Augusto Pinochet Finally Goes To Hell
December 11th 2006 08:40
Ah yes, the sweet smell of justice.
For anyone who's Biblically inclined, God has this kind of difficult proposition for us to wrestle with with this thing called Justice. The Judaeo-Christian position on this has been tried and tested down the millennia and it would seem very hard to swallow for anyone with a secular worldview. The Old Testament prophet Habbakuk had a kick off with God about how the Chaldeans were awful and deserving of judgement, but God turned around and basically said, "Well actually I'm not too thrilled about my people, I'll judge you first". Eventually they were packed off to their enemies in captivity as punishment for their own waywardness. The upshot of it is that God, as a rule, does not punish evildoers (read, for our own benefit 'ruthless dictators') until their evil has reached its "full measure". Now this idea of evil reaching its "full measure" is a bit hard to swallow, but I'll tease it out a bit.
Everyone has their limit. Even Mother Theresa talked about the "ungrateful poor". Yet when the pendulum swings back the other way to extreme and hideous evil, Hitler generally being cited as the prime example, "full measure" includes the death of six million Jews (read God's people), millions of Kulaks (and Christians) in Russia under Stalin, the horrific annihilation of Cambodians under the Khmer Rouge and the not so distant genocide in Rwanda. Stalin died "old and full of years", as the Bible would refer to those blessed with old age, Hitler escaped any measure of human justice through his own suicide, Pol Poht finished his days somewhere out in the Cambodian jungle and Saddam Hussein outlived well over half a million of his fellow Iraqis (in the recent scrap) before he was offered an oddly shaped necktie for his sins. Justice, it must be said, is a mysterious beast.
Pinochet was pretty much your run of the mill dictator. Apart from the scale and ferocity of their genocides or their implementation of policies and laws, all dictators are basically the same. They rise to power, establish a regime and backed by the military they enforce a brutal and often secretive program of oppression, murder and indoctrination to enhance the nobility and righteousness of this year's model of Fascism or Communism or whatever you want to call it. They're all the bloody same and they literally get away with murder behind closed doors. It takes the International Community turning a lot of blind eyes to let this sort of thing fester. So who's better and who's worse? Who's the cause and who's the solution? No one. It takes two to tango, if a country is set up as a totalitarian state it can exist and function (depending on how competent the rulers are) so long as the rest of the world lets them. Whither Justice when both sides are accountable?
Everyone knows the US propped up the regimes in Latin America in the 80s, but I hate to think of when Amercia's evil will reach its full measure. Look how Robert Mugabe gets away with his own brand of lunacy and institutionalised racism in Zimbabwe. What about how South Africa got away with Apartheid for so long and still did business with Reagan's administration? This little problem of dictators or oppressive governments popping up and being propped up around the place never seems to stop. For example, some of our other contemporary equivalents are Burma (I refuse to call it Myanmar), China and even Russia under Putin. The latter is even slipping back into the Olde Wayes under its ex-KGB leader. Clearly and frighteningly. Russia's like the Wild West now, except with an AIDS crisis, endemic drug addiction and low employment rates. If you're at the top, it's sweet, if you're not ... well, you're screwed. You can't stop regress.
If anyone wants to know how dodgy Russia has become under Putin, do some research on the Kursk nuclear submarine tragedy some years back. In a TV documentary screened on SBS called Kursk - A Submarine In Troubled Waters, you will see a distraught relative of one of the Kursk's sailors physically restrained and sedated at a press conference, staged to effectively create a cover-up and appease the families of the victims. Lenin would be grinning at that one. Castro seems to be the lone poster boy for Communism these days, but he killed to get there, he took Marx and his Communist Manifesto at his word and took up arms against the owners of the means of production. He's a bit of a hero in the West for his ability to outlast several American regimes and humiliate them along the way, but where's the Justice? When will they get their due? When will the governments who allow these dictators to exist be visited with Justice too?
Why on Earth would God wait to let these people destroy millions, rape and pillage, profit from disaster, enter into slimy treaties and trade agreements and just ride roughshod over what we call decent, innocent people? Come on theologians, earn your keep? Well I come at it like this: What is the point of uprooting evil before it has flowered completely? If we have a sense of justice that includes compassion for the victims, then we might be able to accept that at 91, Pinochet, unrepentant, untried and over the hill is now being tortured forever in the place he least expected to go. The people you 'disappeared' Mr. Pinochet, will no doubt be heading to t'other place and when looked at with an eternal perspective, the Hell you visited upon them will not be revisited because Heaven is designed for people like them. Change places now Pinochet, now it's your turn to suffer. GO TO HELL you EVIL son of a bitch and STAY THERE. Make way for the rest of them.
Cheers
Michael.
For anyone who's Biblically inclined, God has this kind of difficult proposition for us to wrestle with with this thing called Justice. The Judaeo-Christian position on this has been tried and tested down the millennia and it would seem very hard to swallow for anyone with a secular worldview. The Old Testament prophet Habbakuk had a kick off with God about how the Chaldeans were awful and deserving of judgement, but God turned around and basically said, "Well actually I'm not too thrilled about my people, I'll judge you first". Eventually they were packed off to their enemies in captivity as punishment for their own waywardness. The upshot of it is that God, as a rule, does not punish evildoers (read, for our own benefit 'ruthless dictators') until their evil has reached its "full measure". Now this idea of evil reaching its "full measure" is a bit hard to swallow, but I'll tease it out a bit.
Everyone has their limit. Even Mother Theresa talked about the "ungrateful poor". Yet when the pendulum swings back the other way to extreme and hideous evil, Hitler generally being cited as the prime example, "full measure" includes the death of six million Jews (read God's people), millions of Kulaks (and Christians) in Russia under Stalin, the horrific annihilation of Cambodians under the Khmer Rouge and the not so distant genocide in Rwanda. Stalin died "old and full of years", as the Bible would refer to those blessed with old age, Hitler escaped any measure of human justice through his own suicide, Pol Poht finished his days somewhere out in the Cambodian jungle and Saddam Hussein outlived well over half a million of his fellow Iraqis (in the recent scrap) before he was offered an oddly shaped necktie for his sins. Justice, it must be said, is a mysterious beast.
Pinochet was pretty much your run of the mill dictator. Apart from the scale and ferocity of their genocides or their implementation of policies and laws, all dictators are basically the same. They rise to power, establish a regime and backed by the military they enforce a brutal and often secretive program of oppression, murder and indoctrination to enhance the nobility and righteousness of this year's model of Fascism or Communism or whatever you want to call it. They're all the bloody same and they literally get away with murder behind closed doors. It takes the International Community turning a lot of blind eyes to let this sort of thing fester. So who's better and who's worse? Who's the cause and who's the solution? No one. It takes two to tango, if a country is set up as a totalitarian state it can exist and function (depending on how competent the rulers are) so long as the rest of the world lets them. Whither Justice when both sides are accountable?
Everyone knows the US propped up the regimes in Latin America in the 80s, but I hate to think of when Amercia's evil will reach its full measure. Look how Robert Mugabe gets away with his own brand of lunacy and institutionalised racism in Zimbabwe. What about how South Africa got away with Apartheid for so long and still did business with Reagan's administration? This little problem of dictators or oppressive governments popping up and being propped up around the place never seems to stop. For example, some of our other contemporary equivalents are Burma (I refuse to call it Myanmar), China and even Russia under Putin. The latter is even slipping back into the Olde Wayes under its ex-KGB leader. Clearly and frighteningly. Russia's like the Wild West now, except with an AIDS crisis, endemic drug addiction and low employment rates. If you're at the top, it's sweet, if you're not ... well, you're screwed. You can't stop regress.
If anyone wants to know how dodgy Russia has become under Putin, do some research on the Kursk nuclear submarine tragedy some years back. In a TV documentary screened on SBS called Kursk - A Submarine In Troubled Waters, you will see a distraught relative of one of the Kursk's sailors physically restrained and sedated at a press conference, staged to effectively create a cover-up and appease the families of the victims. Lenin would be grinning at that one. Castro seems to be the lone poster boy for Communism these days, but he killed to get there, he took Marx and his Communist Manifesto at his word and took up arms against the owners of the means of production. He's a bit of a hero in the West for his ability to outlast several American regimes and humiliate them along the way, but where's the Justice? When will they get their due? When will the governments who allow these dictators to exist be visited with Justice too?
Why on Earth would God wait to let these people destroy millions, rape and pillage, profit from disaster, enter into slimy treaties and trade agreements and just ride roughshod over what we call decent, innocent people? Come on theologians, earn your keep? Well I come at it like this: What is the point of uprooting evil before it has flowered completely? If we have a sense of justice that includes compassion for the victims, then we might be able to accept that at 91, Pinochet, unrepentant, untried and over the hill is now being tortured forever in the place he least expected to go. The people you 'disappeared' Mr. Pinochet, will no doubt be heading to t'other place and when looked at with an eternal perspective, the Hell you visited upon them will not be revisited because Heaven is designed for people like them. Change places now Pinochet, now it's your turn to suffer. GO TO HELL you EVIL son of a bitch and STAY THERE. Make way for the rest of them.
Cheers
Michael.
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