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Wednesday, December 13, 2006
How Pinochet Saved British Lives
Robin Harris, the former head of Margaret Thatcher's policy unit has a fascinating ARTICLE in today's Telegraph detailing how General Pinochet supported Britain during the Falklands War. Click HERE.
24 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Oh that's ok then - because Chilean lives don't particularly matter...
Why stop there? Stalin helped us win the Second World War and Saddam was a great supporter of our arms industry. Such a shame people want to focus on the negatives all the time...
This attitude is exactly why terrorism exists. The ridiculous belief that Western lives matter more than anyone else's lives. It's a horrific belief, verging on evil.
Strange lack of comment from you Iain - where do you stand on this issue? Does the fact that Pinochet wanted to cause trouble for Galtieri excuse him killing thousands of Chileans?
On the contrary, Margaret Thatcher has much to be ashamed of.
Pinochet was a monster responsible for horrendous crimes (3,000 murdered according to the Rettig Report) and nearly 30,000 receiving state pensions in compensation for illegal detention and torture following the Valech Report.
And she knew, or had no excuse for not knowing: the Rettig Report had been published a full seven years before she shared that cup of tea.
But then none of them were 'one of us' and anyway Castro killed more so that's alright then.
Torture, Murder, Disappearances? Never mind, he supported our brave boys in the Falklands.
Robin Harris is an arse. "Pinochet left behind a stable democracy" as his major achievement? Just like the democracy that had elected Allende beforehand, and Harris' hero overthrew.
Yes - its a good article - as can be told by the irate leftie comments building up.
The most telling point was to compare Pinochet’s 3000 disappeared with Castro's 15,000 put up against a wall and shot.
Yet does anyone berate Ken Livingston for dropping of in Havana to say hi ?
What I really miss about Mrs T being in power is the knowledge that a leader would stick to their principles- whatever the weather. That’s certainly not true of Blair and the jury is, I'm afraid, out on Mr Cameron.
PS Your now getting your comments cut into Newsnight without any introduction - you have arrived ! In contrast Jeremy Paxman looks like he wants to leave. ( Invite him on 18 Doughty Street - and get Tim to buy him a pint or two before you get him on camera.)
The article implies that Pinochet did whatever he did because he was friendly to Britain ("request for help", "secret collaboration") and that we owe him a debt of honour. The reality, as the article later explains, was that Pinochet was unpopular and Chile was militarily weaker than Argentina and that if the Falklands War had not happened, Chile was likely to be threatened by Argentina.
The arrangement was a question of joint benefit for which we should be grateful, but the idea that we owe Pinochet a debt of honour or that we should regard his other acts less critically because of the mutual assistance is questionable.
I love this. Whenever anyone points out that Pinochet was repulsive, apologists mutter about Castro. Well believe it or not, lots of us (I'm a Lib Dem) think that he's despicable as well!
What about Mandela and his ANC and the attrocities they committed?
Further, it is arguable that will Pinochet killed as many has 3,000 - he potentially stopped far more deaths in the long run, both through economic reforms and removing the potential of a r ise of a Marxist/Communist regime in Chile. Perhaps the ends justified the means?
yes iain, and he tortured british nationals - doesn't that matter any more? so long as maggie was given a helping hand (in a way she should have prevented anyway, by not cutting the south atlantic fleet) the torturing dictator has to be given a free pass. disgusting.
Mark Williams is right it is a case of "my enemies enemy" rather than friendship. Galtieri was looking for somebody to fight to unite his people & had already seriously threatened Chile over some islands in terra del Fuego.
The initial difference between Pinochet & Castro was that the former was put in power by the CIA & that he overthrew a democracy (a democracy that had elected Marxists is still a democracy). The later difference is that a country under constant threat of terrorism & attack from larger neighbours cannot afford the freedoms which even here arebeing lessened in light of our comparatively minor terrorist threat.
On the other hand Pinochet's 3,500 pales into insignificance compared to our 250,000 in Croatia, 6,000 in Kosovo & 100,000 in Iraq.
"No one except Margaret Thatcher would have risked sending the British fleet 8,000 miles into the South Atlantic to recapture the Falklands in 1982."
We cannot know this; but we can know that no one else would have had to, of course: no one else would have invited the Argentines into the Falklands (which was what she did) in the first place.
And those Islands were only recaptured because the Royal Navy (which she had starved anyway) staged a sort of temporary coup and decided to behave as if this hopelessly out-of-her-depth Prime Minister did not exist.
Man In A Shed, what "principles"? The same "principles" that gave us the Single European Act, the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Exchange Rate Mechanism, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, and the replacement of O-levels with GCSEs?
Or the "principles" that gave us Political Correctness (that most 1980s of phenomena), the subjection of local decision-making to previously unimaginable levels of central 'dirigisme', abortion up to birth, massively increased welfare dependency, and general moral chaos?
Or such "principles" as the misdefinition of liberty as the "freedom" to behave however one pleases, the maxim that "there is no such thing as society" (in which case, there can be so such thing as the society that is the family, or the society that is the nation), and the destruction of paternal authority in (as it happened, working-class) families and communities (deliberately effected by means of destroying that authority's economic basis, i.e., the stockades of working-class male employment)?
Even the attack on the unions cannot have had any basis in monetarist "principles", since the unions never controlled the money supply. Nor were the economic "principles" ostensibly professed ever extended to, say, the Post Office (thank God, but then I'm no Thatcherite).
For good or ill, there were still enormous public subsidies fee-paying schools, to nuclear power, to agriculture, and to mortgage-holders, of which, without those subsidies, the last would hardly have existed, while the first three (then as now) would not have existed at all.
And so one could go on, and on, and on. Even the Soviet Union would have collapsed anyway (as predicted by Enoch Powell, among others), whereas Pinochet and apartheid South Africa were actually helped by her support. So, where she could make a difference, she did. And what a difference she made.
There is something seriously wrong with the majority of the people who are posting here. Those who argue they would happily see 3000+ 'commies' die disgust me. Those who defend the Falklands should piss off there to the land they love so much - now that would make the world a better place.
"Reclaim" is hardly the word. Castro is bad, but what he replaced was, er, "no better"...
Of course, America which since the early nineteenth century has never really accepted the existence of any Cuba independent of the United States (we'd better get used to thsi attitude where Britain is concerned), and which even has a sovereign base on Cuba, could simply have done this "reclaiming", without the slightest difficulty, at any point since the fall of the Soviet Union.
She has consciously chosen not to do so, so that Presidential candidates can continue to make empty promises to the Cuban "exiles" (economic migrants) in Florida and a couple of other key battlegrounds. Don't expect this to change any time soon, and certainly not when one Castro merely gives way to another.
24 comments:
Oh that's ok then - because Chilean lives don't particularly matter...
Why stop there? Stalin helped us win the Second World War and Saddam was a great supporter of our arms industry. Such a shame people want to focus on the negatives all the time...
This attitude is exactly why terrorism exists. The ridiculous belief that Western lives matter more than anyone else's lives. It's a horrific belief, verging on evil.
Strange lack of comment from you Iain - where do you stand on this issue? Does the fact that Pinochet wanted to cause trouble for Galtieri excuse him killing thousands of Chileans?
Hitler did the sam Iain by not slaughtering British troops at Dunkirk, which he could easily have done.
It still makes him a murderer and a tyrant who would have hanged.
Doom.
On the contrary, Margaret Thatcher has much to be ashamed of.
Pinochet was a monster responsible for horrendous crimes (3,000 murdered according to the Rettig Report) and nearly 30,000 receiving state pensions in compensation for illegal detention and torture following the Valech Report.
And she knew, or had no excuse for not knowing: the Rettig Report had been published a full seven years before she shared that cup of tea.
But then none of them were 'one of us' and anyway Castro killed more so that's alright then.
That article disgusts me.
Torture, Murder, Disappearances? Never mind, he supported our brave boys in the Falklands.
Robin Harris is an arse. "Pinochet left behind a stable democracy" as his major achievement? Just like the democracy that had elected Allende beforehand, and Harris' hero overthrew.
He saved a lot of them as well. Read the article.
Yes - its a good article - as can be told by the irate leftie comments building up.
The most telling point was to compare Pinochet’s 3000 disappeared with Castro's 15,000 put up against a wall and shot.
Yet does anyone berate Ken Livingston for dropping of in Havana to say hi ?
What I really miss about Mrs T being in power is the knowledge that a leader would stick to their principles- whatever the weather. That’s certainly not true of Blair and the jury is, I'm afraid, out on Mr Cameron.
PS Your now getting your comments cut into Newsnight without any introduction - you have arrived ! In contrast Jeremy Paxman looks like he wants to leave. ( Invite him on 18 Doughty Street - and get Tim to buy him a pint or two before you get him on camera.)
The article implies that Pinochet did whatever he did because he was friendly to Britain ("request for help", "secret collaboration") and that we owe him a debt of honour. The reality, as the article later explains, was that Pinochet was unpopular and Chile was militarily weaker than Argentina and that if the Falklands War had not happened, Chile was likely to be threatened by Argentina.
The arrangement was a question of joint benefit for which we should be grateful, but the idea that we owe Pinochet a debt of honour or that we should regard his other acts less critically because of the mutual assistance is questionable.
I love this. Whenever anyone points out that Pinochet was repulsive, apologists mutter about Castro. Well believe it or not, lots of us (I'm a Lib Dem) think that he's despicable as well!
Don't consider myself a Leftie, but people like Pinochet and Mugabe are beyond the pale.
Typical Lib Dem: You're both nasty. We're SO above it all!
What about Mandela and his ANC and the attrocities they committed?
Further, it is arguable that will Pinochet killed as many has 3,000 - he potentially stopped far more deaths in the long run, both through economic reforms and removing the potential of a r ise of a Marxist/Communist regime in Chile. Perhaps the ends justified the means?
Sambo - yeah, how awful to condemn right wing and left wing murderers. What smugness!
You idiot.
yes iain, and he tortured british nationals - doesn't that matter any more? so long as maggie was given a helping hand (in a way she should have prevented anyway, by not cutting the south atlantic fleet) the torturing dictator has to be given a free pass. disgusting.
Why do people seem to regard 3000 dead commies as a bad thing?
Mark Williams is right it is a case of "my enemies enemy" rather than friendship. Galtieri was looking for somebody to fight to unite his people & had already seriously threatened Chile over some islands in terra del Fuego.
The initial difference between Pinochet & Castro was that the former was put in power by the CIA & that he overthrew a democracy (a democracy that had elected Marxists is still a democracy). The later difference is that a country under constant threat of terrorism & attack from larger neighbours cannot afford the freedoms which even here arebeing lessened in light of our comparatively minor terrorist threat.
On the other hand Pinochet's 3,500 pales into insignificance compared to our 250,000 in Croatia, 6,000 in Kosovo & 100,000 in Iraq.
Geoff - you speak of 'commies' as though they are evil monsters with two heads.
John Reid was a communist.
Alexei Sayle was a communist.
Would you happily see them dead ?
Anonymous ref:commies
Yep. Add Castro to the list too. And Polly Toynbee.
Happily? Oh yes. The world would be a better place.
"No one except Margaret Thatcher would have risked sending the British fleet 8,000 miles into the South Atlantic to recapture the Falklands in 1982."
We cannot know this; but we can know that no one else would have had to, of course: no one else would have invited the Argentines into the Falklands (which was what she did) in the first place.
And those Islands were only recaptured because the Royal Navy (which she had starved anyway) staged a sort of temporary coup and decided to behave as if this hopelessly out-of-her-depth Prime Minister did not exist.
Man In A Shed, what "principles"? The same "principles" that gave us the Single European Act, the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Exchange Rate Mechanism, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, and the replacement of O-levels with GCSEs?
Or the "principles" that gave us Political Correctness (that most 1980s of phenomena), the subjection of local decision-making to previously unimaginable levels of central 'dirigisme', abortion up to birth, massively increased welfare dependency, and general moral chaos?
Or such "principles" as the misdefinition of liberty as the "freedom" to behave however one pleases, the maxim that "there is no such thing as society" (in which case, there can be so such thing as the society that is the family, or the society that is the nation), and the destruction of paternal authority in (as it happened, working-class) families and communities (deliberately effected by means of destroying that authority's economic basis, i.e., the stockades of working-class male employment)?
Even the attack on the unions cannot have had any basis in monetarist "principles", since the unions never controlled the money supply. Nor were the economic "principles" ostensibly professed ever extended to, say, the Post Office (thank God, but then I'm no Thatcherite).
For good or ill, there were still enormous public subsidies fee-paying schools, to nuclear power, to agriculture, and to mortgage-holders, of which, without those subsidies, the last would hardly have existed, while the first three (then as now) would not have existed at all.
And so one could go on, and on, and on. Even the Soviet Union would have collapsed anyway (as predicted by Enoch Powell, among others), whereas Pinochet and apartheid South Africa were actually helped by her support. So, where she could make a difference, she did. And what a difference she made.
Get over her!
There is something seriously wrong with the majority of the people who are posting here. Those who argue they would happily see 3000+ 'commies' die disgust me. Those who defend the Falklands should piss off there to the land they love so much - now that would make the world a better place.
Anonymous, you can post your nonsense because you live in a free (non-commie) country.
To preserve the wonderful benefit of that freedom I would certainly be the first with my finger on a trigger in our defence.
Go away and live in Cuba. I'll see you in my gunsights when we reclaim that island in the name of liberty.
"Reclaim" is hardly the word. Castro is bad, but what he replaced was, er, "no better"...
Of course, America which since the early nineteenth century has never really accepted the existence of any Cuba independent of the United States (we'd better get used to thsi attitude where Britain is concerned), and which even has a sovereign base on Cuba, could simply have done this "reclaiming", without the slightest difficulty, at any point since the fall of the Soviet Union.
She has consciously chosen not to do so, so that Presidential candidates can continue to make empty promises to the Cuban "exiles" (economic migrants) in Florida and a couple of other key battlegrounds. Don't expect this to change any time soon, and certainly not when one Castro merely gives way to another.
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