God Paints

Just as we’re getting yet another confirmation that the United States of America tortures defenseless prisoners comes the news that the entire family of one Augusto Pinochet has been rounded up and indicted for corruption.

This juxtaposition of events is too aesthetically satisfying to be entirely coincidental. Sometimes God paints with a marvelous palette.

Pinochet’s fans among the rich and privileged in Chile never really minded that he and his goons had women raped by trained dogs or threw their half-alive torture victims out of helicopters. But when it was revealed that he was also stealing THEIR money, that was too much. Now it turns out his wife, children, other relatives and top retainers were all in on it as well—not that that should surprise anyone.

During the Pinochet years any thought of accountability for the secret police terror apparatus seemed so unlikely as to be surreal given its origins in the Chilean army. The courts were corrupted and intimidated, and public opinion divided, not that it mattered much for the first decade or so.

Of course, the information was there all along, just as it is here, but the propaganda machine cranked out disinformation just clever enough to allow the regime’s supporters to pretend it wasn’t happening and the apolitical to ignore it.

But all the justifications, policy twists, spinmeistering, cover-ups, clandestine operations, secret dungeons, hiding of remains, the whole structure typical of authoritarian regimes including, yes, anti-terrorism campaigns—none of it was enough to stave off judgment day for these low-lifes. They seem invincible at first, but the moral rot at the center cannot be halted. It spreads and oozes outward bit by bit until the stench is overpowering, like the smell of cadavers dumped in a cellar.

Twenty years later the parade of former thugs and goons including their notorious chief, lower-ranking assassins and torturers, their superiors, the superiors of their superiors and at long last Pinochet himself faced the black robes, many of them going off to jail. They never believed it could happen to them. But they were wrong.

The faux shock from the Democrats at the latest revelations about torture U.S.A.-style is part of a familiar minuet as well, as if anyone not on life support could doubt what has been going on since the ‘War of Terror’ was announced. Pat Leahy and Senator Rockefeller can be shocked! shocked! to hear of secret memoranda if they like. But if this president hasn’t been trumpeting from the White House roof that he’ll ignore any laws dealing with treatment of prisoners since Day One, then I need to relearn English.

I may not live long enough to see it, but I have no doubt that if the biped race survives, the morally depraved perpetrators and enablers of the Bush regime will also face the music for their multiple crimes.

Patience.