On Friday, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial titled “After the Coup in Cairo.” Its final paragraph contained these words:
Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, who took power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy.
Presumably, this means that those who speak for the Wall Street Journal—the editorial was unsigned—think Egyptians will be fortunate if the new ruling generals preside over a long period of terror.*
Only in America can the editorial board of a major newspaper blithely make such a suggestion.
*That period—which included political repression, mass incarcerations, thousands of political prisoners who were killed, and widespread human rights violations—lasted 17 years in the case of Pinochet.
More incredible is they give credit to Pinochet for “midwifing” a transition to Democracy? He ended the then longest democratic governmental history of any Latin American country at that time to impost his 17 year dictatorship!
[…] Sheldon on Only in America […]