The Other September 11

On 11 September 1973, in response to formal requests by his nation's judiciary and legislature, General Augusto Pinochet led a military coup against the regime of the elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, an avowed Marxist whose government had placed foreign agents of revolution in positions of power, stolen the private property of Chilean citizens, nationalized many of the country's major industries, and wrecked Chile's economy and sense of public order. The coup succeded: stolen property was returned, the foreign terrorists with Chile were hunted down and eliminated, and law and order were restored to the country. Allende died by his own hand, shooting himself with a gun given him by Fidel Castro of Cuba.

On 13 December 2004, General Pinochet (now 86 years of age) was indicted by a Chilean court for the disappearance of nine “opposition activists” and the killing of one of them during his regime.

Of course, General Pinochet’s most recent indictment has little to do with his brutally effective war on Chile’s domestic terrorists during the 1970s. His real “crime”is that he fought communism and won — and for that crime the socialists and Marxists of the world will never forgive him. Stalin sent a man with a steel pick to Mexico to show Leon Trotsky what happens to those who dare cross the old hammer and sickle; for today’s wannabe Stalins, getting a judge to send down an indictment against a man who fought them and won is no big deal. Great Stalin always gets his man.

Pinochet was a military dictator. I make no bones about that. He held power for fifteen years, all the while ruthlessly searching out and destroying those whom he deemed to pose a threat to Chile. During his war on his country’s dometic enemies, winning came first, and civil rights came second — and, sometimes, not at all. As is true in every war, there is no doubt that some of those who ended up injured or dead during his regime were innocent.

But that is the nature of war. War means killing people and breaking things, and and one cannot blame those who wage war on behalf of their country for doing so. No reasonable person holds the men who flew the airplanes that firebombed Dresden and Tokyo in World War Two personally responsible for the murders of the thousands of innocent civilians who perished at their hands. They killed those people accidentally, in the course of their duty as soldiers in wartime, not out of any personal malice or spite. The sad truth of war is that sometimes the innocent as well as the guilty suffer. So far as is known, General Pinochet never killed anyone arbitrarily, out of spite, or for personal gain. He killed them because his job was to kill the people who wished to kill his country. Civilized people everywhere call such a man a patriot.

Except the civilized, liberal people of the pampered, hedonistic, materialistic West. To them, the only things worth fighting for are sodomy, abortions, and the right to pillage the public coffers. To them, a patriot is a criminal, a dangerous sentimentalist with a penchant for violence. There is no room for heroes in a world where everyone is equal.

Pinochet’s critics are an amusing bunch — the kind of folks who think that it is more noble to sit back and watch a gang of criminals rape one‘s wife rather than use violence against them and risk violating the rapists’ precious civil rights. “Let the bad guys do whatever they want, as long as my personal moral hymen remains intact!” they seem to say.

In the part of Texas I come from, a person with that sort of attitude is called a coward.

“But Pinochet acted outside the political process!,” his detractors cry. “Allende was lawfully elected by the people of Chile!” My reply: Yeah? Well, so what? News flash, gang: communism is not a politcal force, like the Green Party or the local save-the-endangered-prairie-snail brigade. Despite their kooky politics, the Green Party and the snail-hugger club are composed by and large of civilized people — people who believe in law and order and who would never dream of using murder and terror to enforce their will upon the rest of us.

On the other hand, communism is a form of terrorism — an inherently evil ideology that feeds upon the blood of innocent people in order to gain power; Lenin and his Bolsheviks made that plain to all sensible people in 1917. Communism is based upon terror. Communism is terror. And a civilized country can no more allow communists to come to power than it could allow the IRA, the Klan, or the Islamic fundamentalists to come to power.

And elections be damned. Vox populi is not vox Dei as of the last time I checked, and the republican system is not a suicide pact. Here’s a thought experiment for the no-violence-outside-the-law crowd: let's say that a majority of the people of the United States were to all go nuts at once and cause a native-born Osama bin-Laden type Islamic fundamentalist to be lawfully elected president of the United States, God forbid. Now, would it be better to let him burn our churches, put women in burkhas, and kill all the Jews, or would it be better to support his overthrow by any means necessary, including an extra-constitutional military coup?

I dunno about the rest of you, but I’d be all for a coup myself.

General Augusto Pinochet is a hero, He singlehandedly prevented his country from being turned into a Pacific version of Cuba, and in so doing won a critical battle of World War Three, the so-called “cold war” — that fifty-year global battle for dominance between the Judeo-Christian, capitalist West and the atheistic communists of the USSR and her thralls. Did he get his hands dirty in the process? Yes, he did. He dealt with the communist bandits who hijacked his country in the only proper manner: he killed them. By so doing, he prevented them from killing Chile, a proud nation which is now the jewel of South America.

What General Pinochet did was heroic in the best sense of the word: he did his duty and accepted the consequences. His duty was to defend his country against all enemies, and he did so. Then, after attempting to undo the damage Allende had caused, he voluntarily relinquished the power he had assumed in time of emeregency, and submitted his actions to the judgment of others and of history. A soldier can do no more than that for his native land.

Was General Pinochet a dictator? Yes he was. Was he brutal? Yes, at times he was. But were his actions justified? Only God and history can judge that question. For today, Pinochet stands under indictment by a court of the nation he did so much to preserve. How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!

Meanwhile, not ninety miles from the shores of the United States a far worse dictator still holds his country in an iron-fisted grip of oppression and tyranny — to the lauds of many of the same human-rights crusaders that damn Pinochet.

Where are the cries of outrage from these foes of dictatorship when Cuba is discussed? When is Fidel Castro going to pay for his crimes?

Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte

November 25, 1915 - December 10, 2006

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Note: This piece was written in 2004. I see no reason to change a single word.

Pinochet died on 10 December, 2006, without having been convicted of any crimes committed during his dictatorship.