Letters: How Chile Was Saved

Reading José Piñera's essay on Chile ["How Chile Was Saved," Navigator, September 2003], I was surprised to find that Piñera declined to address what, from an Objectivist perspective, is arguably the most obvious question to ask about the history he describes: Was collaboration with the Pinochet regime consistent with the Objectivist principle of sanction—itself an essential part of the Objectivist theory of justice? The principle of sanction forbids giving existential aid to evil persons or regimes. Surely, murder is a paradigm evil, and Piñera admits, if somewhat obliquely, that the Pinochet regime was guilty of it. The numbers in this context are irrelevant: A regime willing to commit murder to achieve its ends is evil, whether it murders 200, 2000, or 2,000,000 innocent people. If this is right, how then could collaboration with Pinochet have been consistent with the Objectivist theory of justice?

Irfan Khawaja

José Piñera responds:

Irfan Khawaja is mistaken. I did not say, neither obliquely nor linearly, that the Pinochet regime was guilty of murder. That is a distortion of what I wrote, as anyone who rereads my article will attest.

Let me reiterate the points I made in "How Chile Was Saved." First, the Chamber of Deputies accused President Allende of systematically violating the Constitution in order to establish a communist dictatorship. Second, General Pinochet and the armed forces responded to this call by forcibly removing Allende. (As the Declaration of Independence says: "When a long train of abuses and usurpations....evinces a design to reduce them [the people] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw of such government.") Third, since someone must govern after the deposition off a tyrant, freedom-loving citizens should help the revolutionary government in its mission to restore liberty and democracy, as indeed was successfully done in Chile. Fourth, the leftist terrorists that were operating in Chile opposed the Pinochet government with violence (they even tried to kill him in an ambush), and in the ensuing fight approximately two thousand people died during a sixteen-year period. Since that number is very small when compared to other civil wars, it suggests that Chile's aborted civil war was not marked by a "policy" of human-rights violations on the side of the victors. Fifth, some individuals did commit human-rights violations that are unacceptable even in wartime; they should be (and are being) punished. Lastly, the collaborating "Chicago Boys" saved Chile by accomplishing a free-market revolution and fighting to restore limited democracy and the rule of law.

Of course, Khawaja is free to join Marshall Petain and Alexander Kerensky in espousing an approach that entails not fighting evil with force or not helping afterwards those who did—as long as he accepts the consequences. I prefer Ayn Rand's position on the matter: "Force might, and should, be answered by force; under no circumstances, for no reason, for no holy cause or purpose or goal, might it be initiated" (Barbara Branden, The Passion of Ayn Rand.). I believe that helping a liberating regime is not only consistent with the moral code of honest, grown-up people, I believe "it is their right, it is their duty."