{"id":9360,"date":"2006-12-16T10:14:13","date_gmt":"2006-12-16T15:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9360.html"},"modified":"2006-12-16T10:14:13","modified_gmt":"2006-12-16T15:14:13","slug":"guided-by-god-my-foot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/guided-by-god-my-foot\/","title":{"rendered":"Guided by God my foot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Morbo<\/a><\/p>\n

In a previous post<\/a>, I mentioned hearing Chilean exile Ariel Dorfman speak in 1985. During those remarks, which I still recall more than 20 years later, Dorfman pulled no punches as he excoriated Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and explained how a U.S.-backed coup brought this cruel dictator to power.<\/p>\n

Why did we do it? Because the people of Chile had had the temerity to democratically elect Salvador Allende, a man who pledged to bring “democratic Socialism” to Chile. Allende either committed suicide or was killed during the coup.<\/p>\n

Pinochet decided to use his power to institute free-market reforms. He actually lured economists affiliated with the late Milton Friedman down to Chile and had them spearhead a wave privatization. Pinochet did that — and of course killed and tortured a bunch of people. As The Washington Post reported<\/a> this week:<\/p>\n

First as head of a four-man military junta and then as president, Pinochet served until 1990, leaving a legacy of abuse that took successive governments years to catalogue. According to a government report that included testimony from more than 30,000 people, his government killed at least 3,197 people and tortured about 29,000. Two-thirds of the cases listed in the report happened in 1973.<\/p>\n

An austere figure who claimed to be guided by “the spiritual force of God as a believer,” Pinochet regarded himself as a soldier rather than a politician. With his stern visage and fondness for military uniforms and dark glasses, he seemed to personify implacable authority. He was both an opponent of communism and a critic of “orthodox democracy,” which he said was “too easy to infiltrate and destroy.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here is what life was like<\/a> under Pinochet: Political parties were banned, and labor unions were shut down. Free press became a memory. Pinochet scrapped the Chilean constitution and once stated that Chile needed “an authoritarian government that has the capacity to act decisively.”
\n
\nBacked by his secret police, the National Intelligence Directorate, Pinochet ruled through terror. And by the way, Pinochet claimed to be paying himself a modest civil servant’s salary — but somehow managed to sock away $27 million in an overseas bank account.<\/p>\n

I will spare you the details of the methods of torture used in Pinochet’s Chile. They are stomach-turning. Suffice to say, there was often a sexual component — the better to debase and humiliate the victims.<\/p>\n

On Dec. 10, Pinochet died, having never been brought to justice for his crimes. When I read about his death in The Post, I could only think of that odd claim: He said he was guided by “the spiritual force of God as a believer.”<\/p>\n

I don’t know if there is a god, but if there is, I believe he is still guiding Pinochet — straight into the bowels of Hell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Morbo In a previous post, I mentioned hearing Chilean exile Ariel Dorfman speak in 1985. During those remarks, which I still recall more than 20 years later, Dorfman pulled no punches as he excoriated Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and explained how a U.S.-backed coup brought this cruel dictator to power. Why did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}