PINOCHET ARRIVES IN HELL ..................................[MAIL & GUARDIAN, SOUTH AFRICA]
The Frontier Post,
Pakistan
The Life of Augusto Pinochet: Lesson in Imperial Statecraft
“He gave the world another lesson in what happens to local satraps when they don't dance to the tune of their foreign masters; and at who's behest these local rulers are expected to terrorize their own peoples.”
EDITORIAL
December 12, 2006
Pakistan - Frontier Post - Home Page (English)
Augusto Pinochet, formerly the long-serving Chilean dictator, has
breathed his last. With his demise, an inglorious chapter in human history
closes. His was a classic tale – being as he was the instrument of imperial change
in Chile. His ascension in 1973 and the demise of Salvador Allende, the man
he deposed – gave the world another lesson in what happens to local satraps
when they don't dance to the tune of their foreign masters; and at who's behest these local rulers are expected to terrorize their own peoples.
Pinochet rose from the ranks of the Chilean army and caught the
conspiratorial eye of the Americans, after Salvador Allende 
swept Chile's 1973
presidential election. Allende's communist leanings didn't sit well with the
Washington crowd, and although the Americans have never made a clean breast of
it, evidence has never been in short supply that Washington aided and abetted
the coup Pinochet and three other generals staged to oust and assassinate Allende .
[Editor's Note: In 2000, the United States officially admitted for the first time, to CIA involvement in the ouster of Salvadore Allende. For a list and overview of the declassified record, click here ].
Just as in recent times, the Americans wanted Palestinians to go
to the polls - but not elect Hamas – in 1973 they wanted Chileans to hold
elections but not choose Allende. Just as they and their European allies now
punish Palestinians for defying their wishes, they went all out to roast Chileans
on the spit for electing Allende, a man the U.S. hated to the bone.
As President Richard Nixon's secretary of state, Henry Kissinger
infamously intoned, "I don't see why we need to
stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its
own people." And America did not. With Washington's full support,
throughout his 17-years of repressive rule, Pinochet mercilessly hounded Allende
party activists, sympathizers and dissidents. And while the rest of the world labeled
him a pariah for his massive killings, kidnappings and torture, the Americans
stood by him unconscionably and without inhibition. The Americans turned a
blind eye to the reign of terror he let loose on his people.
It was only after Chileans had lost all patience with his
repression and domestic pressure against him became unbearable that the
Americans abandoned him - just as they did their staunch ally the Shah of Iran after the Islamic Revolution swept him off his throne. Even when the
dethroned monarch desperately sought asylum, the Americans told him bluntly
that he wasn't welcome in the United States. In like fashion, the Americans merely abandoned Pinochet
to his inglorious past - one which they had had a big hand in. It was a legacy that
haunted Pinochet every moment after he left office. Although not as painful as the
brutalization he exercised over his own people, it was a legacy that punished
him all the same.
Before laying down the baton, he had made himself Senator for life.
But despite the lifetime immunity this conveyed, the gross human rights
violations he perpetrated against his own people haunted him wherever he went. While
visiting Britain, for example, a Spanish court sought his extradition to Spain
to stand trial for human rights abuse.
Of course, due to his support during the Falklands War ,
the British were quite lenient toward him. He was the only Latin American leader
to side with Britain against Argentina. London found a way out to rebuff the
Spanish request and sent him home safely. But at home there was no escaping the
consequences of his brutal rule. Several court cases against his were underway in
Chile. The courts had quashed his senatorial immunity, but he never actually stood
trial. His lawyers managed to argue that he should be exempt due to old age, ill
health and mental infirmity.
Pinochet did, however, manage to turn around Chile's sagging
economy. But the beneficiaries of this economic miracle were the upper classes
who now mourn his passing, not the lower classes which had only tasted the
tyranny of his rule.
Such are the wages reaped by leaders that rule by trampling the
civil liberties and political freedom of their peoples, and savage them at the
bidding and for the pleasure - of alien masters.
[LATEST NEWS PHOTOS: Death of Pinochet].
