Conservatives Should Not Make Excuses For Pinochet
By Aaron Goldstein (12/13/06)
In my ideological journey over the past five years from Canadian socialist to American conservative I have reconsidered many things. This includes but is not limited to knee jerk anti-Americanism, a strong military, affirmative action and the death penalty. But I haven’t changed my mind about some things. Augusto Pinochet is one of them.
While many conservatives are falling all over themselves to shower praise on the departed dictator I suspect that a majority of Chileans are not sorry now that he has left this mortal coil. This is not to say that conservatives haven’t acknowledged his shortcomings. They acknowledge his shortcomings in much the same way that Islamic apologists will condemn terrorism only to qualify it with a “but” or alternately they downplay and rationalize its historical significance.
On December 11th, National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com) conducted a symposium “Pinochet Is History – But how will it remember him?” Here is a sample of the some of the testimonials:
That a hick general from a humble background should so obviously have done much more for his country than a suave, educated, aristocratic Marxist was a terrible blow to the self-esteem of the Left in every Western country. As for holding a referendum on own his (sic) rule and abiding by the result when he lost, that was quite unforgivable, setting as it did a shocking precedent for left-wing dictators.
- Anthony Daniels, author of Utopias Elsewhere
But Pinochet will also be remembered as leaving the country better off than he found it. It was Pinochet who obeyed his own electorate by stepping down from power after he lost a national referendum. And unlike his fellow Latin American generals, he let market-oriented civilians lay the basis for Chile’s economy – the most productive in the region. Can his fellow caudillo in Cuba – soon to be among the departed as well – say the same?
- Roger Fontaine, former NSC staff officer during the Reagan Administration
Pinnochet (sic) saved Chile from becoming another Communist hell. God bless him for that, and may he be forgiven for his later aberrations.
- Ion Mihai Pacepa, former Soviet general who later defected to the U.S.
There is no doubt that if he (Salvador Allende) had succeeded in his plans, Chile today would be an impoverished Communist prison like Cuba, instead of a shining example of democracy and prosperity. With some compassion and self-discipline, Pinochet could have been remembered as a liberator and not a despot. He was both.
- Otto Reich, former Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere from 2001 to 2004
That’s a fairly representative sample of the symposium. In fairness, Venezuelan film producer Thor Halvorssen unequivocally condemned Pinochet stating, “Pinochet’s name will forever be linked to the Desaparecidos, the Caravan of Death, and the institutionalized torture that took place in the Villa Grimaldi complex.”
Halvorssen, however, is an exception to the rule. So why do conservatives make excuses for Pinochet? The best that I can see conservatives do so for three reasons:
1. Pinochet saved countless lives by overthrowing Salvador Allende who was turning Chile into another Cuba.
2. Pinochet embraced free market reforms championed by the also recently departed Milton Friedman.
3. Pinochet relinquished power and thus Pinochet’s Chile was not as bad as Castro’s Cuba.
Allow me to examine these arguments individually.
First, it is impossible to know how Chile would have turned out had Allende not been overthrown and perished in the coup of September 11, 1973 that brought Pinochet to power. There is no doubt that Allende was a compatriot of Fidel Castro. But so was Michael Manley of Jamaica when he was first elected Prime Minister of Jamaica in 1972. Should there have been a U.S. backed military coup in Kingston? Yet when Manley returned to that post in 1989, after nearly a decade out of office, he embraced the free market. Who can say with any certainty that Allende or his democratically elected successors would not have arrived at the same conclusion? But we will never know the answer to that question because Pinochet (with the encouragement and support of the Nixon Administration) disposed of Allende – something that could have easily happened without costing Allende his life had elections been allowed to proceed on schedule in 1976.
While Allende can be linked to Castro, unlike Castro, Allende was elected Chile’s President in 1970. Conservatives do point out that Allende did not receive a majority of the popular vote and that the election was decided by the Chilean Congress. What conservatives don’t point out is that it wasn’t the first time in Chilean history a President had been chosen in that manner. Indeed, in the 1958 elections, Allende came out on the losing end of this scenario. Allende finished a close second to conservative Jorge Alessandri in the popular vote in a three way race with the incumbent Chilean President Eduardo Frei Montalva and it was left to the Chilean Congress to determine the race’s outcome. The Congress chose Alessandri over Allende. Yet I don’t see conservatives question the legitimacy of Alessandri’s election victory.
This is not to suggest that Allende didn’t have authoritarian tendencies. He certainly was centralizing power away from the legislature and the courts in much the same way Hugo Chavez is doing today in Venezuela. But there is no evidence to suggest that Allende, unlike Pinochet, systematically imprisoned, tortured and murdered his political opponents. The point here is that Chile’s future should have been decided by the Chilean people not by the head of the Chilean armed forces and the Nixon Administration. Ironically, one of the Nixon Administration’s chief objections to Allende was the nationalization of the copper mines. Yet Pinochet never privatized them.
This brings me to conservative lionization of Pinochet for his championing of the free market. While Milton Friedman never formally served Pinochet his economic policies were influenced by him and Friedman did deliver some lectures in Chile shortly after Pinochet came to power. Pinochet appointed a number of graduates of the University of Chicago Economics Department (where Friedman taught) to key Cabinet posts. They became known as the Chicago Boys who persuaded Pinochet to embark on an economic program of lower taxation, deregulation, monetarism and privatization (including the country’s pension system). These policies did achieve some success as Chile as it experienced consistent economic growth averaging around 7% throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Indeed, since democracy was restored to Chile in 1990, successive governments have largely kept these reforms in tact. Friedman would dub these reforms the “Miracle of Chile.” In an interview conducted for the PBS documentary Commanding Heights in October 2000 Friedman stated:
The Chilean economy did very well, but more important, in the end the central government, the military junta, was replaced by a democratic society. So the really important thing about the Chilean business is that free markets did work their way in bringing about a free society. (www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo.int_miltonfriedman.html#10)
Yet in the same interview Friedman downplays his contribution to the “Miracle of Chile” by citing his lectures in China:
When I came back from Communist China, I wrote a letter to the Stanford Daily newspaper in which I said, “It’s curious. I gave exactly the same lecture in China that I gave in Chile. I have had many demonstrations against for what I said in Chile. Nobody has made any objections to what I said in China. How come?
If Uncle Milton were still walking amongst us I would tell him the following. Democracy in Chile did not begin with Pinochet. Chile, unlike China, had a history of democracy through elections, an independent judiciary, a free press, freedom of religion and an organized civil society. Granted democracy in Chile was not always stable but its foundations were there.
The People’s Republic of China has no such tradition. There is no question that since Mao’s death in 1976, Chinese Communists have embraced capitalism. In China, it is perfectly acceptable to order a Big Mac. In China, it is perfectly unacceptable to practice Falun Gong. Political freedom (and for that matter religious freedom) does not inevitably follow economic freedom. That’s why no protesters greeted Milton Friedman in China.
Let’s put it another way. Suppose a group of Palestinian economists trained in the United States were to convince Hamas to initiate free market reforms and bring the Gaza Strip out of poverty and viably compete economically with Israel. Would the Cato Institute suddenly be down with Ismail Haniya and start wearing green baseball caps in solidarity?
Now some might find such a proposition preposterous. But let us consider that Hamas is widely praised in some quarters for its extensive social service network that amongst other things runs health clinics, orphanages and soup kitchens. That’s all well and good but it still doesn’t negate the fact that Hamas raison d’être is the destruction of the State of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state. Similarly, it’s all well and good that Pinochet privatized banks but it doesn’t negate the fact that he was responsible for the murder of 3,000 of his own people. That Chile is today a free society owes more to the desire for justice of Chileans whose loved ones and friends were imprisoned, tortured and in some cases murdered by the Pinochet regime than by a lower marginal taxation rate.
This brings me to my final argument. Most conservatives acknowledge Pinochet was not a champion of human rights although some deem him a champion of democracy because he relinquished power after the results of the 1988 Chilean referendum which denied him an eight year extension on his Presidency. This was the case with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when she visited with Pinochet outside London in March 1999. At the time, Pinochet was awaiting word on the ultimately unsuccessful efforts to extradite him to Spain to be tried for human rights violations against Spaniards who lived in Chile during his reign. Thatcher remarked, “I’m also aware that it is you who brought democracy to Chile, you set up a constitution suitable for democracy, you put it into effect, elections were held, and then, in accordance with the result, you stepped down.” (www.news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/304516.stm) Of course, Thatcher was also grateful to Chile because of the assistance it provided Britain during the Falkland Islands War of 1982 against it’s continental rival, Argentina.
While most conservatives do take Pinochet to task for violating human rights they qualify their admonishment by stating that Castro’s Cuba is worse. I partially agree. Castro’s Cuba is worse. This is self evident because Castro has been in power nearly thrice as long as Pinochet was in Chile and the human rights abuses continue in Cuba to this very day. Just ask Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet who is in a Cuban jail serving a 25 year sentence for flying the Cuban flag upside down. Given the choice between Chile and Cuba in the present day I would take the next plane to Santiago in a heartbeat. But this is beside the point. Claiming Pinochet isn’t as bad as Castro is like saying Jeffrey Dahmer isn’t as bad as John Wayne Gacy because he killed fewer people. Murder is murder. Dahmer and Gacy were both psychopathic murderers who needed to be taken out of society. Both Castro and Pinochet were ruthless tyrants who were responsible for imprisoning, torturing and murdering those who disagreed with them. I use the word “were” for Fidel because it appear he might soon join Pinochet in that special place in Hell although Fidel’s brother Raul will undoubtedly continue the Castro legacy.
While Pinochet abided by the results of a 1988 referendum and left the Presidency in 1990 he was not stripped of all political power. Under the Chilean Constitution, Pinochet remained in command of the Chilean military for another eight years a post he would have held had the referendum gone in his favor. So the military was Pinochet’s to lead regardless of the outcome. At the end of his reign as Chile’s top military commander in 1998, Pinochet was given a lifetime appointment to the Chilean Senate where he would be immune from prosecution for his crimes against those who opposed him (although he would resign the seat in 2002). Despite efforts both in Chile and abroad, Pinochet never answered for his crimes. In March 2005, he was exposed as a money launderer by the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. Minnesota Republican Senator Norm Coleman remarked, “This is a sad, sordid tale of money laundering involving Pinochet accounts at multiple financial institutions using alias names, offshore accounts, and close associates. As a former General and President of Chile, Pinochet was a well-known human rights violator and violent dictator.”
So what if he complied with the results with the 1988 referendum? He was supposed to comply with the results. Why should conservatives praise him for what he was legally obliged to do? It was hardly a virtuous act. Consider Daniel Ortega. Recently returned to power in Nicaragua back in 1990, he lost the Nicaraguan presidential elections to Violeta Chamorro after more than a decade in power and stepped aside. Did conservatives praise the former Sandinista leader for doing so? No. Why? Because he was supposed to step aside. That’s what supposed to happen when politicians lose democratic elections.
Conservatives should stop making excuses for Augusto Pinochet. To argue that more Chileans might have died had Allende remained in power did not justify his ouster. That decision was for Chileans to make not the White House or Pinochet. The ends simply did not justify the means. To give Pinochet a pass because he subscribed to the economic policies set out by Milton Friedman sends the unfortunate message that conservatives believe the human rights of some people are more important than others. It is true that Pinochet subscribed to free markets. He also subscribed to state terrorism as evidenced by the 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C. Letelier had been Chile’s Ambassador to the United States while Allende was in power. To suggest that Pinochet wasn’t so bad because Castro was worse trivializes the suffering endured by Chileans at the hands of Pinochet. On this note, it is worth directing our attention towards the White House. Upon learning of Pinochet’s death, White House spokesman Tony Fratto stated, “Our thoughts today are with the victims of his reign and their families.” I share Fratto’s sentiments and conservatives ought to do the same.
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