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Date sent: 13 Sep 1999 19:43:40 -0000
To: List Member <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: "Common Courage Political Literacy Course"
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Subject: East Timor: Will History Repeat?
Email 5, September 13, 1999. A Political Literacy Course from Common
Courage Press. To find out more, click on "free email course" at:
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U.S. Policy Toward East Timor: Lessons of History
Part I
"Politically, we have won. However, it is a question of force--something
we don't have." --An East Timorese resistance figure, in 1992--seven years
before the referendum in favor of independence.
How are we to assess President Clinton's order to suspend military
support-operations with Indonesia in response to massacres being carried
out in East Timor? (Hint: Buried on page A15 of The Wall Street Journal on
September 10, 1999 is this description of Clinton's action: "largely
symbolic.") News of the Clinton administration's positions with regard to
East Timor can be found on Znet's interview of Noam Chomsky with David
Barsamian, along with new updates (http://www.lbbs.org). In "East Timor:
Genocide in Paradise, the Second Edition," Matthew Jardine and Noam
Chomsky (who wrote the introduction) make clear the value of history in
this assessment, which provides a useful guide to previous rebukes of
Indonesia over its occupation of East Timor.
1. Indonesia invaded East Timor on December 7, 1975, just nine days after
East Timor had declared independence from Portugal and only hours after a
visit from President Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger. Since that time more
than 200,000 East Timorese have died as a result of the occupation. From
an original population of 690,000, this represents proportionally perhaps
the greatest genocide since the Holocaust.
2. What is required to change this situation is simple, wrote Chomsky in
the introduction in 1994: "There is no need for threats to bomb Jakarta,
or to impose sanctions on the aggressor. It would suffice for the great
powers to refrain from their eager participation in Indonesia's crimes--to
stop putting guns in the hands of the killers and torturers while joining
them in robbery of the offshore oil of the Timor Gap."
3. "The reasons for support of Indonesia's crimes went well beyond oil and
'defense interests,' including control of a deep-water passage for nuclear
submarines. Indonesia has been an honored ally ever since General Suharto
came to power in 1965 with a 'boiling bloodbath' that was 'the West's best
news for years in Asia' (Time), a 'staggering mass slaughter of Communists
and pro-Communists,' mostly landless peasants that provided a 'gleam of
light in Asia' (New York Times)."
4. "Cable traffic shows that 'after Suharto was given the green light,'
the main concern of the Embassy and the State Department was 'about the
problems that would be created for us if the public and Congress became
aware' of the American role [in the invasion of East Timor], according to
Philip Liechty, then a senior CIA officer in Jakarta."
5. The U.S. did impose limits on aid. U.S. weapons were limited strictly
to self-defense. "That posed no problem for Kissingerian realism: 'And we
can't construe a Communist government in the middle of Indonesia as self
defense?' Kissinger asked with derision when the question was raised in
internal discussion… New arms were sent, including counterinsurgency
equipment: 'everything that you need to fight a major war against somebody
who doesn't have any guns,' Liechty comments…"
6. As Indonesia ran out of weaponry to carry on its massive attack, the
human rights administration of Jimmy Carter accelerated the arms flow.
7. "In 1990, the issue of Timor received some attention when Iraq invaded
Kuwait… Much ingenuity was displayed in explaining that the distinction
did not lie in the locus of power and profit, but in some more subtle
quality that preserves Anglo-American virtue." It is already interesting
to watch the gyrations with respect to comparing U.S. actions in the
Balkans with its actions toward East Timor and Indonesia. (Since April
3,000 to 5,000 people have been killed, a figure that is steeply rising as
of this writing, and about twice as high as the number killed in Kosovo in
the entire year prior to the bombing.) One example: in the New York Times
Thursday, September 9, 1999, President Clinton's national security advisor
Samuel R. Berger, in referring to the East Timorese capital, said,
"Because we bombed Kosovo doesn't mean we should bomb Dili." Let's leave
aside questions of why we should bomb those fighting for freedom instead
of those fighting against it (shouldn't he have said, because we bombed in
Belgrade doesn't mean we have to bomb Jakarta?). Berger's gyration
continues: "Indonesia is the fourth-largest country in the world. It is
undergoing a fragile but tremendously important political and economic
transformation, which the U.S. strongly supports. The resolution of this
crisis matters not just for East Timor but for Indonesia as a whole."
Translation: our interests in Serbia and Indonesia are aligned
differently. In the first instance, Milosevic represented a last hold out
to the U.S. dominated interests in Europe; Indonesia is already within the
fold of U.S. domination. More on Kosovo and the U.S. bombing later this
week.
8. Another parallel between history and today is worth considering. Again
writing in 1994, Chomsky notes, "Congress has imposed barriers on military
aid and training, which the White House has had to evade in ever more
devious ways, particularly in recent months. Sensing opportunity, Britain
moved effectively under Thatcher's guiding hand to take first place in the
highly profitable enterprise of war crimes. As explained by Defense
Procurement Minister Alan Clark, 'I don't really fill my mind much with
what one set of foreigners is doing to another' when there is money to be
made by arms sales. We must insist on 'reserving the right to bomb
niggers,' as Lloyd George recognized 60 years ago."
9. Will the outcome be different this time? Quite possibly. East Timor has
become "like a sharp piece of gravel in our shoes," according to
Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas in 1992. The reason is "the
enduring heroism of the people of East Timor," reported John Pilger in
1994, a heroism that must be aided by those concerned about these crimes
if indeed the outcome is to be different. But history makes clear that
reliance on the apparent concern of Congress and the president in the
place of sustained outcry and activism will not be enough.
These facts come from Matthew Jardine and Noam Chomsky's "East Timor:
Genocide in Paradise." To learn more click on
http://www.commoncouragepress.com/timor.html
But wait a minute. Are these historical parallels from the Cold War era
still relevant? Or has history--and the U.S.--changed course after the
defeat of Communism?
TOMORROW in Part II, Noam Chomsky reviews this question with East Timor as
a case study.
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