Bye Bye Pinochet

Augusto Pincohet, the former dictator of Chile, kicked the bucket today. And if you wanted to read any favorable comments from me about how he saved Chile from communism, you came to the wrong blog! Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected government of Chile in 1973 with the backing of the CIA and American business to keep President Salvador Allende from nationalizing American property. Under seventeen years of Pinochet's rule, Chile became one of the most fascistic, despotic, and brutal places on the planet, with basic human rights quashed and thousands of people condemned to death. So don't expect me to pay tribute to the old bastard, because I ain't gonna do it. Who do you think I am, Dan Quayle? (When he attended the inaugural ceremony of Patricio Aylwin, the first democratically elected president of Chile in twenty years, back in 1990, then-Vice President Quayle met with Pinochet and saluted him for preserving the free market in Chile, about the only thing in that country that remained free under the Pinochet regime.)

My only regret about Pinochet is that he was never tried for crimes against humanity. Henry Kissinger, who helped put Pinochet into power, should be sent to the Hague for his crimes in Chile. . . and his crimes in a whole lot of other places.