Tuesday, February 19, 2008
(5:30 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
A Quick Note
For those frothing at the mouth about some qualified praise of Castro, I just want to clarify: Pinochet is qualitatively worse than Castro. Yes, Castro committed some terrible crimes, and he shouldn't be excused for them. But Castro's crimes were at least goal-oriented -- in the case of Pinochet, the crimes were the goal itself.And what exactly are Pinochet's achievements even supposed to be? A stronger Chilean economy? That's supposed to balance out the fact that an entire nation's psyche was permanently scarred by a sadistic policy of random abduction and torture.
Even making the comparison seems to me to display a profound lack of moral judgment -- to the point where any pro-Pinochet sentiments in comments will be immediately deleted.
