RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Operation Northwoods

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the G-man said:
You're trying to be clever, but not doing a very good job of it.

First off, you abscribe to me an unwillingness to believe anything negative about the U.S. to show how "pig headed" I am.

Now, when that apparently failed, you try to abscribe to me a belief that anything short of "blind obedience" to the government is "un-American."

You're also "yelling" at me that "even if we were on the verge of a dictatorship, IT WASN'T YOUR DECISION TO MAKE. You need to be sick to think that, under any circumstances, it was." However, you're doing so almost immediately after I acknowledged that very point.

Essentially, you're engaging in the old "straw man" tactic, to wit, arguing against points I didn't make, in order to discredit me, in lieu addressing points I did make.

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You might argue that the U.S. had no "right" to decide which form of dictatorship you got and that you should have been able to choose which form of dictatorship you had. And on that you may have a valid point.

However, even on that point, you need to accept that you still would have been under a dictatorship anyway.

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the G-man said:
Actually, doctor, to this date, INMM is still arguing that a communist government would have respected the democratic process:

A communist goverment [would have] reverted back to normal after the next elections...a country can survive a communist goverment and repair itself.

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wannabuyamonkey said:
It just occured to me that I let this entire thread go on without posting: alt.consperacy.black.helicopters

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This seems to be the best way to do so. Maybe it could also work in Iran.

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Pinochet...said a year ago on a Spanish-language television show: "everything I did I would do again. Who am I supposed to ask for forgiveness? They are the ones who have to ask me for forgiveness, them, the Marxists."

The old boy came to power in 1973. For six months before he took over politicians and private citizens in large numbers had been imploring the military to deliver Chile from President Salvador Allende, a romantic and incompetent Marxist pseudo-intellectual who spent his last year in a drunken haze while economic chaos spread.

For the next 17 years Pinochet, his military, and his secret police waged war against leftists, usually within Chile but occasionally abroad through a series of political assassinations. Pinochet's political assassinations were not as numerous as those practiced by Soviet satellite countries. Nor was his war as bloody as General Francisco Franco's war against communists and other leftists in the 1930s, but it was brutal enough to offend civil libertarians everywhere, including me.

Yet, like Franco, he did return his country to democracy. How many communists have done that? Moreover communism accounted for scores of millions of innocent victims in the twentieth century. Pinochet's regime allegedly accounted for 4,000, not all of them peace-loving progressives.

How many has Fidel Castro murdered, tortured, and jailed? Today Castro remains a bloody tyrant and far more of a problem beyond his shores than the General with the absurd sun-glasses and the eighteenth century uniforms ever was. Finally, when Fidel ultimately croaks he will have left what was once the most prosperous country in Latin America in a heap. Are any of Pinochet's present-day tormentors demanding Castro's prosecution for crimes against humanity?

There are two points worth noting here. One is that the left -- whether communist or simply glassy-eyed reformist -- never tires in hunting down its enemies. The other is that its enemies are always on the right -- or at least the perceived right. The old Soviet Bloc countries are filled with retired brutes who did far more damage to the civil liberties and the prosperity of their countries than Pinochet ever did. There is no effort to prosecute these enemies of freedom commensurate with the effort against Pinochet.

If indeed the prosecution of Pinochet would elevate regard for human rights worldwide I would be among the first to celebrate Judge Guzman's decision. Yet it is not the opponents of Pinochet who have made great strides in the elevation of human rights worldwide. Rather it has been North Americans and Europeans, most notably the English-speaking peoples. Right now those people are leading the world in a struggle against tyrants who, unlike an 89-year-old retired general, can actually shoot back. How prominent have Pinochet's opponents been in the struggle against Islamofascism and the sadistic Saddam Hussein? The answer is not very. In fact, many of those cheering for Pinochet's neck today blithely lump Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush into the same category they reserve for Pinochet.

There is a great deal of posturing about civil liberties and justice in the campaign against Pinochet. There is also something else. It is difficult to explain but it is observable. The left worldwide reserves its hostility for people on the right and for America and its allies, who are the real guarantors of the rights of man.

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the G-man said:
Simply to play devil's advocate, of course, but the American Spectator points out that, as far as dictators go, Pinochet was probably better than the Communists he replaced:

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Jeez. For all the talk of democracy and elections that the right wing does, why is it that if the people overwhelmingly elect a marxist or even a leftist, a CIA sponsored dictator suddenly becomes preferable to them?

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the G-man said:

Pinochet...said a year ago on a Spanish-language television show: "everything I did I would do again. Who am I supposed to ask for forgiveness? They are the ones who have to ask me for forgiveness, them, the Marxists."

The old boy came to power in 1973. For six months before he took over politicians and private citizens in large numbers had been imploring the military to deliver Chile from President Salvador Allende, a romantic and incompetent Marxist pseudo-intellectual who spent his last year in a drunken haze while economic chaos spread.

For the next 17 years Pinochet, his military, and his secret police waged war against leftists, usually within Chile but occasionally abroad through a series of political assassinations. Pinochet's political assassinations were not as numerous as those practiced by Soviet satellite countries. Nor was his war as bloody as General Francisco Franco's war against communists and other leftists in the 1930s, but it was brutal enough to offend civil libertarians everywhere, including me.

Yet, like Franco, he did return his country to democracy. How many communists have done that? Moreover communism accounted for scores of millions of innocent victims in the twentieth century. Pinochet's regime allegedly accounted for 4,000, not all of them peace-loving progressives.

How many has Fidel Castro murdered, tortured, and jailed? Today Castro remains a bloody tyrant and far more of a problem beyond his shores than the General with the absurd sun-glasses and the eighteenth century uniforms ever was. Finally, when Fidel ultimately croaks he will have left what was once the most prosperous country in Latin America in a heap. Are any of Pinochet's present-day tormentors demanding Castro's prosecution for crimes against humanity?

There are two points worth noting here. One is that the left -- whether communist or simply glassy-eyed reformist -- never tires in hunting down its enemies. The other is that its enemies are always on the right -- or at least the perceived right. The old Soviet Bloc countries are filled with retired brutes who did far more damage to the civil liberties and the prosperity of their countries than Pinochet ever did. There is no effort to prosecute these enemies of freedom commensurate with the effort against Pinochet.

If indeed the prosecution of Pinochet would elevate regard for human rights worldwide I would be among the first to celebrate Judge Guzman's decision. Yet it is not the opponents of Pinochet who have made great strides in the elevation of human rights worldwide. Rather it has been North Americans and Europeans, most notably the English-speaking peoples. Right now those people are leading the world in a struggle against tyrants who, unlike an 89-year-old retired general, can actually shoot back. How prominent have Pinochet's opponents been in the struggle against Islamofascism and the sadistic Saddam Hussein? The answer is not very. In fact, many of those cheering for Pinochet's neck today blithely lump Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush into the same category they reserve for Pinochet.

There is a great deal of posturing about civil liberties and justice in the campaign against Pinochet. There is also something else. It is difficult to explain but it is observable. The left worldwide reserves its hostility for people on the right and for America and its allies, who are the real guarantors of the rights of man.

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I'm Not Mister Mxypltk said:
I have a negative impression of it (because I distrust your President)

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You might argue that the U.S. had no "right" to decide which form of dictatorship you got and that you should have been able to choose which form of dictatorship you had. And on that you may have a valid point.

However, even on that point, you need to accept that you still would have been under a dictatorship anyway.

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the G-man said:
But he is democratically elected, so he must be a good choice, using your logic.

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the G-man said:
At this late date, I don't recall whether I edited it in or not. If I did, it was not too much after I originally posted it.

Furthermore, it is consistent with what I am still saying, namely, that for all the complaints about Pinochet. The alternative would probably have been worse.

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the G-man said:
But whenever anyone points out that, yes, Pinochet was a dictator and the US may have been wrong, however, the alternative could have easily been worse, you respond with the idea that Allende was "democratically elected," as if that invalidates the possibility he would have been worse.

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I'm Not Mister Mxypltk said:Allende w...didn't take power with a gun in his hand like Castro. He did it by presenting himself as a candidate and addressing many of the worries the people had at the time.

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the G-man said:

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I'm Not Mister Mxypltk said:Allende w...didn't take power with a gun in his hand like Castro. He did it by presenting himself as a candidate and addressing many of the worries the people had at the time.

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Some would say the same about Hitler. It doesn't make Hitler any less of a dictator.

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the G-man said:
Which brings us back, one more time, to my point.

There has never, ever, been a communist government that wasn't a dictatorship. Communist dictatorships have been responsible for more deaths, more human rights abuses, than any other form of regime in history.

So, in the face of that, why do you assume Allende would have been the exception and not have ended up even worse than Pinochet?

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I'm Not Mister Mxypltk said:
By the way, what do you mean by "the US may have done something wrong"? Did they interfere with a valid democracy or not?

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In many ways, the young Dr. Allende was, indeed, in line with the Fascism-infected streams that were so prevalent during the first half of the last century. For example, he argued that mental illnesses, criminal behavior, and alcoholism were hereditary. Or further, he argued that homosexuality is an illness curable by implanting testicle tissue into the abdomen. Another example: Allende proclaimed that the hot climate prevented people in southern regions from acting morally. Referring to other studies, Allende wrote ominously about Jews in his dissertation saying, "The Hebrews are well-known committers of certain types of crimes including: fraud, deceit, defamation, but most notably usury."

While these views may be reflections of the era in which they were written, they certainly do not indicate a future as a well-respected Socialist for Allende -- and Farias deserves credit for discovering them. But typical of his abrasive style, Farias takes things a step further: The dissertation, he writes, wasn't merely a temporary phase for Allende. Instead, Farias accuses Allende of remaining loyal to racism and anti-Semitism for years -- at least until the days of the Popular Front government under President Pedro Aguirre Cerda (1939 to 1942). Allende served as health minister in that administration and promoted a law on the forced sterilization of the mentally ill.

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the G-man said:
Before his removal, Allende nationalized the copper industry and the banks. The only way to nationalize any business is to take the property therein from its owners. How is taking property from its owners not a violation of their rights?

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the G-man said:
Every dictator claims his human rights violations respond to social needs. Hitler claimed he was fixing the German economy. Stalin's forced labor camps were part and parcel of his economic, not military, policies.

If you are going to argue that Allende's violations of human rights are somehow excused because the ends were justified, or the the goals lofty, then you have no business attacking other leaders for their questionable means.

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the G-man said:
Every dictator claims his human rights violations respond to social needs. Hitler claimed he was fixing the German economy. Stalin's forced labor camps were part and parcel of his economic, not military, policies.

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If you are going to argue that Allende's violations of human rights are somehow excused because the ends were justified, or the the goals lofty, then you have no business attacking other leaders for their questionable means.

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the G-man said:
That's a good point, r3x.

It would be silly of me to seriously argue that the fact President Bush was elected means that any policy of his is beyond criticism.

I would submit, however, that is what Mxy is implying regarding Allende.

All of which brings me back to my original point: regardless of the fact that Allende was "elected," and Pinochet was not, given the history of communist governments, elected or otherwise, over the last century, can we really safely assume Allende would have been any better than Pinochet in the long run?

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