The only man who will be Chile in Hell

I am sure I speak for all of my loyal readers when I say: I am gonna miss Augusto Pinochet.

He was proof that the old axiom “only the good die young” works in reverse too. That bag of snake venom and gravel lived to 91. Just for comparison, here are some comparisons:

Strom Thurmond: 101
Abe Lincoln: 56
Richard Nixon: 81
Frank Sinatra: 83
Dean Martin only 78.

See a pattern here? I think it is pretty iron clad.

It is amazing that there is actually any controversy at all about his reign. Under his dictatorial leadership there was steady economic growth, but the cost was in human rights. In the name of fighting communist terrorists, thousands were killed. There were also thousands tortured or simply disappeared.

What amazed me more than anything was a quote from Maggie “the iron lady” Thatcher, who remarked that Pinochet had “saved Chile for democracy.”

This is the same sort of Orwellian logic that has allowed the abridgement of habeas corpus, the use of secret prisons, the use of unwarranted telephone tapping and the like.

Our leaders have never done anything as terrible as Pinochet, but the iron clad rule holds. You can not destroy democracy to save democracy. If the values of democracy are sacrificed, then democracy is hollow. My hats off to the people of Chile for building a democracy in their country, but that has been in spite of Gen. Pinochet.

On the bright side, I’m sure he’s up in heaven with all the other heroes of the 20th century like Idi Amin, Ty Cobb and Joseph McCarthy.