October 20, 1998
Arrest Fidel!
Fidel Castro is in Spain today, having left an Ibero-American
summit in Portugal to celebrate the kind of symbolic victory that sustains his
revolution amid the squalor and repression it has wrought in Cuba. A
Spanish magistrate has induced Britain to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the
former strongman whose Chile is now prosperous and democratic.
In London for medical treatment, the 82-year-old general was arrested
under European anti-terrorism statutes for human rights violations during his
tenure. OK, but if that is to be the standard, Spain should arrest Fidel. His
killing and human rights violations dwarf the most exaggerated accusations
against General Pinochet. Indeed, Castro's program for subverting Latin
America was the real root of the brutality that swept the region in the
1970s. His attempts to spread revolution gave life to the brutal military
dictatorships that once marred the Latin scene.
After the death of Che Guevara and especially after the fall of the Berlin
Wall cut off Mr. Castro's sugar pot, a wave of democracy has spread
across Central and South America. What remains is a fringe of angry old
Communists and starry-eyed leftists sitting in exile in Spain and
demonstrating on the streets of London. The left governments now in
control in most of Europe realize they cannot expand the welfare state, but
they can still appease their core constituencies with Marxist symbolism by
applying one standard of law to General Pinochet and quite another to
Fidel.
For the past quarter-century Marxist romantics have been seeking revenge
in particular against General Pinochet, the man who probably did more than
anyone else in Latin America to roll back their revolution. With the election
of Marxist President Salvador Allende in 1970, Chile was supposed to
become the driving wedge of Castro-style communism on the Latin
continent. For Chile itself, the experience was not quite so romantic. Elected
with a mere 36% plurality of the popular vote, Allende aimed for nothing
short of turning what had been one of the most stable democracies in Latin
America into a Communist state. He began confiscating property, debasing
the money, bankrupting the opposition press and allowing gangs of armed
leftist revolutionaries to invade homes and factories.
By 1972, the U.S.S.R. had awarded Allende the Lenin Peace Prize, and
Chilean society was fragmenting into armed camps. Truck drivers went on
strike; housewives began banging pots and pans in the streets to protest the
appearance of that Communist staple -- food lines that stretched for blocks.
Trying to keep his grip on power, it was Allende himself who ordered tanks
to patrol the streets and installed military officers on what had been a civilian
cabinet. In September 1973, General Pinochet headed the coup that saved
his country. Some 3,000 people died. One of them was President Allende
-- who by some accounts killed himself with a gun that had been a gift from
Fidel Castro.
What has since rankled the radical left is that Chile under General Pinochet
was translated from a Communist beachhead to an example of successful
free-market reform. General Pinochet went on to free trade, privatize
industry and repair the damage of Castro-style government -- producing an
economy that inspired reform elsewhere on the continent and throughout the
developing world in general. Then, in 1989, General Pinochet peacefully
held elections and stepped down. Chile was again a democracy. For
anyone who had hoped to make Chile into the next Cuba, it was the final
insult.
What we have instead is a free and prospering nation. The decision in Chile
was to make peace with the past, and move on. Germany made an identical
decision, of course, about the Stasi records. The Chilean government has
protested General Pinochet's arrest. Scotland Yard now holds the General,
pending some decision from Tony Blair and "New Labor."
We hear the arrest sets new precedents for human rights. Interesting. If we
start extraditing rulers with blood on their hands, what becomes of China's
President Jiang Zemin -- part of the party machinery that crushed the 1989
Tiananmen protests by ordering the army to kill peaceful civilians in Beijing?
Is Russia's President Boris Yeltsin safe? Yes, he led Russia to democracy.
But before that he served as party boss in the Urals, presiding over things
like the manufacture of nuclear bombs and the local gulag. Chun Doo Hwan
and Roh Tae Woo, the generals who led Korea to democracy, were
arrested for earlier repression, but were pardoned by Kim Dae Jung, the
former dissident they'd repressed.
If the world begins a program of wholesale revenge against dictators who
drop their defenses, there are going to be a lot fewer dictators willing to turn
over government to their nations' democrats. All the more so if those who
cling brutally to power, like Fidel, strut about boastfully. In recent years, the
U.S. has listened repeatedly to European lectures about "extraterritoriality."
The real question the Pinochet arrest raises is whether there are any
grownups left in the chanceries of Europe. If so, it is time for them to speak
up.
interactive.wsj.com
Yes, on balance Pinochet was a great positive, but the Left hates reality. Since their ideology has failed the Left has been reduced to their essense: hate.
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