Allende committed suicide. It has been investigated more than once, and his family accepts the determination. Nixon and Kissinger did feel that he was a threat due to his Communist/Socialist leanings, and did try to unseat him, but that's not exactly ordering that he be killed.
Keep in mind that with respect to Saddam Hussein, he tried to have 41 killed because of the Gulf War (a response to his invasion of Kuwait). As far as I'm concerned, if you promote the assassination of a US president, the diplomatic gloves need to come off, and you get one dropped into your lap while you're sitting out by the pool.
If Allende committed suicide (with his government palace being bombed and machine-gunned and meanwhile Chile's left and what Pinochet's henchmen took to be "the left" hoarded into football stadiums at gunpoint for internment, interrogation, torture and murder), then it was about as voluntary as Erwin Rommel's suicide in 1944 - which was ordered by our then beloved Führer, otherwise Rommel would have been show-tried and hanged. I don't believe that the Pinochet regime, that freedom-loving, torture-averse and due process-stickling role model of a democratic government would have offered Allende better options. The demonstrations against Allende by allegedly angry Chilean housewifes banging on their empty pans - instigated, organized and paid for by the CIA. The withdrawal of funds from Chilean banks by Chile's landowning elite to create currency issues - ditto. The conscious decision of industry and trade to stop importing goods to create shortages: ditto. The military coupists' and their cronies' secret meeting place: the US Embassy in Santiago. The list goes on.
Allende's economic policies were socialist, yes, and probably not very effective in modern economic terms, but he was without a doubt democratically elected and Chile was not a leftist police state when the putsch happened, the US could have simply waited for the next democratic election and see whether Allende wins again, but it chose to "accelerate" things. Ironically, gullible Allende had been instrumental in the promotion of Pinochet who came from a less than gilded background (unlike Allende) which echoes the old Cesar-Brutus adage ...
Left with the choice of a democratic leftist or a totalitarian rightist Chilean government, the US took the not so freedom-loving choice. But then the Russians had no issues supporting Idi Amin in Uganda too, who was hardly socialist or communist ... Goes to show how foreign policies of superpowers tend to be on the same low standard as regards ethics.
I was in Chile quite recently and the population - much like Spain regarding Franco - is still pretty much split in the middle as regards the Allende and Pinochet years. Pinochet had a keen distrust of anything urban and installed heavy infrastructure investment projects for the rural areas of Chile "the leftist elite in Santiago had never thought about". So the people there still thank him for the highways he had built. That's what we heard. And also "if he (Pinochet) could have only done without all the killings and the corruption ...". The other picture is of course Victor Jara's (sort of a Chilean Woody Guthrie) simple grave in Santiago (Allende's grave - created after democracy returned -is modernistic-impressive in comparison and situated in the same 2 million graves cemetery, but located in "the part of the wealthy people") and how he was tortured to death by soldiers after the putsch who broke his hands and then goaded him to play guitar and sing.
Nixon and Kissinger - make no mistake, both men had/have merits too, and Nixon would today probably be regarded as "too left" in the Republican Party - are often derided for Watergate and its disastrous effect on US political culture, but I find their unappetizing engagement in/intrusion in/destabilization of Chile even crummier, very much in the tradition of viewing South America as the US "backyard" and acting accordingly. Too close for comfort to what the Soviet Union did in Czechoslovakia when Dubcek dared some democracy and freedom, get my point?
Uwe
