In Other News, Generalissimo Augusto Pinochet Is Still Dead

Just as Robert Farley predicted, the wingnuts are indulging in some serious Pinochet revisionism. The party line seems to have solidified as "he saved Chile from Marxism" (along with variations on a theme, e.g., 'not as bad as Castro').

Even if that were a defensible claim, it would be a pretty weak defense; after all, Saddam Hussein 'saved' Iraq from sectarian civil war, but you won't find me eulogizing him.

But it isn't a defensible claim, because Allende wasn't Castro. (Nor was he Batista, for that matter.) 'Saved Chile from Marxism' guy (who also says "Chile would be another cuba" if not for Pinochet) implicitly acknowledges this when, in his eagerness to throw some blame onto the left, he links to a story (from Crazy Davey's Front Page Magazine) about how the hard left undermined Allende, and failed to stand by him when it really mattered. It doesn't exactly fit the Allende-as-would-be Castro storyline, does it?

No, what Pinochet 'saved' Chile from was a democratically-elected government. Pinochet 'saved' Chile from subsequent elections for 17 years (and would have continued to 'save' Chile had his advisors not persuaded him to honor the results in 1990). That's what we know; anything else (Allende could have become Stalin! or Pol Pot! or Enver Hoxha!), any supposedly mitigating factors, are so speculative that to make the argument at all is to engage in an absurdity.

[That's all, folks]