Good riddance
Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the brutal former dictator of Chile who took power with U.S. support in 1973, died today in Santiago at age 91. That he lived so long is a rebuke to justice and to the memories of the thousands of Chileans he had tortured and murdered.
To understand Pinochet, think of the absolutely worst aspects of George W. Bush and multiply them by 10 or more times. He had contempt for democracy, contempt for unions, contempt for leftist professors at the universities, contempt for any effort to improve the lot of the poor that did not grow out of his devotion to conservative economist Milton Friedman and "free markets." He was strongly supported by the economic elites of Chile and its military. American conservatives were slavishly devoted to Pinochet for the supposed "economic miracle" he brought to Chile, especially the privatization of Social Security that was a model for Bush's failed effort at the same. Yet much of it was an illusion that left the poor in Chile as bad off as ever.
Here is the Washington Post's obit of Pinochet, and here is the version in the Los Angeles Times. The New York Times, linked above, has the most comprehensive account, while the Post is better on the role of the Nixon Administration in Pinochet's seizure of power and the Los Angeles Times on the latter period of the dictator's life.
Pinochet ousted and may have murdered President Salvador Allende of Chile, although some believe Allende committed suicide during Pinochet's aerial attack on the Presidential palace in Santiago in 1973. There is no longer any doubt that President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger strongly supported the coup. Nixon had instructed the CIA to destabilize Allende's government. I recall Kissinger saying something about not letting a nation go communist "because of the stupidity of their own people." It was a shameful thing they did in our name. And we probably barely know the half of it.