G'day Kim,
>In his polemic against Kautsky and in Socialism and War, Lenin argues that
>socialists need to look at whether particular wars benefit imperialist
>powers or the working class struggle. If they do not then socialists can
>and should support them.
It's not as if East Timor was ever going to be a sovereign nation-state in
any meaningful way, was it? I argued thus against Hugh on the matter of
Kosovo, as I remember. East Timor's people were fighting against one
imperial master (and Indonesia could easily have become an even worse
master - still can, really) in circumstances where they could not prevail
unless they successfully appealed to the Anglo-Saxon powers - that's how I
read CNRT policy, anyway. Fine, let's be honest about it. With Wiranto's
power looking likely to prevail at the time (he pretty well controlled
Habibie and he looked, for a while at least, to have a realistic shot at
Junta control if he played the incident right), why not opt for the lesser
evil (as it demonstrably must have appeared to thousands of cringing woman
as they faced sudden widowhood and a phalanx of drunk M-16-wielding
militia-members grimly undoing their trousers)? Lenin's polemic seems too
simplistic for the particularities of such a moment, I reckon.
>This is the case with East Timor ... UN
>intervention went against 24 years of Indonesian and Australian
>imperialist policy. Without it, Indonesia would have continued its
>scorched earth policy of murder and destruction.
Er, it was the materially unsupported referendum proposal that started the
scorched earth policy of the Indonesians/militias, Kim! There WAS a time
for armed peacekeepers, and that was when something approximating a peace
pertained - before and during the vote! Habibie wasn't up to allowing
that, of course (although, personally, he seemed all for it), and concerted
foreign pressure (of the kind the US is happily exerting now) would have
been necessary 18 months ago. Australian and UN intervention started the
slaughter, for mine (and, I suspect, CNRT complicity, too - they didn't
lift a finger to help their people when the chips were down, as a good bit
of 'murder-of-the-innocents' footage was politically awfully useful - just
a suspicion, mind).
And Australia's imperialist policy has been impeded exactly how? We seem
nicely ensconced in the chair, for mine. You know I didn't oppose
intervention - but that was because I saw only one alternative future once
the vote had been cast (for ET and Indonesia alike), and it promised to be
far worse than imperialist rule from Canberra. It's still imperialist rule
from Canberra though, innit?
>But I guess that would have been okay, because then dogmatists could say
>"well, isn't it terrible that the East Timorese were massacred, but at
>least we stuck to our principles ..., we have a cut and dried absolutist
>position that says no compromises with imperialism, to bad this meant that
>any chance of working class revolution that may have exist will not occur
>now because there is no working class because they have all been massacre.
>But hey, we did stick to our 'on principle' objections".
Here I agree with you and the GLW completely - but, as I think Bob's
position is not usefully nuanced here, so do I think yours is lacking.
Yours ever-compromisingly,
Rob.
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