The anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center overshadowed an anniversary that deserves our attention. On September 11, 1973, Augusto Pinochet led a coup in Chile. Ousting democratically-elected President Salvador Allende, Pinochet installed a totalitarian government that led to the “disappearance” of thousands of Chileans. He even went so far as to murder Chilean political enemies in Washington D.C. Yet the U.S. never opposed Pinochet and rarely even criticized him. He remained in power until March 1990.

Henry Kissinger was a strong supporter of Pinochet. When Allende was elected in 1972, Kissinger convinced Nixon to use covert action to keep Allende from taking office. Their intention was, in their words, to “make the economy scream.” When other efforts failed, the U.S. gave approval for the coup. Here’s info from the Wikipedia page on Pinochet:

While the U.S. tacitly supported the Pinochet government after the 1973 coup, there is no evidence that the US was directly involved in the coup. However, the Church Report concluded that, while the US had not directly participated in the 1973 coup, it had supported an attempted coup in 1970, and had directed money to anti-Allende elements, including possibly terrorist groups, during the period 1970–1973.

Allende’s crime was being a Marxist during the Cold War. He was not aligned with the Soviets and sought to work with Washington. But he had been democratically elected, and that was Washington’s fear: democracy. If the U.S. didn’t intervene, they feared that other Marxists would come to power, not by revolution but through elections.

I won’t go into the whole story, but it’s history that we should remember. It was a time when the U.S. opposed things that it claims to support (like open elections and human rights) and supported the very things we accuse our enemies of (totalitarianism, terrorism, corruption).

40 years. That’s not that long, but it is at the same time. Chile has done much to come to grips with its complicity in those dark times. Seems like its time for the U.S. government to do more than just declassify the documents that show its guilt.