Only in America

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.