What's up with all these libertarian intellectuals defending Pinochet? First it was George Reisman, a notorious crank and pseudo-libertarian fascist, and now Paul Craig Roberts too, as well? I have to admit I don't understand this from Roberts at all. The ex-Reaganite Treasury department apparatchik and Wall Street Journal and National Review editor/columnist has denounced the neo-cons and the Bush administration in the most scathing terms, even to the point of questioning Bush's sanity and calling him a nascent fascist tyrant for illegal imprisonments and wire tapping in his “war on terror” and yet Roberts defends Pinochet because he "only" killed 2300 Chileans? "Only “2300”, Paul? Most people who kill (directly, or by giving orders to, which is morally the same thing) are called psychopathic serial killers, not “heroes of national salvation” [sic]. I have to admit I don't understand this at all.
Unlike Reisman, who in my estimation is a clear and obvious crank, Roberts always struck me as a natural and steadily evolving voice for anti-statism and anti-authoritarianism that stayed true to his Goldwaterist views even as the GOP morphed into a big-spending, big-deficit, big-government outfit and a War Party with neo-Wilsonian imperialist designs. But now this?
And just as with Reisman, PCR ignores the embezzlement of by Pinochet of Chilean state funds into his own private bank accounts which he stashed overseas. Now come on Mr. Roberts why would a man bent on "national salvation coup"[sic] find it necessary to steal money for himself and stash it away overseas? Actions speak more accurately to true intent than speeches and decrees in my observation, and it also speaks volumes as why Roberts Reisman and other defenders of the coup never mention this inconvenient truth let alone try to explain or defend it, eh?
And the Letelier assassination by car bomb in Washington DC in 1976 is nothing more than a state sanctioned terrorist murder. Letelier was in America, not Chile, so how and why was he such a threat, this one lone powerless and near penniless exile, that Pinochet's junta found it necessary to commit a double homicide outside its own borders?
The fact that Allende only got 36% of the vote for President and that he began taking steps toward land reform and ending the sweetheart deals the international mining companies had enjoyed for so long, was hardly a good enough reason for all this bloodshed, and certainly no reason for engaging in state sanctioned terror bombings and murder, stealing money for his own personal use, and illegal imprisonments and extra-judicial executions. And the torture and rape of dissidents is, or should be, beyond the pail, regardless of political or economic problems, for civilized people.
Reisman and now Roberts, seems to believe that you can fight terror with bigger, better, and more brutal terrorism, fight disorder with chaos, and reign in an over-reaching state with a bigger and more over-reaching authoritarian state.
Roberts’s reputation has certainly taken a big nose-dive in my opinion. I'll never read his anti-Bush, anti-state, and anti-war screeds with the same enthusiasm again, if in fact I ever bother with 'em at all. It really makes me wonder about the LvMI blog and Lewrockwell.com websites, ostensibly devoted to liberty, that they seem to endorse this view of revolution and counter-revolution on their websites.
[A note on sources here. I didn’t have the time today to add the hyperlinks to this post giving my sources for some of the statements of fact. Scroll down to the posts on Pinochet for the preceding days and you’ll find ‘em there. I extend my apologies for the inconvenience.)
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