Brutality Cannot Be Excused For the Sake of Ideology

To the editors:



Ryan McCaffrey’s December 13 op-ed, “The Wronging of a Dictator,” embodied an unforgivable flaw of the brutal dictator he eulogized, Augusto Pinochet: arrogance that attempts to excuse inhuman brutality in the name of ideological purity.

McCaffrey claims that the mainstream media’s depiction of Pinochet as a thief and murderer is overblown. The facts do not support his case. Pinochet’s thievery, perpetrated while ostensibly conducting the faithful realignment of his country’s economic institutions, resulted in a heist of $27 million stashed in bank accounts around the world. Evidently McCaffrey is also aware of the thousands of murders Pinochet perpetrated through the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, as the author himself acknowledges at least 3,000 of the deaths on Pinochet’s hands. This is his legacy, in addition to the 30,000 political prisoners he tortured. This is his legacy, in addition to the millions of Chileans taught to live in fear of their neighbors, deprived of the right to speak freely, dominated and cowed by a regime that denied their humanity. This is the legacy of a thief, a murderer, and a tyrant.

McCaffrey presumes, like Augusto Pinochet, to be the keeper of an ideological truth, a vision of pure conservatism that must be pursued at all costs. Emboldened by this presumptive omniscience, the author and Pinochet extend themselves into the arrogant defense of inhuman action to further their personal philosophies. This is the greatest sin of dictators and tyrants, because this simple construct allows for the denial of the rights and humanity of those who stand between the ruler and the achievement of his goal. Whether the despot must murder 3,000 or 11 million to achieve his ends, he will do as he sees fit, because anything is possible once the opponent has been dehumanized and debilitated.

McCaffrey’s apology demonstrates his ignorance of this basic concept of the value of life. In defending Pinochet, he claims that the tyrant stood for “the principles on which Western nations were founded,” principles based in the free market. This misapprehension is unsurprising, coming from a young conservative, but no less troubling. There are three key foundational principles we respect in this Western nation, so much so that we know them as the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” More concretely, they are the rights to life, to liberty, and to personal agency. These are the rights that Pinochet denied his countrymen throughout his rule. What was unalienable, he destroyed. What was sacred, he desecrated.

There is no small irony in McCaffrey’s comparison of President Salvador Allende to Fidel Castro, because it is Pinochet who will be remembered alongside the Cuban dictator. Throughout his apologetic treatise, McCaffrey argues that Augusto Pinochet should be absolved of his crimes because he committed them in the pursuit of his uniquely pure ideology. But like Castro, who stated explicitly his desire to be absolved by history, Pinochet will find no absolution. He will be remembered only as a tyrant, a murderer, a traitor to his country, and a betrayer of his countrymen.



LUCAS L. TATE ’05

Phoenix, Ariz.

Dec. 13



The writer lived, studied, and worked in Chile.