_______________DICTATOR OF CHOICE BY DAVID HOROWITZ (11/23/98)

Just when I thought he couldn't get any more annoying or offensive, David Horowitz has done it again. What was his motivation in writing the Pinochet/Castro article? To make a clear, rational point? Obviously not. Every single article by him is overtly confrontational, a thinly disguised attempt to bait clear-thinking readers into the most inane of arguments. There is no clearer sign of ideological weakness than having to write a shock column just to get people to talk about your belief system. Comparing Pinochet and Castro is not only faulty logic, it is sensationalistic and ethically reprehensible. Since you obviously cannot grasp the basic realities of this situation, let me spell it out for you: Pinochet's "economic miracle" involved basically the selling of his country to international corporate interests (mostly U.S.), a move that enabled the upper 2 percent of Chile's population to get enormously wealthy and left the rest of the country in abject poverty. A "miracle" on paper only. Castro's government has been hampered by massive U.S. trade restrictions from Day One. If Cuba looks starved, poor and dirty, blame our foreign policy, not Castro's inept leadership. Your most damning piece of evidence? That some gay guy was arrested 17 times in Cuba. Like awful things don't happen to gays here and throughout the world too. I'm not saying Castro is a saint, but to imply that his government has been more harmful to his people than the reign of terror, torture, murder and treason that Pinochet brought is beyond ludicrous. -- Mike Garringer Portland, Ore. This article is a travesty -- the only choices are not dictatorships of the left or right. Life in Chile under Pinochet was as repressive as life in Cuba under Castro. And one was more likely to be murdered by the state in Chile than in Cuba. The author was apparently a confused "progressive" when he was young and he apparently is an equally confused "conservative" now that he is doddering and somewhat senile. The regime that Castro destroyed in Cuba was corrupt and repressive; Castro's failings don't make Batista and his thugs any less culpable. Why are doctrinaire progressives and doctrinaire conservatives equally balmy? Apparently Horowitz is unbalanced enough to have spent his life as an adherent to one or the other of these flawed political philosophies. -- Larry Moss I'm stupefied that Salon would run an article on such an ill-thought-out premise. It's bizarre to read something that justifies Pinochet's brutal rule because it didn't "compromise any conservative expectations in the way that Castro's dictatorship compromises the visions of the left." This is the kind of writing I expect to see in the summary of Internet searches on crackpot sites, not headlined in Salon. Nothing justifies a police state, and to argue that Pinochet is good compared to Castro is a pathetic argument for cloud-gazers. Kim Il-Sung was good compared to Stalin. Go feed the people of North Korea on that. -- Derek Zumsteg N E X T+P A G E+| "Birthright Israel" and the American media