Oliver Camm: Pinochet myths
[Mr. Camm writes a column for the Times of London.]
There are two great myths about the late General Augusto Pinochet. One is that the coup that brought him to power in Chile in 1973 was engineered by the United States. I wrote about the myth here. While there are many reasons for opposing the realist foreign policies of Henry Kissinger, and many more for abominating the tyranny of Pinochet, no one has ever been able to demonstrate that the US brought Pinochet to power, for the simple reason that it isn't true. (Other myths followed inexorably from this. Mark Falcoff notes in his Modern Chile: 1970-1989, 1991, p. 307, that a Chilean exile, Isabel Vargas, wife of the Vice-President of the Norwegian parliament, asserted in 1987 that "the [Chilean] generals would turn their backs on [Pinochet] if the United States would stop giving him weapons and loans". This was in the eleventh year of an arms embargo imposed by the US Congress.)
That myth, however, is not the subject of this post. The second myth is the durable one, held by some on the other side of the political spectrum, that Pinochet was in some sense the saviour of his country. You can find an allusion to this view in the statement of Baroness Thatcher that she is saddened by the tyrant's death. Well, I am saddened to hear it. I have no respect for Pinochet's customary defenders on the Right - such as the egregious Lord Lamont, who reportedly described Pinochet in 1999 as a "good, brave and honourable soldier" - but Lady Thatcher is a case apart. She was on the right side of history in prosecuting the Cold War, in reversing Argentine imperialist aggression in the Falklands, and - after she left office - in opposing Serb aggression in the Balkans. In her feebleness towards apartheid South Africa and her indulgence of Pinochet, however, she showed no such instinct for liberty.
Pinochet was a thug, and his rule was a tragedy for Chile. Political prisoners numbered in the thousands for years after the coup; some were tortured and hundreds were murdered. Even the supposed Chilean economic miracle, after the mismanagement by Salvador Allende, was founded on colossal foreign debt. (On Allende's economic incompetence, incidentally, there is a rueful reflection by the late economist Alec Nove, a socialist who knew Chile well, in his book The Economics of Feasible Socialism, 1983, p. 166: "A sad émigré in Mexico after the coup told me that Chilean left-wing intellectuals had spent much time in denouncing international finance and the multinationals, but unfortunately had never studied what their actual role was, and what would happen if links with them were broken.")...
Read entire article at Oliver Camm (Blog)
There are two great myths about the late General Augusto Pinochet. One is that the coup that brought him to power in Chile in 1973 was engineered by the United States. I wrote about the myth here. While there are many reasons for opposing the realist foreign policies of Henry Kissinger, and many more for abominating the tyranny of Pinochet, no one has ever been able to demonstrate that the US brought Pinochet to power, for the simple reason that it isn't true. (Other myths followed inexorably from this. Mark Falcoff notes in his Modern Chile: 1970-1989, 1991, p. 307, that a Chilean exile, Isabel Vargas, wife of the Vice-President of the Norwegian parliament, asserted in 1987 that "the [Chilean] generals would turn their backs on [Pinochet] if the United States would stop giving him weapons and loans". This was in the eleventh year of an arms embargo imposed by the US Congress.)
That myth, however, is not the subject of this post. The second myth is the durable one, held by some on the other side of the political spectrum, that Pinochet was in some sense the saviour of his country. You can find an allusion to this view in the statement of Baroness Thatcher that she is saddened by the tyrant's death. Well, I am saddened to hear it. I have no respect for Pinochet's customary defenders on the Right - such as the egregious Lord Lamont, who reportedly described Pinochet in 1999 as a "good, brave and honourable soldier" - but Lady Thatcher is a case apart. She was on the right side of history in prosecuting the Cold War, in reversing Argentine imperialist aggression in the Falklands, and - after she left office - in opposing Serb aggression in the Balkans. In her feebleness towards apartheid South Africa and her indulgence of Pinochet, however, she showed no such instinct for liberty.
Pinochet was a thug, and his rule was a tragedy for Chile. Political prisoners numbered in the thousands for years after the coup; some were tortured and hundreds were murdered. Even the supposed Chilean economic miracle, after the mismanagement by Salvador Allende, was founded on colossal foreign debt. (On Allende's economic incompetence, incidentally, there is a rueful reflection by the late economist Alec Nove, a socialist who knew Chile well, in his book The Economics of Feasible Socialism, 1983, p. 166: "A sad émigré in Mexico after the coup told me that Chilean left-wing intellectuals had spent much time in denouncing international finance and the multinationals, but unfortunately had never studied what their actual role was, and what would happen if links with them were broken.")...