His success in transforming the Chilean economy (I recall interviewing his youthful “Chicago Boys” and being struck by the intensity of their drive to privatize and modernize) provided the basis for export growth, free trade, an independent central bank and a limited state sector — achievements a democratic Chile has been able to build on to become the most prosperous country in the region.

Cohen isn’t alone in this line of thinking. “Iraq needs a Pinochet,” declared Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times. So does Egypt, according to Charles Krauthammer and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.

The most appropriate gut reaction to this may be moral revulsion—3,000 people killed or disappeared so that you can enjoy your global sushi at the mall? But it’s also worth asking whether story is even true. Was Pinochet’s dictatorship really a time of prosperity, growth and openness against an unfortunate backdrop of torture, terror and repression? Is the healthy OECD democracy we see today a result to his wise if brutal stewardship?

In fact, no. The “economic miracle” Milton Friedman ascribed to Pinochet is one of the great false narratives of modern economic history. The miracle he oversaw was really just a series of boom-bust cycles: two periods of rapid growth bookended by two deep recessions: the first precipitated by a “shock treatment” of monetary contraction, privatization and deregulation authored by his University of Chicago-trained cabinet ministers in 1975; the second, a catastrophic debt crisis in 1982. In the immediate aftermath of the free market reforms in the mid 70s, Chile had the second lowest growth rate in Latin America: Bankruptcies were rampant, national output fell 15%, unemployment surpassed 20%, and salaries fell 35% below 1970 levels . Not to mention the corruption, from the fire sale of state properties to politically connected investors, to Pinochet’s personal embezzlement of millions later found in secret bank accounts in Washington, Miami and elsewhere.

Average per capita GDP growth over the entire course of the dictatorship was less than 2%, significantly lower than the four Christian Democrat and Socialist governments that succeeded him. The poverty rate, hovering at 40% by the time Pinochet left office, was cut in half within a decade with an upsurge in social welfare spending, and stands at 14% today. The numbers are clear: the true Chilean economic miracle occurred after Pinochet, under democratic, leftist governments.