[refurb]

Saying the "CIA overthrew its democracy and installed a fascist dictator" is a vast oversimplification of what actually happened and ignores the role of other international actors, not to mention the domestic actors themselves.

Like most "CIA coups", the role the CIA played in Chile is more of a "hey let's help this guy who is already planning a coup" and if you dig into the details, it raises the question if the CIA had done nothing whether the outcome would have changed at all.

[kerkeslager]

> Like most "CIA coups", the role the CIA played in Chile is more of a "hey let's help this guy who is already planning a coup" and if you dig into the details, it raises the question if the CIA had done nothing whether the outcome would have changed at all.

Helping a fascist coup is bad, even if the fascist coup didn't need your help.

[refurb]

Is it worse if the alternative is another authoritarian?

It's not a choice between democracy and a fascist (Allende was going regardless), it was a choice between a US friendly authoritarian or a USSR friendly authoritarian.

This is a nice summary of the situation in Chile at the time, the actors involved (domestic and international) and the role of the CIA.

https://www.kyleorton.com/p/myth-1973-american-coup-in-chile

To get a sense of the CIA’s role, they didn’t even think Pinochet had it in him - they had others pegged as the coup leader. They were surprised to find out it was Pinochet.

[viccis]

>Is it worse if the alternative is another authoritarian?

Comparing the two is so fatuous I can't believe it.

[xwolfi]

You know reality is independent from your morals right ?

[owebmaster]

You can't be the bad guy saying the alternative is worse and expect to be respected tho

[viccis]

Pinochet raped political prisoners with dogs. Allende is so anodyne in comparison that the comparison is a non sequitur.

[ted_bunny]

Nonstarter, you mean?

[kerkeslager]

It's really not complicated. Don't support people who murder, torture, and expel people from their homes.

"The other guy was worse," is factually pretty off base. You can pick and choose sources all you want, but the fact is that Allende was elected as democratically as any US president in the last few decades: the idea that foreign interference invalidates an election is pretty specious. And even if you want to call Allende a dictator, he's definitely a better dictator than Pinochet: he killed far, far fewer innocent people. I give zero fucks about US-friendly vs. USSR-friendly in this case: if the US friendly dictator kills hundreds of thousands of people and the USSR friendly one doesn't, the USSR friendly one is better.

Let me make this clear: if you choose capitalism over preventing mass-murder, your morality is screwed up.

And even if somehow Allende was worse (which again, is not true), that doesn't make supporting Pinochet morally right. Most 5 year olds know two wrongs don't make a right.

> To get a sense of the CIA’s role, they didn’t even think Pinochet had it in him - they had others pegged as the coup leader. They were surprised to find out it was Pinochet.

If your argument is that the CIA was incompetent, that doesn't look much better for them.

[aredox]

>https://www.kyleorton.com/p/myth-1973-american-coup-in-chile

This article is on the level of "the holocaust never happened" cherry-picked argumentations.

Just an example: it doesn't even mention the trucker's strike was directed by the CIA.

[refurb]

Love your attempt at bringing in Holocaust denial to evoke emotions.

The total funding was $7M over 2 years. The strike involved 250,000 trucker drivers, or $28 per striker.

As the source said in a NY Times article..

““The whole point of this is that covert action provides a 1 per cent impetus for something that the people want anyway,” he said.” - CIA source

https://www.nytimes.com/1974/09/20/archives/cia-is-linked-to...

[aredox]

>The total funding was $7M over 2 years. The strike involved 250,000 trucker drivers, or $28 per striker.

As if the money was for the strikers and not just their leaders...

(But even so, 28 USD in 1974 would be 180 USD today and was still a pretty sum in Argentina at the time, especially for a trucker)

Bad faith arguments doesn't help believing you have an honest argument to begin with.

[refurb]

> As if the money was for the strikers and not just their leaders...

So you're claiming the leaders were able to convince 250,000 union members to strike because... the leaders wanted it? That makes no sense.

As laid out in the article, the truckers were already upset at the government undermining their entire industry. They didn't need $28 USD to convince them to strike.

It wild how people think the CIA with a few million dollars can convince an otherwise stable democratic nation to overthrow it's leader in a coup.

As the article lays out, the CIA were mostly observers who tossed a bit of money to opposition parties. It's questionable if the CIA had any impact at all considering they weren't backing Pinochet himself, and the timing of the coup caught them by surprise. It's pretty clear they weren't very plugged in to what was happening.

[komali2]

> Is it worse if the alternative is another authoritarian?

Yes, the USA shouldn't be meddling in the domestic affairs of other countries to action its proxy cold war against a rival super power.

I acknowledge that the USA determined this was a correct course of action in order to strengthen its hegemony, and the hegemony of global capitalism, however it was still unethical and in opposition to the needs of people in the USA.

[refurb]

But if the USDR is already meddling it’s not longer purely “domestic affairs” is it?

If your take is that it’s unethical, that’s fine, but you need to consider the alternative - giving the USSR free rein to meddle in the domestic politics of the Southern hemisphere. The citizens of those countries end up living under an authoritarian anyways.

I’m not saying it isn’t an ugly business, but I’m not sure the alternative is much better.

[komali2]

I also believe it's unethical for the USSR to meddle. I don't think two wrongs make a right. Also, let's not be naive and pretend like the USA supported Pinochet out of the goodness of the CIA's heart - it was absolutely to use the country as a pawn in the country's cold war against the USSR.

[refurb]

Whether you think the USSR meddling is unethical does change that it happened.

Do you just shrug your ahoulders and do nothing?

[refurb]

Would it have been ethical for the CIA to meddle in German politics to prevent Hitler from coming to power?

[ozgrakkurt]

It is insane that this is downvoted. You have to be wrong in the head to think that a country helping a coup that clearly damaged another country is a good thing.

[m000]

White savior complex: "We know better what's best for you."

[kerkeslager]

I think it's even worse than that. The CIA simply was not concerned with the well-being of the Chilean people, seeking only to further US cold war interests no matter how many people it killed.

[aredox]

>Like most "CIA coups", the role the CIA played in Chile is more of a "hey let's help this guy who is already planning a coup"

Absolutely wrong, to the point of negationism. Amongst many things, the CIA trained South American militaries and police in torture through the School of the Americas.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2246205

If "this guy" wasn't already planning a coup, the CIA would have done it themselves anyway. Overthrowing Allende by any means was a core mission for them. The CIA was directly responsible for killing a general, René Schneider, who stood against any attempt at a coup.

And then they collaborated with Argentina's (and other South Amrican dictatorships') Operation Condor:

-mass abduction

-death squads

-torture of anyone suspected of being even vaguely leftist (electric shocks, prolonged immersion in water, cigarette burns, sexual abuse, rape, removal of teeth and fingernails, castration, and burning with boiling water, oil and acid)

-throwing them alive fron planes into the sea, hands and feet bound

-kidnapping newborns from their "leftist" mothers (subsequenly killed) to give them to conservative families

[refurb]

Sources rather than “trust me bro” would be nice.

“ In the best traditions of the CIA, catastrophe ensued. Viaux ignored the explicit U.S. instructions to cease-and-desist; two abduction efforts against Schneider, on 19 and 20 October, failed; the third attempt, on 22 October, ended with Schneider being mortally wounded (he died on 25 October);”

[aredox]

Your whole article is a giant "trust me bro" based on some unclassified testimonies coming from the most guilty, and ends with the insane and unsupported assertion that Allende was going to set up gulags (which doesn't address the fact that the CIA, before and after the coup, trained the juntas of all South America how to disappear and torture opponents on the French model of the Battle of Algiers).

[refurb]

The article provides more than 50 references to sources. It has has links to previously classified CIA documents.

Your rebuttal consists of one source completely unrelated to what happened in Chile. Well done.

And what the CIA was doing in other countries is irrelevant to whether what was article describes as happening in Chile is accurate.

If you're going to claim the article isn't true, then an actual rebuttal of the article arguments would be a helpful place to start.

[aredox]

Your article claims Allende was going to set up gulags. No reference.

Meanwhile you pretend we should ignore the CIA trained every torturer and executioner of the juntas of South America.

Pure negationism.

[refurb]

Once again you ignore the facts (with sources) and zero in on the one claim irrelevant to the discussion.

I take that as you can’t actually prove the article is wrong?