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-- A Tale of Two Septembers

A Tale of Two Septembers

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September 11th marks the second anniversary of the aerial attack by terrorists that killed 2,700 people and profoundly changed American society. September 11th also marks the anniversary, in this case the thirtieth, of the aerial attack by terrorists that led to the murder of more than 3,000 people and profoundly changed Chilean society. [...] In June 1973 parts of the Chilean Navy attempted a coup and failed. A million people marched to the President's office and demanded arms to be able to defend the government. President Allende stood on the balcony and firmly rejected their request. To the end he was a Constitutionalist. As were several of the leaders of the Chilean military. These were arrested in the early morning of September 11th. About 8:30AM rogue military units began bombing the Chilean White House. Allende died in his office. General Augusto Pinochet, an admirer of Adolf Hitler, seized power. Pinochet's military dictatorship killed thousands, tortured tens of thousands and drove more than a million Chileans into exile. A society with a 150 year tradition of democracy and participation suffered under totalitarian rule.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16712

It's just ticked over to September 11 down here so I thought this might be worth posting. Take or leave the political slant as you wish, I just thought it presented an interesting take on two of the more important world-events since WW2.

Heh, how goes the saying, what goes around comes around?

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Heh, how goes the saying, what goes around comes around?

Are you implying that the 3,000 people who were murdered on 9/11/01 actually deserved to die???

I suppose I could bring up the topic of the cold war again whereby countless western nations took a blind eye or gave a wink to many of these actions in order to ward off growing spheres of communist influence, but I think I've already stated it a million times. Cold War politics are in a different league. It's like me bringing up British colonialism in the context of British actions today.

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1964 �1973 American-backed Overthrow of the Democratic Government of Chile Estimated civilian deaths: over 5000 people from the subsequent Pinochet terror campaign; at least 1000 people missing and presumed dead �Not a nut or bolt shall reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and all Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty.� � U.S. Ambassador to Chile three years before the US-supported coup against Chile�s elected President Allende From Killing Hope by William Blum: Salvador Allende was the worst possible scenario for a Washington imperialist, [who] could imagine only one thing worse than a Marxist in power � an elected Marxist in power, who honored the constitution, and became increasingly popular. This shook the very foundation stones on which the anti-Communist tower was built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that �communists� can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing and brainwashing the population. After sabotaging Allende�s electoral endeavor in 1964, and failing to do so in 1970, despite their best efforts, the CIA and the rest of the American foreign policy machine left no stone unturned in their attempt to destabilize the Allende government over the next three years, paying particular attention to building up military hostility. Finally, in September 1973, the military overthrew the government, Allende dying in the process. They closed the country to the outside world for a week, while the tanks rolled and the soldiers broke down doors; the stadiums rang with the sounds of execution and the bodies piled up along the streets and floated in the river; the torture centers opened for business; the subversive books were thrown into bonfires; soldiers slit the trouser legs of women, shouting that �In Chile women wear dresses!�; the poor returned to their natural state; and the men of the world in Washington and in the halls of international finance opened up their check-books. In the end, more than 3,000 had been executed, thousands more tortured or disappeared. (End of Killing Hope excerpt) In the bloody coup of September 11, 1973, Henry Kissinger and the CIA helped General Augusto Pinochet overthrow the democratically elected leftist government of President Salvador Allende. The Fascist puppet-regime of Pinochet then embarked on a 17-year terror campaign against the people of Chile, which included mass arrests and executions, death squads, torture and disappearances. Many of the victims were fingered as �radicals� by lists provided by the CIA. Santiago�s national stadium was used as a mass execution site. Robert Saldias, the first army officer to come forward publicly without concealing his identity, said prisoners entering the stadium were identified by yellow, black, and red discs. �Whoever received a red disc had no chance,� Saldias said. Many of the professional torturers and assassins in the Chilean military (and in every other Fascist country of Central and South America) were trained at the �School of the Americas�, in Fort Benning, Georgia. Under Pinochet, Chile also participated in �Operation Condor,� a joint collaboration between the U.S.-backed dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil to hunt down and murder exiled opponents of those regimes. Successful hits included the 1976 car-bomb explosion in Washington, DC, which killed Allende�s exiled foreign minister Orlando Letelier, and his aide, American Ronnie Moffitt. �I don�t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.� � Henry Kissinger referring to Chilean voters (after a few drinks, perhaps?) 1970 See also: Remember Chile: General Pinochet and human rights abuses http://www.remember-chile.org.uk/

more:

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". . . and honoring the victims" James Carroll The Boston Globe, 9/9/2003 http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/2..._victims+.shtml THE COINCIDENCE of dates is precious to human beings because it creates the impression that underlying the chaos of normality is a structure of order. The passage of time is not a mere matter of chance, and even things that seem unrelated are tied together, if not by links of causality, by meaning. In casting an eye back across the terrain of the past, a human being with a feeling for history looks for the juxtaposition of seemingly disparate events that will illuminate the hidden connection that alone explains their full significance. Sept. 11 will live in the American memory. But as what? ''Memory,'' the novelist Paul Auster says, is ''the space in which a thing happens for the second time.'' On Sept. 11, 1941, at almost exactly the moment in which the Pentagon would be hit by American Airlines Flight 77 60 years later, ground was broken for that building in a solemn ceremony. On Sept. 11, 1944, Allied soldiers arrived at the German border, sealing Hitler's fate. But also on Sept. 11, 1944, as I read in W.G. Sebald's ''On the Natural History of Destruction,'' distant Germans watched the night sky above the city of Darmstadt: ''The light grew and grew until the whole of the southern sky was glowing, shot through with red and yellow.'' It was a night of Allied terror bombing. On Sept. 11, 1973, terrorists launched the violent overthrow of a democratic government in Chile. In that case, the result was the murder of the head of state, Salvador Allende, and the terrorists were sponsored not by an ad hoc nihilist group, but by the United States. Sept. 11 as an anniversary of savage violence pushes the mind also to Sept. 11, 1945, the date that marks Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson's post-Hiroshima proposal to President Truman that the United States immediately share the secrets of the atomic bomb with the Soviet Union in order to head off an arms race ''of a rather desparate character,'' as Stimson put it. ''The chief lesson I have learned in a long life,'' Stimson said, anticipating his critics, ''is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him.'' As I noted a year ago, Stimson's proposal marks the great American road not taken. On Sept. 11, 1906, more than 3,000 men of Indian origin gathered at the Empire Theater in Johannesburg, South Africa, to denounce the just-passed Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance -- a new set of racial laws condemning them to second-class citizenship. As I learned from Jonathan Schell's recent masterwork ''The Unconquerable World,'' one of those who stood and took a God-invoking oath against obedience to such laws was Mohandas K. Gandhi. He recognized this joint commitment to a radically individual act -- ''a new principle,'' he later said of that day, ''had come into being'' -- as the generating spark of Satyagraha, the ''truth force.'' Gandhi said, ''The foundation of the first civil resistance under the then-known name of passive resistance was laid by accident . . . I had gone to the meeting with no preconceived resolution. It was born at the meeting. The creation is still expanding.'' What began on that Sept. 11 would generate the great counter-story of nonviolence running through the most violent century in history. At the dawn of the new century, what story do we tell? Does Sept. 11 represent only the experience of American grief, victimhood, justification for revenge? Does Sept. 11 live on only as the engine driving America's shocking new belligerence? Or, in recalling the nobility of those selfless New Yorkers and Pentagon workers who reentered the wounded buildings, who remained behind to usher others out, or who simply maintained calm as worlds collapsed around them -- can we carry this date forward as an image of the possibility of public love? It may help to see Sept. 11, 2001, in the context of those other days in other years. How, when the ground was first broken for the Pentagon, its builders assumed one day it would be a hospital. How the leader of America's greatest war sought in its aftermath to end war forever. How knowing that Washington, too, can sponsor terrorism must lead to humility. How the age-old dream of nonviolence became actual. Ordinarily, we think of such incidents in isolation, but there can be an archeology of the calendar that uncovers harmonies in the layers of time. Sept. 11 is an anniversary of the future, a day enshrining the worst of human impulses -- and the best. A day, therefore, that puts the choice before us. How are we going to live now? We are on the earth for the briefest of interludes. Thinking in particular of all those who died in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, let us honor them by building the earth, instead of destroying it. Let us make peace, instead of war. James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.

My parents lived most of their yonger years and saw everything that happened that Day Pinochet took over. I lived under Pinochet dictatorship until I was about 9.

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Originally posted by Shakka Are you implying that the 3,000 people who were murdered on 9/11/01 actually deserved to die???

Definitely not. what I am implying is that if a country supports extremist groups worldwide, it shouldn't be surprised when it finds itself in a hostile world surrounded with fanatics of all sorts.

There are a number of days on the calendar which seem to be magnets of a sort for major events happening. Of course, there are only 365.25 days in a year and there have been a lot of major events in history.

I did not know about the Pinochet Sept 11th connection. If you believe some of the wild conspiracy theories about the CIA and the 2001 attacks you could postulate that there is some special signifigance with that date at the CIA.

MrS

"The numbers 3, 7, 9, 11, 13, 33 , 39 have special meaning to the ELITE Freemasons"

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Originally posted by rizen "The numbers 3, 7, 9, 11, 13, 33 , 39 have special meaning to the ELITE Freemasons"

Oh please. What do you really know about the Freemasons? The words "Go fuck a goat" is 11 letters. Un oh...

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Originally posted by Shakka Oh please. What do you really know about the Freemasons? The words "Go fuck a goat" is 11 letters. Un oh...

i never said i knew, i just quoted and linked it

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Originally posted by occrider I suppose I could bring up the topic of the cold war again whereby countless western nations took a blind eye or gave a wink to many of these actions in order to ward off growing spheres of communist influence, but I think I've already stated it a million times. Cold War politics are in a different league. It's like me bringing up British colonialism in the context of British actions today.

So what exactly are you trying to say? That because the US government acted within a specific political context (namely the cold war) that we cannot condemn them for their actions? If we can "overlook" the actions committed by the US government because they were made within the context of the perceived threat of Marxist communism, can we "overlook" the actions committed by the 19 men who hijacked 4 commercial ariliners in 2001, merely because they were made within the context of perceived US cultural hegemony?

Regardless of the external situation (political or otherwise), man is still responsible for his actions. If you cannot view this event for what it is - namely as the removal of a democratically elected president in favour of one of the most brutal dictators this century - and condemn the US government's involvement in it, purely because it can be said that they were acting within the specific political context of a paranoid ideology, then we clearly have a very different moral outlook.

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Originally posted by Renegade So what exactly are you trying to say? That because the US government acted within a specific political context (namely the cold war) that we cannot condemn them for their actions? If we can "overlook" the actions committed by the US government because they were made within the context of the perceived threat of Marxist communism, can we "overlook" the actions committed by the 19 men who hijacked 4 commercial ariliners in 2001, merely because they were made within the context of perceived US cultural hegemony? Regardless of the external situation (political or otherwise), man is still responsible for his actions. If you cannot view this event for what it is - namely as the removal of a democratically elected president in favour of one of the most brutal dictators this century - and condemn the US government's involvement in it, purely because it can be said that they were acting within the specific political context of a paranoid ideology, then we clearly have a very different moral outlook.

I'm not saying that. Perhaps you should read my other posting in Teisto14's thread regarding the CIA's actions throughout history. If I recall, I said I condemned their actions. However, each case must be examined taking into account the historical context within which they happened. Does a CIA plot to install a military dictator in Chile today = a CIA plot to install a military dictator in the 70's at the height of the Cold War? Of course not. Do you know WHY the CIA was so adament in warding off a Soviet sphere of influence in S. America??? Simple, we learned our lesson with Cuba. A Soviet South America equals potential Soviet SS-19s and SS-11s within the 30 minute warning zone of ballistic missile launch which equals an absense of MAD deterrance. Does this mean that what the CIA did should not be condemned? NO. Does this provide us with a greater understanding of why the CIA did what it did? YES.

Now, that being said, I'm not quite understanding what the point of the side by side comparison of the two events are. Are you trying to insinuate that the two offset each other? Should americans not be horrified of what happened because of past transgressions committed by the CIA? Oh well, we had it coming and in the end we deserved it? Why are you trying to saddle two completely different events with virtually 0 in common, except for innocent people being killed, that were carried out in two completely different time periods? Perhaps a thread of its own would be a more appropriate remembrance of the Chilean atrocities rather than using it as an obvious, political propoganda tool?

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However, each case must be examined taking into account the historical context within which they happened.

Absolutely. Every action commited by every human being over the course of human civilization has been made within a "political context" and it would be senseless to ignore this in an attempt to understand the reasoning behind the said actions. So don't get me wrong: I understand the reasoning behind the decision to back the coup (given the political context) but - as I said - irrespective of the policital context, bodies such as the CIA and that particular US administration must still be held responsible for what was, at base, an immoral set of decisions. One can find reasons for the backing of Piochet's rise to power, but these reasons do not in any constitute an "excuse" for their grave subversion of moral principles that, even in the 1970s, were widely prevelant and accepted.

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Does a CIA plot to install a military dictator in Chile today = a CIA plot to install a military dictator in the 70's at the height of the Cold War?

If you were to presume that the military dictator were installed to combat "terrorism" instead of "communism", then yes, many parallels can be drawn between the ideologies of the respective administrations (I'll get into this later on). Besides, even though every action is committed within a certain political context, you can't overplay the influence that this context may have on a deliberately committed action. Historical deconstructionists, for instance, reject the notion that history is a series of "periods" and that beneath each period there is a time-line of historical continuity that can be used to explain "why" events happened. So the historical deconstructionist would reject placing undue importance on the historical conext within with the "Pinochet Coup" event took place, and instead view the event as merely one of millions of "breaks" in continuity (this is called historical "discontinuity") as, in essence, every event such as this one marks a departure from "prior history" and instead creates its own. That is, that each event necessarily changes the perceived "direction" of history and thus, even though it may have taken place within a given context at the end of some given history, the event necessarily departs from history at the point at which it occurs. The old historical ideology is destroyed and a new one is created every time an event occurs - hence the term "discontinuity".

This had a point originally.... ah yes:

Therefore, we cannot explain the Pinochet Coup based on its "historical" context, because the second it occurred it immediately departed from it. As I said earlier, events are necessarily influenced by political and historical contexts, but this is not to say that events can necessarily be explained or by such contexts. The Cold War is a useful term to employ to group together events within a similar period but, if you agree with this theory of "discontinuity", we cannot invoke the Cold War as an existent, metaphysical "thing" that influenced events such as this one, or that indeed influenced anything at all. Regardless of the political context, the Cold War (as with any other historical period) can be defined as no more than a series of events that can be bound together in some way by "traditional" historical analysis. It would be an causal error, though, to presume that the nature of the Cold War can be used to explain the nature of these events, as it is actually the nature of these discontinuous events that define and explain what we now call the "Cold War". So the Cold War didn't give rise to specific events, these specific events - and whatever binds them together - were grouped together later on by historians to actually form the ideological context of the "Cold War".

So, um, yeah. That's what flicking through the works of Focault can do to you.

Back on topic:

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Now, that being said, I'm not quite understanding what the point of the side by side comparison of the two events are.

Purely that two nations are bound together by the date of (arguably) their most significant disasters in recent history and that - if there is, indeed, a moral tangent to it - that only one is presently being remembered world-wide.

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Are you trying to insinuate that the two offset each other?

Did I say that?

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Should americans not be horrified of what happened because of past transgressions committed by the CIA?

No, merely that they (and everyone else world-wide) should be aware of what happened in Chile. I posted the article as a piece of oft-neglected history, not as just yet another opportunity to berate Americans for being "evil". In fact, I didn't even mention America in my OP (including in the quote from the article I gave) and it was only after your "Cold War Contextuality" apologetics that the US came into the argument at all.

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Oh well, we had it coming and in the end we deserved it?

Have I ever said anything like that in the history of this forum, let alone in this post?

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Why are you trying to saddle two completely different events with virtually 0 in common, except for innocent people being killed, that were carried out in two completely different time periods?

Like I said, only because the two national disasters happen to share a common anniversary.

(Though, as I alluded to before, a comparision could be made between the fact that in both cases, the US felt it could eliminate an ideology (communism/terrorism) by toppling foreign governments and that civilian casualites from such an action were merely an unfortunate consequence of the need to protect the notions of "freedom" and "liberty". Seemingly, though, little has been learnt from these cold war expeditions - what's that they say about history being cyclical?)

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Perhaps a thread of its own would be a more appropriate remembrance of the Chilean atrocities

Which is what this was intended to be.....

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rather than using it as an obvious, political propoganda tool?

.... until you started to cast baseless aspersions on my intentions.

Im from Chile.. and I guess I should know about this.. I lived there. Anyways. Allende was a communist, yes, very good friends with Cuba, then CIA set up everything for Pinochet. Pinochet got into power.. and remained there for decades, killing inoccent people, people not even communists.. it was sick to look and see how they killed dogs just for fun.. they were cold blooded. And the reason why chileans can be mad at the US is because the US just left him there.. and didnt do sh*t to come or see what was going on, or at least place the . on the I. Nothing, so yes, it was a good thing taking allende out, but leaving Pinochet there was even worst then heaving Allende.

Where's Cyris King when ya need him?

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Originally posted by TheDemon Where's Cyris King when ya need him?

Hanging out with Melech_Mike?

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Originally posted by occrider Hanging out with Melech_Mike?

We would know it if they were hanging out.

More posts to sift through.



MrS

Oh by the way, I haven't forgotten you Renegade. I disagree with your application of historical discontinutity (or rather I would like it refined, of which I will comment on later), but I admit that perhaps I misinterpreted the intent of your post. In retrospect you were quite neutral and I think I took the underlying implications I percieved from the article and misconstrued that as being your intentions. Quite baseless you are correct

But I will comment or seek clarification on your statement of historical deconstructionists when I have time (and motivation).

If you're going to question my application of historical discontinuity then at least give me a couple of months so I can learn about it myself.

The bit I wrote on that subject was more for me than anyone else. I bought Focault's "Archaeology of Knowledge" a couple of months ago but only got around to flicking through it a few days ago (I had a couple of free hours before work, so I sat out on the balcony with it) and that part of my post was more to solidify what I'd learnt on the subject rather than to educate anyone else. What I said may be correct, but I certainly wouldn't be suprised if it wasn't. :-/

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Originally posted by occrider Hanging out with Melech_Mike?

Oh we wish man.

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Originally posted by Renegade and that part of my post was more to solidify what I'd learnt on the subject rather than to educate anyone else.

I do this all the time

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