-Caveat Lector-
>From www.mises.org
> Give Neutrality a Chance
>
> by LLEWELLYN H. ROCKWELL, JR.
>
> The government of Indonesia must stop the slaughter in East Timor, says
> National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, or else. Or else what? Or else,
> there will be implications for the capacity of the international
> community to support Indonesia's economic program. Whoa, that's some
> pretty big talk there, Mr. Berger. Imagine: the Clinton administration
> is thinking, just thinking, about actually cutting some foreign aid.
> Must be serious.
>
> Indeed it is. A religiously distinct, economically oppressed, and
> militarily conquered people meekly voted for political independence, and
> are now paying the ultimate price. The East Timorese still have their
> sacred honor, but their fortunes were long ago stolen by the Indonesian
> central state, and now their lives are being sacrificed for the
> preservation of an imperial military nation state.
>
> Say, wasn't it only yesterday this administration proclaimed that it had
> the divine duty to stop ethnic cleansing wherever it may occur? Well,
> it's occurring really occurringbut Berger is singing a different tune:
> Because we bombed in Kosovo doesn't mean we have to bomb in Dili.
>
> Actually, to make the analogy stick, the US would have to bomb Jakarta,
> the capital of Indonesia, the way it bombed the ancient city of
> Belgrade. You can't help noticing the hypocrisy. When Serbia wouldn't
> let Kosovo go, the US terrorized the Serbian population until Milosevic
> relented. Indonesia won't let East Timor go, and Clinton barely bothers
> to suggest Jakarta might politely invite UN peacekeepers in, with US
> troops not among them.
>
> Indonesia and Serbia have common elements. Each has a recalcitrant
> province dominated by a religion alien from the majority faith. The
> Timorese Catholics are as much a minority in Indonesia as the Moslems in
> Kosovar are in Yugoslavia proper. Both provinces have attempted to
> secede following catastrophic central government economic upheavals that
> destroyed their currencies. Both face a refugee crisis brought about by
> state terrorism (domestic in one case and foreign in the other).
>
> But many of the reported atrocities carried out by Serbs against
> Kosovars have turned out to be wildly exaggerated or entirely made up.
> In the war's aftermath, mass graves have turned up, but they are filled
> with Serbs. The much-heralded liberation army of the KLA, ally of the
> US, has shown its true colors as a terrorist mob out for a complete
> ethnic cleansing of the region.
>
> Meanwhile, the massacres in East Timor have been carried out in the most
> brutal fashion and without apology. People have been mowed down as they
> worship in churches and clamored for food in what remains of stores.
> Merchants have been looted and murdered. Killings of priests, nuns, old
> people, women, and children are the norm. This is the culmination of a
> long-running policy that is well-documented and not disputed by anyone
> except the Indonesian government.
>
> It's not up to the US to settle these conflicts, which are rooted in a
> very complicated history. However, it should be clear that secession in
> East Timor makes far more sense than secession in Kosovo. East Timor was
> a province of Portugal for centuries that was only recently conquered
> militarily. It is now occupied by an imperial power that hates its
> indigenous people, religion, and politics. To underscore the point, the
> people have since voted for independence by nearly 80 percent, despite a
> reign of terror.
>
> Kosovo, in contrast, is historically Serbian and has profound religious
> significance to the Orthodox faith. In the last several decades, it was
> effectively conquered through immigration. But the US position is the
> reverse: Kosovo should be independent but East Timor should be an
> obedient client state, albeit one that doesn't descend into chaos, as
> the passively voiced cliche has it.
>
> It makes an interesting study to discern why the US weighed in on behalf
> of Moslem Kosovars but is telling the Christian East Timorese to go jump
> in the Pacific. In the 1960s, in the midst of the Cold War, the US gave
> the supposedly anti-communist Indonesian dictatorship the green light to
> massacre its Chinese merchant class. Indonesia and the US became blood
> brothers in a relationship that survives to this day.
>
> In 1975, Jakarta invaded and suppressed East Timor under the supervision
> and approval of US President Ford and Henry Kissinger, both in the
> capital city the day it began. Despite the reports of tens and even
> hundreds of thousands of deaths (up to a third of the population), and
> relentless oppression, the US has been funneling foreign aid and weapons
> of mass destruction to the regime ever since. Only now, responding to
> world outrage, has the Clinton administration temporarily suspended
> formal military ties.
>
> During the war on Serbia, every establishment organ from the New York
> Times to the Wall Street Journal echoed the Clinton line that the US was
> bombing for humanitarian reasons. Clinton enlisted moral metaphors
> from the civil rights movement to say that the poor Kosovar Albanians
> were suffering under discrimination on grounds of their religion and
> ethnicity.
>
> But in his press conference on East Timor, Clinton could muster no moral
> indignation. There was no talk about the human rights of the Timorese
> and the bloody campaign complete with concentration camps being
> conducted against them. Why not? Is the Clinton administration committed
> to a policy of siding against any Christians in any foreign policy
> decision? That would explain why he backed both Jakarta and the KLA. Or
> we might also consider that the Clinton administration has benefitted
> directly from massive campaign contributions from government- connected
> Indonesian business interests.
>
> More likely, the bottom line is that this particular oil-rich rogue
> state is a client of the US, and therefore is permitted to engage in all
> the ethnic cleansing and genocide it desires. Hey, international
> politics is a rough business. But then let's hear no more about the
> humanitarian impulses behind the US wars. The bottom line is that the
> US will kill people when its interests are at stake, and let them be
> killed when they are not.
>
> As bloody and repulsive as it is to see the continuing rape of East
> Timor, US should not intervene militarily. Indeed, its interventions
> brought about the problem in the first place. The answer to the massacre
> is to do exactly what Berger is suggesting: turn off the spigot. The US,
> along with international financial institutions the US supports, should
> stop supporting the Jakarta regime at the expense of the American
> taxpayer. For once, let's give neutrality a chance: neither arming nor
> bombing at least one country in the world.
>
> * * * * *
> Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is president of the Ludwig von Mises
> Institute in Auburn, Alabama.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> For a full discussion of the most important political trend of our time,
> see Secession, State, and Liberty, edited by David Gordon.
>
> ^ Top of Page
>
>
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