Pinochet Nostalgia
By The Wall Street Journal, openly pining for Augusto Pinochet:
Mr. Obama also requested a review of U.S. aid to Egypt, but cutting that off now would be a mistake. Unpopular as America is in Egypt, $1.3 billion in annual military aid buys access with the generals. U.S. support for Cairo is written into the Camp David peace accords with Israel. Washington can also do more to help Egypt gain access to markets, international loans and investment capital. The U.S. now has a second chance to use its leverage to shape a better outcome.
Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, who took power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy. If General Sisi merely tries to restore the old Mubarak order, he will eventually suffer Mr. Morsi’s fate.
Let’s let Colin Snider take over here:
Simply put: this is vile, disgusting, repugnant, vulgar, and ignorant. Pinochet’s regime murdered over 3,000 people. Again: the government actively arrested and murdered 3,000 people – men, women, children, parents. What were their crimes? Some had been union leaders. Some had been in the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende. Some had simply expressed themselves in ways the government disagreed with. Some criticized the coup and the dictatorship that resulted. Some were merely suspected of “subversion” without a shred of evidence. And Pinochet oversaw their murders, directly and indirectly. Just as he oversaw the torture of tens of thousands more, in brutal, horrific, illegal ways. And tens of thousands more fled into exile to escape such repression, in the process tearing apart families.
And yet, the Wall Street Journal says Chileans were “lucky.”
Nevermind that Pinochet only reluctantly left the presidency – after losing a plebiscite he was certain he would win in 1988, he insisted on cracking down on the people and annulling the results, and only other generals’ refusal to do so ultimately led to his leaving office. And even after he left the presidency, he remained head of the army and served as a senator for another eight years, enjoying immunity for his crimes until London finally put him under arrest in 1998 in response to a Spanish extradition request.
And yet, Chileans were “lucky.”
Nevermind that, under those alleged economic improvements under Pinochet, the gap between rich and poor grew considerably, as nearly 90% of the country’s wealth went to only 10% of its population, even while Pinochet himself embezzled millions into private bank accounts in other countries.
But Chileans were “lucky.”
In a perfect world, the editorial board would be fired en masse for such horrific statements and perspectives, and then forced to apologize personally to every single family member who lost a loved one during the Pinochet regime, to every single person who was tortured by Pinochet’s security forces. Sadly, the editors will likely keep their jobs, protected by the same elitist insulation that led them in the first place to see only economic outcomes, rather than human rights crises.
So yeah, from the Wall Street Journal editorial board’s perspective, the Egyptian people would be lucky to see this happen.