Question 11
How could Argentine forces' volunteers serve a fascist military junta which had spent years kidnapping, disappearing and murdering thousands of their own citizens?
Behind our backs, Thatcher had been trying to secure secret deals with a right-wing junta. One that had spent many years torturing and disappearing tens of thousands of its own law-abiding citizens. She was also trying to secure arms deals with the Argentine junta, right up until four days before the invasion.
40, 50, 60 years on, it’s likely many of the missing people were murdered by death squads, and now occupy shallow, unmarked graves. They’ll never be seen or heard from again. Thatcher quite carefully chose to stay mute and to not criticise or embarrass the rogue governments of the United States, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil for their prolonged involvement in these extra-judicial atrocities.
We’ve travelled a long way since 1982. Most of it has been spent careering in the wrong direction. Are the Five Eyes nations and several nodding dog EU states keeping their back yards safe, as claimed, or is their behaviour making the rest of the world unsafe?
I would suggest the latter.
My sympathy goes out to the 52,000 conscripted Argentine servicemen – those still with us – who were pressed into what will have been sold to them as ‘service of your country’.
However, this sympathy is tempered when it comes to the unspeakable 38,000 volunteers who had willingly surrendered their civilian status and signed up to serve a murdering, military junta. One that whipped up nationalistic fervour and had the damn gall to masquerade as ‘patriotic’, even after kidnapping, torturing, and ‘disappearing’ thousands of its own law-abiding citizens. The Argentine volunteers – a few of whom were navy pilots displaying misplaced bravery – inflicted the greatest casualties to UK forces and would have been fully aware of the junta’s murderous actions over the years. How could they not be, following the many well-known protests inside the country? It beats me how any reasonable, well-adjusted, compassionate human being could risk their own lives, allegedly serve their country, and kill others under the direction of torturing fascists.
Thatcher never considered criticising these crimes for one moment.
There was heroic opposition inside Argentina, but to her shame, Thatcher had never publicly acknowledged the disappearances, nor taken the USA, Argentina or Chile to task on them. I’m drawn to conclude the murders and secret burials must have been what she’d wanted all along, making her a willing associate to these crimes.
Worse still, she’d developed very close, unsavoury ties to Chilean war criminal Pinochet, who from the start was involved in torturing, killing, and disappearing his own people. Even before necrophiliac child rapist Jimmy Savile came onto the scene, Thatcher was stained by her associations and was never able to boast a clean conscience, much less, any wholesome side to her character.