Torture and Senseless Killing OK as long as Democracy Reigns

This was taken from the Washington Post editorial section:

"AUGUSTO PINOCHET, who died Sunday at the age of 91, has been vilified for three decades in and outside of Chile, the South American country he ruled for 17 years. For some he was the epitome of an evil dictator. That was partly because he helped to overthrow, with U.S. support, an elected president considered saintly by the international left: socialist Salvador Allende, whose responsibility for creating the conditions for the 1973 coup is usually overlooked. Mr. Pinochet was brutal: More than 3,000 people were killed by his government and tens of thousands tortured, mostly in his first three years. Thousands of others spent years in exile.

It's hard not to notice, however, that the evil dictator leaves behind the most successful country in Latin America. In the past 15 years, Chile's economy has grown at twice the regional average, and its poverty rate has been halved. It's leaving behind the developing world, where all of its neighbors remain mired. It also has a vibrant democracy. Earlier this year it elected another socialist president, Michelle Bachelet, who suffered persecution during the Pinochet years.

Like it or not, Mr. Pinochet had something to do with this success. To the dismay of every economic minister in Latin America, he introduced the free-market policies that produced the Chilean economic miracle -- and that not even Allende's socialist successors have dared reverse. He also accepted a transition to democracy, stepping down peacefully in 1990 after losing a referendum."

Are there people who are actually buying into this shit? Evidently, some Chilean mourners were sickened because Pinochet wasn’t able to have a funeral with full military/state honors. Are these people serious? First of all, responsibility for economic restoration or recession does not begin or end with ONE man. The reason Pinochet was successful is because the US backed him. Obviously, if we gave him the money and resources to stage his 1973 coup, he was at that point, our bitch. Communism was not an option after we bought him.

Secondly, Pinochet was a greedy small-minded little man who got off on abusing others while seizing mass amounts of power. Hell, even his own daughter, Lucía Pinochet Hiriart, said the use of torture during his 1973–90 regime was "barbaric and without justification.” The current President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet Jeria, and her mother were both tortured and abused at Villa Grimaldi, a secret detention center.(her own father died in one of Pinochet’s prison camps too!) Yet, some Chilean Pinochet supporters were actually surprised (WTF!) that President Bachelet didn’t give him full honors. Heh. Yeah.

Equally outrageous, we have these hack writers in the US who are advocating Pinochet should be treated as a national treasure. I mean, isn’t he ALONE responsible for implementing a free market economic structure? And why can’t those damn Chileans just be grateful? The torture and senseless killings couldn’t have been THAT bad. Sometimes you have to destroy a few human beings here and there for the sake of democracy and westernized prosperity. Now, I don’t know about y’all, but I think something stinks in Denmark . Isn’t this the same line of bullshit the Bush Administration has been feeding the American public about Iraq since 2003? Oh yeah, cause the Iraq people will be so much more free and forever grateful if we bomb the shit out of them and destroy their cities. Me thinks so. Somehow this logic isn’t working anymore. But was it ever working? In the past, Americans were too blind and apathetic to see it before. However, Pinochet’s death is big slap across our collective faces. Turn off that 400th episode of Friends, Scrubs, Everybody Loves Raymond, Seinfield, or whatever you use to numb your brain and WAKE UP America.

Quote of the Day: Mussolini may have done many brutal and tyrannical things; he may have destroyed human freedom in Italy; he may have murdered and tortured citizens whose only crime was to oppose Mussolini; but one has to admit: he made the trains run on time.

Answer to quote of the day: I’d rather walk.