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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (87648)	3/29/2003 1:42:07 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

on Chile/Allende: I'm quite surprised you would post an article like that. Usually, it's me bringing up ugly history like that, (and then getting slammed for "hating America".) <Allende was elected president with 36.2 percent of the vote in 1970> And Lincoln was elected in 1860 with 39.8% of the popular vote. And Gore got more votes than Bush2. After the fact, you could with equal justice claim all 3 elections were illegitimate. But, according to the rules in place in each of those times and places, the result was the WillOfThePeople, and should have been respected by any nation that supports democracy. This is the RuleOfLaw. Looking at history is often an ink-blot test; different people look at the same facts, come to different conclusions, and this tells a lot about the observer, and not much about the actual history. I read <Nixon directed CIA to prevent Allende's inauguration through a military coup>, and <during 1972 and 1973 the US increased aid to the military, a sector unenthusiastic toward the Allende government. The United States also increased training Chilean military personnel in the United States and Panama.>, and (to me) this condradicts <few would assign the United States the primary role in the destruction of that government>. Here's an Alternate History that, as an American citizen, I could have been proud of: When Allende's expropriations and move toward a Command Economy steadily produced poverty, the U.S. responded by doing nothing. I define "doing nothing" as: stopping aid, not lending them money, but also not organizing an embargo, not funding/encouraging the fascists (and I use that term in its specific meaning, not as a curse) in the military, not trying to overthrow the democratically elected government by coups. We simply stood aside, and let the Chileans figure out that Command Economies don't work. We encouraged everyone to follow the rule of law, and the principle that governments are changed only by elections. At the next election, Allende would have lost, and been replaced most likely by a center-right coalition who respected (as Allende did) the democratic traditions of the country. <Allende either was assassinated or committed suicide while defending (with an assault rifle) his socialist government against the coup d'état. Several cabinet ministers were also assassinated, the universities were put under military control, opposition parties were banned and thousands of Chileans were tortured and killed> One in a long list of examples, where Regime Change at U.S. instigation was followed by UnDemocracy. If your point was that the Force used was mainly Chilean, not a U.S. Army, that's true. Different tools are used at different times, to defend and expand the American Empire. As a rule, when proxies can be found, we hire/arm/train them to do our dirty work. With Plausible Deniability. And the work done in Chile was very dirty indeed.