of democracy, etc.) or that Latin American democracies were aberrations.

In that light, it becomes particularly easy to assume that any sort of 'democratic reforms' coupled with socialist economics become the shadows cast by the boogeyman in the night.

Folks like to get up in arms about some of the poorer choices made over the last half century, but seem to do so without full recognition of the containment policy created by Truman.

Bloody policy at times and lot of unintended consequences, but I guess it's better than losing.

Raymond: What do you think of Castro's antics in venezuela these days?

I support regime-change in both Cuba and Venezuela for all the usual reasons. But I would not support a Pinochet in either case.

A military coup followed by an instant election in Venezuela would be arguably defensible since it would be a defense of democracy rather than an attack on it. A military coup in Cuba followed by an election in the medium term would be just peachy.

That said, I don't have much faith in social progress in Latin American being led by military coups. Best to have successful uprisings against both Castro and Chavez like the one that led to the downfall of Slobodan Milosovic in Belgrade.

With regard to Venezuela, I have to disagree with you strongly there, Michael. I have been nothing but critical of Chávez, but there should be only democrat methods to remove him (i.e., the referendum). A lot of people Could die in such a coup and Chávez may very well come out stronger from out which is exactly what happened in the April 2002 attempted coup. I have no idea how an instant election would take place in Venezuela. Also, as odious as Chávez is, he did get elected twice and didn't occur in a vacuum. Finally, the Inter-American Democratic Charter could then be implemented against Venezuela which could isolate the country and make life difficult for the average Venezuelan.

What I think would be helpful is a treaty in the OAS expressly outlawing anyone who came to a power in a coup before or attempted a coup from holding elective office.

As for Cuba, I firmly believe change will come from within Cuba. The Varela Project has shown what an absolute sham the Castro constitution is and the world is becoming more aware and more supportive of the dissident movement there. The worst thing the US could do in either case is to be seen as an instigator of change in either country. Why, because then Chávez and Castro are able to shift the focus from this being an issue of freedom and democracy and paint it as an issue of a US-Venezuela or US-Cuba dispute.

I hear ya, Randy. Like I said, best to throw out both bums from the ground rather than the top. And I said an anti-Chavez coup would be arguably defensible if done in a certain way. I don't know that I would defend it if worked out the way I described, I'm just saying it would be different than what happened in Chile.

The longer Chavez is in office the more democracy is eroded. So there's a bit of a time crunch.

I'm not particularly opinionated about Venezuela except to say Chavez is a bastard who needs to go and that I wouldn't support his replacement with a right-wing military dictator for even two seconds.

Michael,

Let's turn it around and see how it reads.

"Right-wingers seem over the top, hyper-emotional on this subject for some reason. Its as if things were going swimmingly in Cuba when Castro took over."

Reading this tidbit reminds me why I'm not a liberal anymore.

Castro and Pinochet are both monsters -- but only one aimed medium-range Soviet ballistic missiles at my homeland.

Tell me that doesn't matter.

Michael,

If I recall, the US was heavily involved in training the students of OTPOR in the practice and theory of nonviolence. There were schools set up in Hungary across the Serbian border. Such methods can succeed brilliantly -- the Palestinians could probably have brought Israel to its knees long ago with nonviolent protest. But I don't see this in Cuba, and probably not in Venezuela either.

I'm afraid that Cuba will follow in the footsteps of Vietnam and North Korea, simply hanging on forever. But heh, if I were a prophet I'd be sitting on my own island in the Carribean, enjoying my harem.

Venezuela -- I hope someone with first hand experience will comment. Let us hope that civil war is averted; all things ugly and awful are possible in war. Indeed, I see Allende as a naive idealist, who roused forces beyond his control. If you have ever been caught up in a mob, you know what I'm talking about.

Pinochet's secret police committed an act of state-sponsored terrorism in Washington, DC that resulted in the death of a Chilean exile and a US citizen.

I grew up in Miami and lived there during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I remember being walked home in the first grade by National Guardsmen. Pinochet and Castro are peas in a pod. The only difference is which extreme side of the political fence supports them.

Oh come on Randy. Pinochet carried out a hit on America soil. Castro threatened us with nuclear annihilation. That's one hell of a difference if you ask me.

I think that they are both pretty awful. I hardly see any reason to define them down in any event.

So I take you all are not interested in going after Gorbachev for his crimes? If we are going to go after one dictator, why not the rest? I am sure Gorbachev killed far more people Pinochet ever did.

Derek

Derek,

If I can recommend a book...read the Pulitzer prize-winning "Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire" by David Remnick and then get back to me about Gorbachev. (It's the best history book, on several levels, that I've read.)

They're dancing with the missing
They're dancing with the dead
They dance with the invisible ones
Their anguish is unsaid
They're dancing with their fathers
They're dancing with their sons
They're dancing with their husbands
They dance alone They dance alone

They're dancing with the missing ...

I thought that song was about the mothers of the disappeared in Argentina. But, hey, if it works for one Latin American military dictatorship ....

On another theme running through the thread - I'm not sure what value there is in refusing to countenence varying degrees of evil. Yes, Pinochet was a mass murderer and a dictator, but it is also true to say that permitted to flourish other aspects of a civil society such as largely free, reasonably well-regulated markets and property rights.

In other words, he wasn't Pol Pot or Mao.

Which is not to say that he shouldn't be hounded to his grave for his crimes.

Pigs will fly on the day when Liberals anguish over the Castro dicatorship and its crimes.

/Castro apologists here's your big chance.

Mork,

Might I actually be in agreement with you on something?

Wonders never cease.:)

"Castro is a bastard. Period. Full stop. Pinochet is a bastard. Period. Full stop."

Complete agreement here.

Meta-question, though: Why do you think Pinochet is/was crazy? Evil does not equal crazy. Actually, it makes evil less of a mystery and less grave when we reduce it to mere madness. Eh?

Gideon,

I guess it depends what you mean by crazy. Like irrational? Or do you mean seomthing more like sociopathic?

MJT calls Allende a "...socialist who is committed to democracy..."

A serious review of the historical facts would not support such a characterization, irrespective of Cooper's representations. Allende lost his life, in large part, because he wasn't committed to democracy...at least any sort of democracy that frustrated his vision of building a worker's paradise.

I offer no excuse for Pinochet, but there is no reason to mangle the facts regarding Allende. That Allende was a liar and a fool and a Castro wannabe (and he was all three) in no way mitigates in Pinochet's favor.

As I posted before, this is what The Economist said about Allende regarding democracy

Allende’s economics were, approximately, Marxist and certainly disastrous. Not so the political system he ran. The opposition press and parties carried on. So did elections, and even in March 1973 the regime could win only 44% of the vote for Congress.

Those are facts regarding Allende. Elections took place in March 1973. If he wasn't committed to democracy, it certainly seems to me Congress would have been shut down, opposition parties and press banned and elections elemented. Instead, that's what Pinochet did.

David,

You need to read my blog. I'm liberal and a very strong critic of Castro. I'm also not the only one like that.

If you derive satisfaction from stereotyping and engaging in generalizations, go for it. I'll stick to the facts, however nuanced they may be.

Dennis.. your ignorance on this matter is frankly immeasurable. you may not have liked allende's economic or social policies but to charge that he wasn't democratic defies all facts and history. the man had been a congressman for years, even president of the senate elected with the votes of conservative christian democrats. the parties that made up the allende government (including the communists) had long and untainted histories of parliamentary democracy-- the communists in fact were the party most entwined in the constitutional process. under allende there was absolute respect for all civil and political liberies, for press freedom and free speech, for politiical association; and the conservative opposition controlled the bulk of the media, all of the congress, the supreme court and as it turned out the police and the army. it may be a bitter pill for you to swallow but it was allende's opposition who not only interrupted the democratic process but smashed it to smithereens. apologists for pinochet like to speculate that if left in power allende would have led chile to a totalitarian state. that is speculation and one for which there is no credible evidence. (indeed anyone who knows the broadest outlines of chilean history knows WHY the coup took place on sept 11 1973. allende had made his mind up the previous weekend that on that tuesday he would announce a simple yes/no refrendum on his continued tenure. if he lost the vote -- which was fairly likely-- he would actually step down before his elected term was over. the military was willing to take no chance that he would win and also wanted to take the opportunity to obilterate the unions and political parties that had taken the chilean poor 100 years to build up so they decided to take allende out before he could announce the plebescite). what isn't speculation is that allende's opponents led by pinochet absolutely and ruthlessly established precisely the sort of authoritarian dictatorship that you and others incorrectly assume allende had in mind. within minutes of the coup the press was shut down, radio stations were bombed off the air, the congress was padlocked, political parties were outlawed, a TWELVE year long nightly curfew was imposed allowing the bloody secret police to rule the night (and day), and while 3,000 people were murdered (as oppposed to ZERO under allende) literally tens of thousands were tortured and more than a million fled into exile. pinochet then went ahead to establish an intl terrorist squad that felt it was just fine and dandy to set off a car bomb in DuPont Circle. so as tough as it might be for you to accept it was pinochet, not allende, who wound up imitating and actually surpassing castro in terms of repression. sorry to disappoint you but i actually knew allende and he was acutely aware of everything about cuba that he did NOT want to emulate. i would challenge you to demonstrate a single moment in his career when allende violated the democratic order (hint: you ain't gonna find it). a fool, perhaps, he was. he died with a machine gun in hand defending a constitutional order against those who most benefitted from it. rather ironic. but to call allende a liar is moral libel. i won't bother to challenge that absurd notion and will politely ascribe it to your demonstrated and vast ignorance of chilean history.

>>>"If you derive satisfaction from stereotyping and engaging in generalizations, go for it. I'll stick to the facts, however nuanced they may be."

Nuanced schmuanced. You and two other exceptions to the rule don't make the rule. Libs have been soft on Castro for the last 40 years.

MJT writes: "According to Garcia Marquez he [Pinochet] did. What's so hard to believe about that?"

Not hard at all to believe that Castro apologist extraordinaire Garcia Marquez would claim such a quote by Pinochet. I understand that hermano Fidel keeps a guest "dacha" for Gabi when he visits Paradise.

Nuanced schmuanced. You and two other exceptions to the rule don't make the rule. Libs have been soft on Castro for the last 40 years.

If this is the quality of discourse from Castro opponents on the right, no wonder he's stayed in power.

Randy, there's not a lot of nuance to be found or needed in discussions about Castro any more than there's a need for nuance in describing Pinochet.

BRD,

Perhaps not, but I really try to avoid generalizations. I can't tell you how many actions I worked on involving Cuba when I was involved with AI. Other NGO's that some on the right like to beat up on like Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights) have been pounding on Cuba for years just as vigorously as they pounded on Pinochet's Chile.

There have been a lot more than two or three exceptions to David's sweeping generalization.

All of this "soft vs. hard on Castro" talk has got me to thinking. I would consider myself extremely hard on Castro, but I would also go as far as to say our policies for dealing with him these past 40 years have been downright disasterous.

We isolate the guy, leave him to his own devices, and somehow expect the situation to change! I'd be willing to bet that maybe if we would have engaged him these past 40 years, economically, instead, he wouldn't be in power today. Free Markets and Open Trading oftentimes prove a far more effective liberalizing force than even bombs. Case in point: Look how far China has come these past 5 or 10 years.

Sometimes the cliche of "hard" and "soft" isn't as appropriate as "effective" and "ineffective".

Grant - I don't think that there's anyone left who actually believes that the purpose of U.S. policy is to get rid of Castro.

Maybe not, Mork. But it should be.

But it should be.

Well, that depends what you have in mind ... as the topic of Michael's post illustrates.

But clearly we should not be doing anything that entrenches his power, as the current policy does.

>>>"If this is the quality of discourse from Castro opponents on the right, no wonder he's stayed in power."

"quality of discourse" from conservatives doesn't keep Castro in power; guns, torture and murder keep him in power. Was that too blunt for you?

Marc-

What is it with you "professionals" ? If you're the effin' professional writer then use proper professional punctuation. This no capitalization B.S. may be L.A. cool, but it's a pain to those of us who ain't in L.A. and ain't cool.

Anyway, my comments were based primarily, but not exclusively, on readings from the following:

Paul Johnson's "Modern Times"
Robert J. Alexander's "The Tragedy of Chile"
Paul E. Sigmund's "The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile"
Roxborough, O'Brien & Roddick "Chile, The State and Revolution"

Johnson, Alexander and Sigmund are academics of some note, and Roxborough et. al. are Marxist types. Johnson would be considered 'conservative' or 'rightist', the rest would probably not be (but then who knows these days, given Allende's patron saint status).

Your misspent youth is your business, and your desire to romanticize those days is perfectly understandable. That said, I remain unmoved. I have the choice of taking your word or gathering literature from a diverse group of respected academics. Even if I was unfamiliar with your writings, I would choose the latter.

P.S.-There is no such thing as 'moral libel'. It is meaningless mental methane as either a concept or a criticism. It is, in fact, right up there with 'democratic socialism'.

Marc "allende had made his mind up the previous weekend that on that tuesday he would announce a simple yes/no refrendum on his continued tenure. if he lost the vote -- which was fairly likely-- he would actually step down before his elected term was over."

The really important point here is why Allende thought he would lose -- because the country was rapidly degenerating into chaotic, anti-property rights violence & wealth destruction. (Or was it something else? )

I also read, long ago, that it was union/ worker/ poor vs. the rich oriented violence and lawlessness. I wouldn't be surprised if there was rich provocations, but I really don't know.

Pinochet SHOULD be hounded, by principles of justice. He should NOT be hounded "too much", if the world wants to give an incentive to other dictators (like Charles Taylor, Mugabe, etc.) to give up power. Pinochet was human rights evil; economic rights reasonable. Which rights are more important to most people?

Marc Cooper,

Dennis.. your ignorance on this matter is frankly immeasurable. you may not have liked allende's economic or social policies but to charge that he wasn't democratic defies all facts and history.

You are either a delusional true believer or a filthy liar. But what else should we expect from someone who writes for a neo-socialist rag like the Nation?

Allende had thoroughly shattered Chile's consitution and both the judiciary and the legislature were openly calling on a military coup in order to RESTORE the constitutional order that Allende had trampled.

And your ad hominem attack on Dennis for having the nerve to blaspheme your socialist prophet is inexcusable in light of MJT's speech code.

Here is the truth about what happened in Chile:

http://val.dorta.com/archives/000343.html

Read it and weep in shame for what YOU in some small way are responsible for. And you would do for America what you did for Chile.

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