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Augusto Pinochet and the Conservative Threat to America
While some people might believe that those on the Left wing of the political spectrum pose the bigger threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people, nothing could be further from the truth. Today, the much bigger threat (Read here and here) comes instead from the Right wing or conservative side of the political spectrum, for it is the conservatives who are either indifferent to — or squarely in favor of — military rule, torture, and suspension of habeas corpus and civil liberties for suspected terrorists. And those things constitute a much more ominous threat to our freedom and well-being than anything leftists endorse. (Of course, in fairness to the truth, there are leftists who endorse violations of civil liberties — or simply look the other way — when such violations are committed by leftist officials, two notable examples being Janet Reno and Fidel Castro.)

A good example of the conservative mindset — and the threat that it currently poses to the American people — lies with the brutal military regime of Chilean strongman Gen. Augusto Pinochet, an army general who, with the support of the U.S. CIA, ousted the democratically elected president of Chile and took power in a coup d’etat in 1973. While the Bush administration often suggests that the U.S. “war on terrorism” is something new, the fact is that the “war on terrorism” was the central element of General Pinochet’s 17 years of brutal military rule in Chile.

Pinochet’s “war on terrorism” entailed all the features of the Bush administration’s “war on terrorism” — torture, murder, sex abuse, denial of civil liberties, indefinite detentions, “renditions,” and disappearances of suspected terrorists. ...

...U.S. conservatives have long justified the Pinochet regime on the ground that Allende’s socialist economic policies (and, conservatives claimed, Allende’s communist aims) were anti-freedom and threatened the economic well-being of the Chilean people. Therefore, to avoid a socialist president and possibly another communist regime in this hemisphere (Cuba, of course, being the other), conservatives claimed that it was entirely proper for the Chilean military (and the U.S. government) to disregard the democratic electoral results and violently oust Allende from office, installing a military regime that might even bring “free enterprise” policies to Chile.

Yet, for the past several decades, the American people have democratically elected people to public office who believe in the same socialist policies that Allende believed in: Social Security (which originated among pre-Hitler German socialists), Medicare, Medicaid, public (i.e., government) schooling, welfare, public works, income taxation, coercive redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor, business subsidies, foreign aid, and the like. For that matter, all these U.S. socialist programs (which U.S. conservatives today embrace) are also primary features of Fidel Castro’s socialist and communist system.

Was Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal any different in principle from Allende’s economic platform? How about Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society? Roosevelt, you’ll recall, had even confiscated and nationalized the gold holdings of the American people. As a socialist, Allende believed in the Marxian principle of coercive redistribution of wealth from rich to poor. So did Johnson — that’s what his “war on poverty” was all about.

Would the election of Roosevelt and Johnson and the adoption of their socialist policies have morally justified a military takeover of America to restore free enterprise to our country? Or would we prefer that such ideological changes be accomplished through the normal democratic processes?

As harmful and destructive as socialist economic policies are, they pale in comparison to the omnipotent power to kill, torture, and disappear people that come with military rule. Seeing your wealth taxed and given to others is bad. Seeing your economic activities regulated is bad. But when military officials have the unfettered power to take you into custody, torture you, and execute you, it’s the end of the story for freedom in that society. As Chileans under Pinochet discovered — indeed as Russians under Stalin and Germans under Hitler discovered — there is no peaceful way to change the system once you’re dead. ...

...“But I don’t need to worry about Bush, the CIA, and the Pentagon,” one might say. “I’m an American and therefore I have nothing to worry about.”

Oh? Not only is the morality of that position questionable, try telling it to Jose Padilla, an American citizen whom the Pentagon arrested on American soil and accused of terrorism. He’s been denied due process of law and trial by jury, and the U.S. military is saying that it has the unfettered military power to punish, even execute, him as a “terrorist” who was captured on the “battlefield” of the world, which includes the Chicago, Illinois, airport, where he was taken into custody. It is the same position that Pinochet took when he sent DINA agents to kill Orlando Letelier on the streets of Washington, D.C.

“But it’s only one American, and he’s some Hispanic named Jose Padilla. They’re not going to come after any of us Anglo-Americans.”

The people in the CIA and the Pentagon are not stupid. They know that if they begin rounding up hundreds or thousands of domestic “terrorists,” as Pinochet did, before having secured a favorable judicial ruling authorizing them to do so, large numbers of detainees, tortures, and executions would prejudice their chances in the courts. Thus, even while they’ve rounding up untold numbers of foreigners, they’ve limited their domestic roundups so far to one unsympathetic American arrested here in the United States — Jose Padilla.

But they know what every lawyer knows — if they can secure one favorable and definitive ruling that keeps the federal courts from interfering with their arrest and incarceration of Jose Padilla, there will then be no further obstacles to their expanding their Gulag operations at Guantanamo to include American “terrorists.” After all, the reason that the Pentagon has not sent Americans to Guantanamo is not based in law but rather in discretion — they’re being nice until they secure that favorable judicial ruling in the Padilla case. ...

...In other words, if the Pentagon secures a favorable ruling in the Padilla case, there will be nothing — repeat nothing — to prevent the Pentagon from indiscriminately arresting Americans, transporting them to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, torturing them, detaining them indefinitely, and executing them. Just as under Pinochet....