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| quote: | | 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.
| quote: | | 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:
| quote: | | 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.
| quote: | | Are you trying to insinuate that the two offset each other? |
Did I say that?
| quote: | | 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.
| quote: | | 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?
| quote: | | 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?)
| quote: | | Perhaps a thread of its own would be a more appropriate remembrance of the Chilean atrocities |
Which is what this was intended to be.....
| quote: | | rather than using it as an obvious, political propoganda tool? |
.... until you started to cast baseless aspersions on my intentions.
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