In her book about obituary writers, Marilyn Johnson wrote that notable people tend to die in clusters, as if their deaths were pre-arranged. That happened this week, when former United Nations Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick died on December 7 and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet died on December 10.

Kirkpatrick was an American, and Pinochet was from Chile, but they had a lot in common, and at this moment they have a lot to talk about as they step into the cosmic elevator which will shoot immediately to the bottom floor.

What made Kirkpatrick famous was her attempt to distinguish between authoritarian governments and totalitarian governments. Associated Press reminds us that "In a pivotal article in Commentary Magazine, she sought to draw a distinction between authoritarian governments and more extreme violators of human rights like the Soviet Union. She acknowledged that authoritarian states did not meet democratic standards but wrote that they were far preferable to totalitarian regimes."

Kirkpatrick actually argued that the United States should support the authoritarian ones. "Authoritarian regimes really typically don't have complete command economies. Authoritarian regimes typically have some kind of traditional economy with some private ownership. The Nazi regime left ownership in private hands, but the state assumed control of the economy. Control was separated from ownership but it was really a command economy because it was controlled by the state. A command economy is an attribute of a totalitarian state."

It takes a lot of guts to say that authoritarian regimes are preferable to totalitarian regimes. Who was buying this shit? Ronald Reagan was. Impressed by this pointless distinction between repressive regimes, Reagan appointed Kirkpatrick the United States ambassador to the United Nations. The Reagan presidency launched a new era of American support for totalitarian dictatorships throughout the world in the name of "anti-communism." The problem was that the guys we supported were not much better than the communists they opposed.

Wikipedia samples some of her views: "She was one of the strongest open supporters of Argentina's military dictatorship following the March 1982 Argentine invasion of the United Kingdom's Falkland Islands, which triggered the Falklands War. Kirkpatrick sympathized with Argentina's President Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, whose military regime clamped down on leftists." Also, she supported the military dictatorship in El Salvador, which killed thousands of people in one of the ugliest civil wars of the 1980's.

Kirkpatrick was a classic neo-conservative, a former Democrat who turned right and found her way into the Reagan administration. At some point in American history it became fashionable to openly support totalitarian (or, uh, authoritarian) regimes in the defense of "freedom." This kind of neo-conservatism reached profound heights in the 1970's, when the U.S. government supported Gen. Pinochet, the Chilean dictator who took power in a coup in 1973 which ousted the democratically-elected Salvador Allende. Pinochet was a vicious man who gained American support by presiding over what those in the mainstream call "economic growth." The New York Times obituary for Pinochet captures the ying-yang:

General Pinochet seized power on Sept. 11, 1973, in a bloody military coup that toppled the Marxist government of President Salvador Allende. He then led the country into an era of robust economic growth. But during his rule, more than 3,200 people were executed or disappeared, and scores of thousands more were detained and tortured or exiled.

Indeed, the New York Times obituary devotes quite a bit of space to Pinochet's economic record, while noting that Pinochet was also a repressive leader. The Times can get away with this because Pinochet was our man in Latin America. Conservatives who complain that the New York Times is too liberal cannot explain this paradox. But imagine what would happen if, upon Fidel Castro's death, the Times devoted equal time to the Cuban dictator's efficient managerial skills.

This is the essence of American foreign policy. Open your country to exploitation by U.S. investors, give us cheap labor and access to your resources, join us in the fight against Communism and we don't care how many innocent people fill the mass graves, or how many people are tortured. Funny, how the U.S. went to war against Saddam Hussein twice in 15 years supposedly because of his brutality, but successive American governments supported Pinochet.

In his landmark review of American foreign policy, The Real Terror Network, Edward S. Herman criticized American media, including the New York Times, for playing down Pinochet's human rights abuses and playing up his economic record. This excerpt on Pinochet and the torture network he promoted in South America is worth a read. Pinochet's role in promoting torture, "disappearances" and summary executions in Chile is a sorry chapter in American foreign policy, but not particularly out of the ordinary for Latin America.

Pinochet took power thanks to the Nixon administration's active involvement. When the people of Chile elected a leftist, Salvador Allende, Nixon's chief foreign policy advisor, Henry Kissenger, said: "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people." As told by Wikipedia, "Allende's increasingly bold socialist policies (partly in response to pressure from some of the more radical members within his coalition), combined with his close contacts with Cuba, heightened fears in Washington. The Nixon administration began exerting economic pressure on Chile via multilateral organizations, and continued to back Allende's opponents in the Chilean Congress. Almost immediately after his election, Nixon directed CIA and U.S. State Department officials to 'put pressure' on Allende's government."

Historians are still debating the exact role that the Nixon administration played in the Pinochet coup, which cost Allende his life. But there is no question that the Nixon administration wanted Allende out and that it supported Pinochet to the fullest even though he overthrew a democratically-elected regime. This account tells it all: "There is no evidence that the U.S. directly backed Pinochet's successful coup in 1973, but the Nixon administration was undoubtedly pleased with the outcome. . . . The U.S. did provide material support to the military regime after the coup, although it criticized them in public. A document released by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2000 titled 'CIA Activities in Chile' revealed that the CIA actively supported the military junta after the overthrow of Allende and that it made many of Pinochet's officers into paid contacts of the CIA or U.S. military, even though some were known to be involved in human rights abuses."

Pinochet held power for several decades, killing thousands who disagreed with him. The blood of these victims in Chile is on our hands. Well, not my hands. I was too young to vote for Nixon and I didn't vote for the guys who supported him later on. That blood is also on the hands of Reagan administration officials like Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who supported Pinochet even as he tortured 28,000 people (according to a Chilean Truth Commission). The American government during Pinochet's reign (1973-1990) could have done something about this reign of terror, but it did not.

We are still in denial about the American role in Pinochet's rise to power and our government's support for this monster. Books have been written about the U.S. relationship with Pinochet, and the 1973 coup still fascinates scholars. But the New York Times obituary for Pinochet says not a word about Pinochet's close relationship with successive American governments. Ignoring any context, it only says in passing that he took power with U.S. support, as if we watched helplessly over the years as Pinochet became a bloody dictator. Terrorism? We would never support terrorism!