[Nasional-f] [koran-salatiga] Chomsky On Indonesia

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Chomsky on Indonesia
>From Year 501 Copyright © 1993 by Noam Chomsky.
Published by South End Press.
Chapter 5: Human Rights: The Pragmatic Criterion
Segment 2/9
http://www.infoshop.org/news2/chomsky_indo.html
-------------------------------------------------------2.
Securing the Anchor
"The problem of Indonesia" is "the most crucial issue
of the moment in our struggle with the Kremlin,"
Kennan wrote in 1948. "Indonesia is the anchor in that
chain of islands stretching from Hokkaido to Sumatra
which we should develop as a politico-economic
counter-force to communism" and a "base area" for
possible military action beyond. A Communist
Indonesia, he warned, would be an "infection" that
"would sweep westward" through all of South Asia.
Resource-rich Indonesia was also designated to be a
critical part of the "Empire toward the South" that
the US intended to recreate for Japan, now within the
US-dominated system.

In accord with standard reasoning, "ultra-nationalism"
in Indonesia would prevent Southeast Asia from
"fulfilling its main function" as a service area for
the core industrial powers. Accordingly, the US urged
the former Dutch rulers to grant independence, but
under Dutch tutelage, an outcome critical to "Western
Europe's economic rehabilitation, and to America's
strategic well-being," Leffler observes, and to
Japan's reconstruction as well. The principled
antagonism to independent nationalism that animates US
foreign policy took on particular significance in this
case.4

After its liberation from the Dutch, Indonesia was
ruled by the nationalist leader Sukarno. At first, the
United States was willing to tolerate this
arrangement, particularly after Sukarno and the army
suppressed a land reform movement supported by the
Indonesian Communist Party [PKI] in the Madiun region
in 1948, virtually destroying the party's leadership
and jailing 36,000 people. But Sukarno's nationalist
and neutralist commitments soon proved entirely
unacceptable.

The two major power centers in Indonesia were the army
and the PKI, the only mass-based political force.
Internal politics were dominated by Sukarno's
balancing of these two forces. Western aims were
largely shared by the army, who therefore qualified as
moderates. To achieve these aims, it was necessary
somehow to overcome the anti-American extremists.
Other methods having failed, mass extermination
remained as a last resort.

In the early 1950s, the CIA tried covert support of
right-wing parties, and in 1957-1958 the US backed and
participated in armed insurrection against Sukarno,
possibly including assassination attempts. After the
rebellions were put down, the US turned to a program
of military aid and training coupled with a cutback of
economic aid, a classic mode of pre-coup planning,
followed in Chile a few years later, and attempted in
Iran with the dispatch of arms via Israel from shortly
after the Khomeini takeover -- one of the many crucial
elements of the Iran-contra affair suppressed in the
subsequent cover-up.5 Universities and corporations
also lent their willing hands.

In a RAND study published by Princeton University in
1962, Guy Pauker, closely involved with US
policy-making through RAND and the CIA, urged his
contacts in the Indonesian military to take "full
responsibility" for their country, "fulfill a
mission," and "strike, sweep their house clean." In
1963, former CIA staff officer William Kintner, then
at a CIA-subsidized research institute at the
University of Pennsylvania, warned that "If the PKI is
able to maintain its legal existence and Soviet
influence continues to grow, it is possible that
Indonesia may be the first Southeast Asia country to
be taken over by a popularly based, legally elected
communist government... In the meantime, with Western
help, free Asian political leaders -- together with
the military -- must not only hold on and manage, but
reform and advance while liquidating the enemy's
political and guerrilla armies." The prospects for
liquidation of the popularly based political forces
were regarded as uncertain, however. In a 1964 RAND
memorandum, Pauker expressed his concern that the
groups backed by the US "would probably lack the
ruthlessness that made it possible for the Nazis to
suppress the Communist Party of Germany... [These
right-wing and military elements] are weaker than the
Nazis, not only in numbers and in mass support, but
also in unity, discipline, and leadership."

Pauker's pessimism proved unfounded. After an alleged
Communist coup attempt on September 30, 1965, and the
murder of six Indonesian generals, pro-American
General Suharto took charge and launched a bloodbath
in which hundreds of thousands of people, mostly
landless peasants, were slaughtered. Reflecting on the
matter in 1969, Pauker noted that the assassination of
the generals "elicited the ruthlessness that I had not
anticipated a year earlier and resulted in the death
of large numbers of Communist cadres."

The scale of the massacre is unknown. The CIA
estimates 250,000 killed. The head of the Indonesia
state security system later estimated the toll at over
half a million; Amnesty International gave the figure
of "many more than one million." Whatever the numbers,
no one doubts that there was incredible butchery.
Seven-hundred-fifty-thousand more were arrested,
according to official figures, many of them kept for
years under miserable conditions without trial.
President Sukarno was overthrown and the military
ruled unchallenged. Meanwhile the country was opened
to Western exploitation, hindered only by the rapacity
of the rulers.

The US role in these events is uncertain, one reason
being the gaps in the documentary record. Gabriel
Kolko observes that "U.S. documents for the three
months preceding September 30, 1965, and dealing with
the convoluted background and intrigues, much less the
embassy's and the CIA's roles, have been withheld from
public scrutiny. Given the detailed materials
available before and after July-September 1965, one
can only assume that the release of these papers would
embarrass the U.S. government." Ex-CIA officer Ralph
McGehee reports that he is familiar with a highly
classified CIA report on the agency's role in
provoking the destruction of the PKI, and attributes
the slaughter to the "C.I.A. [one word deleted]
operation." The deletion was imposed by CIA
censorship. Peter Dale Scott, who has carried out the
most careful attempt to reconstruct the events,
suggests that the deleted word is "deception,"
referring to CIA propaganda that "creates the
appropriate situations," in McGehee's uncensored
words, for this and other mass murder operations
(citing also Chile). McGehee referred specifically to
atrocity fabrication by the CIA to lay the basis for
violence against the PKI.6

There is no doubt that Washington was aware of the
slaughter, and approved. Secretary of State Dean Rusk
cabled to Ambassador Marshall Green on October 29 that
the "campaign against PKI" must continue and that the
military, who were orchestrating it, "are [the] only
force capable of creating order in Indonesia" and must
continue to do so with US help for a "major military
campaign against PKI." The US moved quickly to provide
aid to the army, but details have not been made
public. Cables from the Jakarta Embassy on October 30
and November 4 indicate that deliveries of
communications equipment to the Indonesian army were
accelerated and the sale of US aircraft approved,
while the Deputy Chief of Mission noted that "The
embassy and the USG were generally sympathetic with
and admiring of what the army was doing."7

For clarity, we must distinguish several issues. On
the one hand, there are questions of historical fact:
What took place in Indonesia and Washington in
1965-1966? There are also questions of cultural
history: How did the US government, and articulate
sectors at home, react to what they took to be the
facts? The political history is murky. On the matter
of cultural history, however, the public record
provides ample evidence. The cultural history is by
far the more informative with regard to the
implications for the longer term. It is from the
reactions that we draw lessons for the future.

There is no serious controversy about Washington's
sympathy for "what the army was doing." An analysis by
H.W. Brands is of particular interest in this
connection.8 Of the more careful studies of the events
themselves, his is the most skeptical concerning the
US role, which he regards as basically that of a
confused observer, with "only a marginal ability to
change a very dangerous situation for the better." But
he leaves no doubt about Washington's enthusiasm about
the turn "for the better" as the slaughter proceeded.

According to Brands's reconstruction of events, by
early 1964 the US was engaged in "quiet efforts to
encourage action by the army against the PKI,"
ensuring that when the expected conflict broke out,
"the army [would know] it had friends in Washington."
The goal of the continuing civic action and military
training programs, Secretary of State Dean Rusk
commented, was "strengthening anti-Communist elements
in Indonesia in the continuing and coming struggle
with the PKI." Chief of Staff Nasution, regarded by US
Ambassador Howard Jones as "the strongest man in the
country," informed Jones in March 1964 that "Madiun
would be mild compared with an army crackdown today,"
referring to the bloody repression of 1948.

Through 1965, the main question in Washington was how
to encourage army action against the PKI. US emissary
Ellsworth Bunker felt that Washington should keep a
low profile so that the generals could proceed
"without the incubus of being attacked as defenders of
the neo-colonialists and imperialists." The State
Department agreed. Prospects, however, remained
uncertain, and September 1965 ended, Brands continues,
"with American officials anticipating little good news
soon."

The September 30 strike against the army leadership
came as a surprise to Washington, Brands concludes,
and the CIA knew little about it. Ambassador Green,
who had replaced Jones, told Washington he could not
establish any PKI role, though the official story then
and since is that it was a "Communist coup attempt."

The "good news" was not long in coming. "American
officials soon recognized that the situation in
Indonesia was changing drastically and, from their
perspective, for the better," Brands continues. "As
information arrived from the countryside indicating
that a purge of the PKI was beginning, the principal
worry of American officials in Jakarta and in
Washington was that the army would fail to take
advantage of its opportunity," and when the army
seemed to hesitate, Washington sought ways "to
encourage the officers" to proceed. Green recommended
covert efforts to "spread the story of the PKI's
guilt, treachery, and brutality," though he knew of no
PKI role. Such efforts were undertaken to good effect,
according to McGehee's account of the internal CIA
record. George Ball, the leading Administration dove,
recommended that the US stay in the background because
"the generals were doing quite well on their own"
(Brands's paraphrase), and the military aid and
training programs "should have established clearly in
the minds of the army leaders that the US stands
behind them if they should need help" (Ball). Ball
instructed the Jakarta embassy to exercise "extreme
caution lest our well-meaning efforts to offer
assistance or steel their resolve may in fact play
into the hands of Sukarno and [his political
associate] Subandrio." Dean Rusk added that "If the
army's willingness to follow through against the PKI
is in anyway contingent on or subject to influence by
the United States, we do not want to miss the
opportunity to consider U.S. action."

Brands concludes that US covert aid "may have
facilitated the liquidation of the PKI," but "at most
it speeded what probably would have happened more
slowly." "Whatever the American role in these
developments," he continues, "the administration found
the overall trend encouraging. In mid-December Ball
reported with satisfaction that the army's campaign to
destroy the PKI was `moving fairly swiftly and
smoothly.' At about the same time Green cabled from
Jakarta: `The elimination of the communists continues
apace'." By early February 1966, President Johnson was
informed that about 100,000 had been massacred.
Shortly before, the CIA reported that Sukarno was
finished, and "The army has virtually destroyed the
PKI."

Nevertheless, Brands continues, "Despite that good
news the administration remained reluctant to commit
itself publicly to Suharto," fearing that the outcome
was still uncertain. But doubts soon faded. Johnson's
new National Security Adviser Walt Rostow "found
Suharto's `New Order' encouraging," US aid began to
flow openly, and Washington officials began to take
credit for the great success.

According to this skeptical view, then, "The United
States did not overthrow Sukarno, and it was not
responsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths
involved in the liquidation of the PKI," though it did
what it could to encourage the army to liquidate the
only mass popular organization in Indonesia, hesitated
to become more directly involved only because it
feared that these efforts would be counterproductive,
greeted the "good news" with enthusiasm as the
slaughter mounted, and turned enthusiastically to
assisting the "New Order" that arose from the
bloodshed as the moderates triumphed.

3. Celebration
The public Western reaction was one of relief and
pride. Deputy Undersecretary of State Alexis Johnson
celebrated "The reversal of the Communist tide in the
great country of Indonesia" as "an event that will
probably rank along with the Vietnamese war as perhaps
the most historic turning point of Asia in this
decade" (October 1966). Appearing before a Senate
Committee, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was
asked whether US military aid during the pre-coup
period had "paid dividends." He agreed that it had,
and was therefore justified -- the major dividend
being a huge pile of corpses. In a private
communication to President Johnson in March 1967,
McNamara went further, saying that US military
assistance to the Indonesian army had "encouraged it
to move against the PKI when the opportunity was
presented." Particularly valuable, he said, was the
program bringing Indonesian military personnel to the
United States for training at universities, where they
learned the lessons they put to use so well. These
were "very significant factors in determining the
favorable orientation of the new Indonesian political
elite" (the army), McNamara argued. A congressional
report also held that training and continued
communication with military officers paid "enormous
dividends." The same reasoning has long been standard
with regard to Latin America, with similar results.9

Across a broad spectrum, commentators credited the US
intervention in Vietnam with having encouraged these
welcome developments, providing a sign of American
commitment to the anti-Communist cause and a "shield"
behind which the generals could act without undue
concern about Sukarno's Chinese ally. A Freedom House
statement in November 1966 signed by "145
distinguished Americans" justified the US war in
Vietnam for having "provided a shield for the sharp
reversal of Indonesia's shift toward Communism," with
no reservations concerning the means employed.
Speaking to US troops in November 1966, President
Johnson told them that their exploits in Indochina
were the reason why "In Indonesia there are 100
million people that enjoy a measure of freedom today
that they didn't enjoy yesterday." These reactions
reflect the logic of the US war in Indochina.10

In line with his general skepticism, Brands believes
these claims to be exaggerated. McNamara's "attempts
to appropriate responsibility for the general's rise
to power," he thinks, were a reaction to President
Johnson's "enthusiasm for the Suharto regime." US
assurances to the Indonesian military "certainly had
some effect on Suharto's assessment of his prospects,"
but not much, because they "merely reiterated the
obvious fact that the United States prefers rightists
to leftists" -- including rightists who conduct a huge
slaughter and install a terrorist "New Order." As for
the war in Vietnam, the CIA doubted that "the US
display of determination in Vietnam directly
influenced the outcome of the Indonesian crisis in any
significant way," CIA director Helms wrote to Walt
Rostow in 1966. As Brands himself puts it, the Johnson
administration had been concerned that Indonesia might
suffer "the fate from which the United States was then
attempting to rescue South Vietnam." Fortunately,
Indonesia rescued itself.

There was no condemnation of the slaughter on the
floor of Congress, and no major US relief agency
offered aid. The World Bank restored Indonesia to
favor, soon making it the third largest borrower.
Western governments and corporations followed along.

Those close at hand may have drawn further lessons
about peasant massacre. Ambassador Green went on to
the State Department, where he presided over the
bombing of rural Cambodia, among other achievements.
As the bombing was stepped up to historically
unprecedented levels in 1973, slaughtering tens of
thousands of peasants, Green testified before Congress
that the massacre should continue because of our
desire for peace: our experience with "these
characters in Hanoi" teaches that only the rivers of
blood of Cambodian peasants might bring them to the
negotiating table. The "experience" to which he
referred was the 1972 Christmas bombings of Hanoi,
undertaken to force those characters in Hanoi to
modify the agreements reached with the Nixon
Administration in October but rejected by Washington,
then restored without change after the US stopped the
bombing because it proved too costly. The events and
their remarkable aftermath having been concealed by
the Free Press, Green could be confident that there
would be no exposure of his colossal fabrications in
the interest of continued mass murder.11

Returning to Indonesia, the media were pleased, even
euphoric. As the army moved to take control, Times
correspondent Max Frankel described the delight of
Johnson Administration officials over the "dramatic
new opportunity" in Indonesia. The "military showed
power," so that "Indonesia can now be saved from what
had appeared to be an inevitable drift towards a
peaceful takeover from within" -- an unthinkable
disaster, since internal politics was not under US
control. US officials "believe the army will cripple
and perhaps destroy the Communists as a significant
political force," leading to "the elimination of
Communist influences at all levels of Indonesian
society." Consequently, there is now "hope where only
two weeks ago there was despair."12

Not everyone was so enthusiastic about the opportunity
to destroy the one popular political force in the
country. Japan's leading newspaper, Asahi Shimbun,
urged caution: "In view of the fact that the Communist
influence is deeply entrenched among the Indonesian
grassroots, it would cause further deterioration in
the confused national state of affairs if a firm
crackdown were carried out against them."13 But such
more somber reflections were rare.

In mid-1966, well after the results were known, U.S.
News & World Report headlined a long and enthusiastic
story "Indonesia: `HOPE...WHERE ONCE THERE WAS NONE.'"
"Indonesians these days can talk and argue freely, no
longer fearful of being denounced and imprisoned," the
journal reported, describing an emerging totalitarian
terror state with hundreds of thousands in prison and
the blood still flowing. In a cover story, Time
magazine celebrated "The West's best news for years in
Asia" under the heading "Vengeance with a Smile,"
devoting 5 pages of text and 6 more of pictures to the
"boiling bloodbath that almost unnoticed took 400,000
lives." The new army regime is "scrupulously
constitutional," Time happily announced, "based on law
not on mere power," in the words of its "quietly
determined" leader Suharto with his "almost innocent
face." The elimination of the 3 million-member PKI by
its "only possible rival," the army, and the removal
from power of the "genuine folk hero" Sukarno, may
virtually be considered a triumph of democracy.14

The leading political thinker of the New York Times,
James Reston, chimed in under the heading "A Gleam of
Light in Asia." The regular channel for the State
Department, Reston admonished Americans not to let the
bad news in Vietnam displace "the more hopeful
developments in Asia," primary among them being "the
savage transformation of Indonesia from a pro-Chinese
policy under Sukarno to a defiantly anti-Communist
policy under General Suharto":

Washington is being careful not to claim any credit
for this change in the sixth most populous and one of
the richest nations in the world, but this does not
mean that Washington had nothing to do with it. There
was a great deal more contact between the
anti-Communist forces in that country and at least one
very high official in Washington before and during the
Indonesian massacre than is generally realized.
General Suharto's forces, at times severely short of
food and munitions, have been getting aid from here
through various third countries, and it is doubtful if
the coup would ever have been attempted without the
American show of strength in Vietnam or been sustained
without the clandestine aid it has received indirectly
from here.
The news story on Indonesia the same day carried more
glad tidings. Headlined "Indonesians View U.S. Films
Again," it described "the biggest public social event
in the Indonesian capital these days," the showing of
American films to "smartly dressed Indonesians" who
"alight from expensive limousines," "one sign of the
country's rejection of the anti-American pro-Communist
policy of the Indonesian Government" before the gleam
of light broke through the clouds.15

Recall that according to the skeptical view of Brands
and others, Reston's proud claim that the US
government could fairly claim credit for the massacre
and the establishment of the "New Order" was
exaggerated, though understandable.

Editorial reaction to the bloodbath was judicious. The
Times was pleased that the Indonesian army had
"de-fused the country's political time-bomb, the
powerful Indonesian Communist party," and praised
Washington for having "wisely stayed in the background
during the recent upheavals" instead of assisting
openly and trumpeting its glee; the idea that
Washington, or anyone, should have protested and
sought to abort the useful slaughter was beyond the
pale. Washington should continue this wise course, the
editors urged, supporting international aid to the
"Indonesian moderates" who had conducted the massacre.
A February 1966 editorial outlined the likely
advantages for the United States now that the
Indonesian military had taken power and "proceeded to
dismantle the entire P.K.I. apparatus." A follow-up in
August recognized that there had been a "staggering
mass slaughter of Communists and pro-Communists," with
hundreds of thousands killed. This "situation...raises
critical questions for the United States," which,
fortunately, have been correctly answered: Washington
"wisely has not intruded into the Indonesian turmoil"
by "embrac[ing] the country's new rulers publicly,"
which "could well hurt them" -- the only "critical
question" that comes to mind. A month later the
editors described the relief in Washington over the
fact that "Indonesia was lost and has been found
again." The successes of the "moderates" had been
rewarded "with generous pledges of rice, cotton and
machinery" and preparations to resume the economic aid
that was held back before the "staggering mass
slaughter" set matters right. The US "has adequate
reasons of state to come to terms with the new
regime," not to speak of more than adequate reasons of
profit.16

Within a few years, a complete role reversal had been
achieved. George McArthur of the Los Angeles Times, a
respected Asia hand, wrote in 1977 that the PKI had
"attempted to seize power and subjected the country to
a bloodbath," placing their necks under the knife in a
major Communist atrocity.17

By then, the Indonesian generals, in addition to
compiling one of the worst human rights records in the
world at home, had escalated their 1975 attack on the
former Portuguese colony of East Timor to
near-genocidal levels, with another "staggering mass
slaughter," which bears comparison to the atrocities
of Pol Pot in the same years. In this case, the deed
was done with the crucial support of the Human Rights
Administration and its allies. They understand
"reasons of state" as well as the Times editors, who,
with their North American and European colleagues, did
what they could to facilitate the slaughter by
suppressing the readily available facts in favor of
(occasional) fairy tales told by Indonesian generals
and the State Department. US-Canadian reporting on
Timor, which had been substantial before the invasion
in the context of Western concerns over the collapse
of the Portuguese empire, reduced to zero in 1978 as
atrocities peaked along with the flow of US arms.18

Times editors were not alone in extolling the
moderates who had stirred up the "boiling bloodbath."
"Many in the West were keen to cultivate Jakarta's new
moderate leader, Suharto," the Christian Science
Monitor later reported. Times Southeast Asia
correspondent Philip Shenon adds, more cautiously,
that Suharto's human rights record is "checkered." The
London Economist described this great mass murderer
and torturer as "at heart benign," doubtless thinking
of his compassion for TNCs. Unfortunately, there are
those who try to impugn his benign nature:
"propagandists for the guerrillas" in East Timor and
West Papua (Irian Jaya) "talk of the army's savagery
and use of torture" -- including the Bishop and other
church sources, thousands of refugees in Australia and
Portugal, Western diplomats and journalists who have
chosen to see, Amnesty International and other human
rights organizations. They are all "propagandists,"
rather than intrepid champions of human rights,
because they have quite the wrong story to tell.19

In the Wall Street Journal, Barry Wain, editor of its
Asia affiliate, described how General Suharto "moved
boldly in defeating the coup makers and consolidating
his power," using "strength and finesse" to take total
control. "By most standards, he has done well," though
there have been a few problems, specifically,
government involvement in the killing of several
thousand alleged criminals from 1982 to 1985. Some
lingering questions about earlier years aside, a few
weeks before Wain's laudatory column, Asiaweek
reported another massacre in Sumatra, where armed
troops burnt a village of 300 people to the ground,
killing dozens of civilians, part of an operation to
quell unrest in the province. Suharto is "a Figure of
Stability," a Wall Street Journal headline reads,
using the term in the PC sense already discussed. The
upbeat story does not overlook the events of 1965. One
sentence reads: Suharto "took command of the effort to
crush the coup attempt, and succeeded."20

When the victims are classified as less than human --
wild beasts in the shape of men, Communists,
terrorists, or whatever may be the contemporary term
of art -- their extermination raises no moral qualms.
And the agents of extermination are praiseworthy
moderates -- our Nazis, to translate from Newspeak.
The practice is standard. Recall the "moderate"
General Gramajo, to mention someone who might aspire
to Suharto's league.

4. Closing the Books
In 1990-1991, several events elicited some
uncharacteristic concern over US-backed Indonesian
atrocities. In May 1990, States News Service released
a study in Washington by Kathy Kadane, which found
that

The U.S. government played a significant role by
supplying the names of thousands of Communist Party
leaders to the Indonesian army, which hunted down the
leftists and killed them, former U.S. diplomats say...
As many as 5000 names were furnished to the Indonesian
army, and the Americans later checked off the names of
those who had been killed or captured, according to
U.S. officials... The lists were a detailed who's-who
of the leadership of the party of 3 million members,
[foreign service officer Robert] Martens said. They
included names of provincial, city and other local PKI
committee members, and leaders of the "mass
organizations," such as the PKI national labor
federation, women's and youth groups.
The names were passed on to the military, which used
them as a "shooting list," according to Joseph
Lazarsky, deputy CIA station chief in Jakarta at the
time, who adds that some were kept for interrogation
or "kangaroo courts" because the Indonesians "didn't
have enough goon squads to zap them all." Kadane
reports that top US Embassy officials acknowledged in
interviews that they had approved of the release of
the names. William Colby compared the operation to his
Phoenix program in Vietnam, in exculpation of his own
campaign of political assassination (which Phoenix
clearly was, though he denies it).

"No one cared as long as they were Communists, that
they were being butchered," said Howard Federspiel,
then Indonesia expert for State Department
intelligence; "No one was getting very worked up about
it." "It really was a big help to the army," Martens
said. "They probably killed a lot of people, and I
probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's
not all bad." "There's a time when you have to strike
hard at a decisive moment."

The story was picked up by a few newspapers, though no
one got worked up about it. Just more business as
usual; after all, the US Embassy had done much the
same in Guatemala a decade earlier, as another useful
slaughter was getting underway.21

While ruffling some feathers briefly, the report was
soon consigned to oblivion. The Newspaper of Record
(the New York Times) waited almost two months to take
notice, long enough to marshal the required denials.
Reporter Michael Wines repeats every government
propaganda cliché about the events themselves, however
tenuous, as unquestioned fact. Ambassador Green
dismisses the Kadane report as "garbage." He and
others claim that the US had nothing to do with the
list of names, which were of no significance anyway.
Wines cites a Martens letter to the Washington Post
saying that the names were publicly available in the
Indonesian press, but not his amplification of this
remark, in which he stressed the importance of handing
over the list of names; Martens wrote that he "saw
nothing wrong with helping out," and still doesn't,
because "the pro-Communist terror leading to the final
coup...against the non-Communist army leaders...had
prevented systematic collection of data on the
Communists" (a fanciful tale, but no matter). Wines
says nothing about the Times celebration of the
slaughter, or the pride of their leading political
commentator on the US role in expediting it.22

Stephen Rosenfeld of the Washington Post was one of
the few in the national press to be troubled by the
Kadane revelations. His reaction too is instructive.

After the Kadane story appeared, the Post carried a
letter by Indonesian human rights activist Carmel
Budiardjo, who pointed out that direct US complicity
in the massacre was already known from the cable
traffic between the US Embassy in Jakarta and the
State Department published by Gabriel Kolko,
specifically, the Green-Rusk interchange cited
earlier. A month later, Rosenfeld expressed some
concern, adding that "in the one account I read" --
namely, Kolko's book -- some doubts are raised about
Communist complicity in the alleged coup attempt that
served as the pretext for the massacres (note the
evasion of the crucial issues, a deft stroke). But,
Rosenfeld continued, Kolko's "typical revisionist
blame-America-first point of view makes me distrust
his conclusions." He expressed the hope that "someone
whose politics are more mainstream would sift through
the material and provide an independent account." His
plea for rescue appears under the heading, "Indonesia
1965: Year of Living Cynically?"

Fortunately, relief was soon on its way. A week later,
under the heading "Indonesia 1965: Year of U.S.
Irrelevance," Rosenfeld wrote that he had received in
the mail an "independent account" by a historian
"without political bias" -- that is, one who could
assure him that the state he loves had done no wrong.
This antidote was "full of delights and surprises,"
concluding that the US had no responsibility for the
deaths or the overthrow of Sukarno. It "clears
Americans of the damaging lingering suspicion of
responsibility for the Indonesian coup and massacre,"
Rosenfeld concludes happily: "For me, the question of
the American role in Indonesia is closed."23

How easy is the life of the true believer.

The article that closed the books, to Rosenfeld's
immense relief, was the Brands study reviewed earlier.
That Brands is an "independent" commentator "without
political bias" is demonstrated throughout: The US war
in Vietnam was an attempt "to rescue South Vietnam";
the information reaching Washington that "The army has
virtually destroyed the PKI" in a huge massacre was
"good news"; "the most serious deficiency of covert
warfare" is "its inevitable tendency to poison the
well of public opinion," that is, to tar the US with
"bum raps" elsewhere; etc. Much more significant are
the "delights and surprises" that put any lingering
doubts to rest. Since the study closes all questions
for good, we may now rest easy in the knowledge that
Washington did all it could to encourage the greatest
massacre since the days of Hitler and Stalin, welcomed
the outcome with enthusiasm, and immediately turned to
the task of supporting Suharto's aptly named "New
Order." Thankfully, there is nothing to trouble the
liberal conscience.

One interesting non-reaction to the Kadane report
appeared in the lead article in the New York Review of
Books by Senator Daniel Moynihan. He fears that "we
are poisoning the wells of our historical memory,"
suppressing unpleasant features of our past. He
contrasts these failures with the "extraordinary
period of exhuming the worst crimes of its hideous
history" now underway in the Soviet Union. Of course,
"the United States has no such history. To the
contrary." Our history is quite pure. There are no
crimes to "exhume" against the indigenous population
or Africans in the 70 years following our revolution,
or against Filipinos, Central Americans, Indochinese,
and others later on. Still, even we are not perfect:
"not everything we have done in this country has been
done in the open," Moynihan observes, though "not
everything could be. Or should have been." But we
conceal too much, the gravest crime of our history.24

It is hard to believe that as he was writing these
words, the Senator did not have the recent revelations
about Indonesia in mind. He, after all, has a special
personal relation to Indonesian atrocities. He was UN
Ambassador at the time of the Indonesian invasion of
East Timor, and takes pride, in his memoirs, in having
forestalled any international reaction to the
aggression and massacre. "The United States wished
things to turn out as they did," he writes, "and
worked to bring this about. The Department of State
desired that the United Nations prove utterly
ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This
task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no
inconsiderable success." Moynihan was well aware of
how things turned out, noting that within a few weeks
some 60,000 people had been killed, "10 percent of the
population, almost the proportion of casualties
experienced by the Soviet Union during the Second
World War." Thus he took credit for achievements that
he compares to those of the Nazis. And he is surely
familiar with the subsequent US government role in
escalating the slaughter, and the contribution of the
media and political class in concealing it. But the
newly released information about the US role in mass
slaughter did not stir his historical memory, or
suggest some reflections on our practices, apart from
our single blemish: insufficient candor.

Moynihan's successes at the UN have entered history in
the conventional manner. Measures taken against Iraq
and Libya "show again how the collapse of Communism
has given the Security Council the cohesion needed to
enforce its orders," Times UN correspondent Paul Lewis
explains in a front-page story: "That was impossible
in earlier cases like...Indonesia's annexation of East
Timor."25

There was also a flicker of concern about Indonesia
after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. It was hard
not to notice the similarity to Indonesia's (vastly
more murderous) aggression and annexation. A decade
earlier, when glimmerings of what had happened finally
began to break through, there had been occasional
notice of the comparison between Suharto's exploits in
Timor and the simultaneous Pol Pot slaughters. As in
1990, the US and its allies were charged at most with
"ignoring" Indonesian atrocities. The truth was well
concealed throughout: Indonesia was given critical
military and diplomatic support for its monstrous war
crimes; and crucially, unlike the case of Pol Pot and
Saddam, these could readily have been halted, simply
by withdrawal of Western aid and breaking the silence.


Ingenious efforts have been made to explain away the
radically different response to Suharto, on the one
hand, and Pol Pot and Saddam, on the other, and to
avoid the obvious explanation in terms of interest,
which of course covers a vastly wider range. William
Shawcross offered a "more structurally serious
explanation" for the Timor-Cambodia case: "a
comparative lack of sources" and lack of access to
refugees, Lisbon and Australia being so inaccessible
in comparison with the Thai-Cambodian border. Gérard
Chaliand dismissed France's active support for the
Indonesian slaughter in the midst of a great show of
anguish about Pol Pot on grounds that the Timorese are
"geographically and historically marginal." The
difference between Kuwait and Timor, according to Fred
Halliday, is that Kuwait "has been up and running as
an independent state since 1961"; to evaluate the
proposal, recall that the US prevented the UN from
interfering with Israel's invasion of Lebanon or
following through on its condemnation of Israel's
(virtual) annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights, and
that, unlike Suharto in Timor, Saddam had offered to
withdraw from Kuwait, how seriously we do not know,
since the US rejected the offers instantly out of fear
that they might "defuse the crisis." A common stance
is that "American influence on [Indonesia's decision
to invade] may easily be exaggerated," though the US
"averted its eyes from East Timor" and "could have
done far more than it did to distance itself from the
carnage" (James Fallows). The fault, then, is failure
to act, not the decisive contribution to the ongoing
carnage by increasing the flow of arms as atrocities
mounted and by rendering the UN "utterly ineffective"
because "The United States wished things to turn out
as they did" (Ambassador Moynihan), while the
intellectual community preferred to denounce the
crimes of official enemies. Others tried different
techniques to evade the obvious, adding further
footnotes to the inglorious story.26

The Australian government was more forthright. "There
is no binding legal obligation not to recognize the
acquisition of territory that was acquired by force,"
Foreign Minister Gareth Evans explained, adding that
"The world is a pretty unfair place, littered with
examples of acquisition by force..." (in the same
breath, following the US-UK lead, he banned all
official contacts with the PLO with proper indignation
because of its "consistently defending and associating
itself with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait"). Prime
Minister Hawke declared that "big countries cannot
invade small neighbors and get away with it"
(referring to Iraq and Kuwait), proclaiming that in
the "new order" established by the virtuous
Anglo-Americans, "would-be aggressors will think twice
before invading smaller neighbours." The weak will
"feel more secure because they know that they will not
stand alone if they are threatened," now that, at
last, "all nations should know that the rule of law
must prevail over the rule of force in international
relations."

Australia has a special relation to Timor; tens of
thousands of Timorese were killed during World War II
protecting a few Australian guerrillas fighting in
Timor to deter an impending Japanese invasion of
Australia. Australia has been the most outspoken
defender of the Indonesian invasion. One reason, known
early on, is the rich natural gas and oil reserves in
the Timor Gap, "a cold, hard, sobering reality that
must be addressed," Foreign Minister Bill Hayden
explained frankly in April 1984. In December 1989,
Evans signed a treaty with the Indonesian conquerors
dividing up Timor's wealth; through 1990, Australia
received $Aus. 31 million from sales of permits to oil
companies for exploration. Evans's remarks, quoted
above, were made in explanation of Australia's
rejection of a protest against the treaty brought to
the World Court by Portugal, generally regarded as the
responsible authority.27

While British political figures and intellectuals
lectured with due gravity on the values of their
traditional culture, now at last to be imposed by the
righteous in the "new world order" (referring to
Iraq-Kuwait), British Aerospace entered into new
arrangements to sell Indonesia jet fighters and enter
into co-production arrangements, "what could turn out
to be one of the largest arms packages any company has
sold to an Asian country," the Far Eastern Economic
Review reported. Britain had become "one of
Indonesia's major arms suppliers, selling £290 million
worth of equipment in the 1986-1990 period alone,"
Oxford historian Peter Carey writes.28

The public has been protected from such undesirable
facts, kept in the shadows along with a Fall 1990
Indonesian military offensive in Timor under the cover
of the Gulf crisis, and the Western-backed Indonesian
operations that may wipe out a million tribal people
in West Papua, with thousands of victims of chemical
weapons among the dead according to human rights
activists and the few observers. Solemn discourse on
international law, the crime of aggression, and our
perhaps too-fervent idealism can therefore proceed,
untroubled. The attention of the civilized West is to
be focused, laser-like, on the crimes of official
enemies, not on those it could readily mitigate or
bring to an end.29

The Timor-Kuwait embarrassment, such as it was,
quickly subsided; reasonably, since it is only one of
a host of similar examples that demonstrate the utter
cynicism of the posturing during the Gulf War. But
problems arose again in November 1991, when Indonesia
made a foolish error, carrying out a massacre in the
capital city of Dili in front of TV cameras and
severely beating two US reporters, Alan Nairn and Amy
Goodman. That is bad form, and requires the
conventional remedy: an inquiry to whitewash the
atrocity, a tap on the wrist for the authorities, mild
punishment of subordinates, and applause from the rich
men's club over this impressive proof that our
moderate client is making still further progress. The
script, familiar to the point of boredom, was followed
routinely. Meanwhile Timorese were harshly punished
and the atmosphere of terror deepened.

Business proceeded as usual. A few weeks after the
Dili massacre, the Indonesia-Australia joint authority
signed six contracts for oil exploration in the Timor
Gap, with four more in January. Eleven contracts with
55 companies were reported by mid-1992, including
Australian, British, Japanese, Dutch, and US. The
naive might ask what the reaction would have been had
55 western companies joined with Iraq in exploiting
Kuwaiti oil, though the analogy is imprecise, since
Suharto's atrocities in Timor were a hundred times as
great. Britain stepped up its arms sales, announcing
plans in January to sell Indonesia a naval vessel. As
Indonesian courts sentenced Timorese "subversives" to
15-year terms for having allegedly instigated the Dili
massacre, British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce negotiated
a multi-million pound deal for 40 Hawk
fighter-trainers, adding to the 15 already in service,
some used in crushing the Timorese. Meanwhile
Indonesia was targeted for a new sales campaign by
British firms because of its prospects for aerospace
industries. As the slight tremor subsided, others
followed suit.30

The "Gleam of Light in Asia" in 1965-1966 and the glow
it has left until today illuminate the traditional
attitudes towards human rights and democracy, the
reasons for them, and the critical role of the
educated classes. They reveal with equal brilliance
the reach of the pragmatic criterion that effectively
dismisses any human values in the culture of
respectability.


----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------

4 Leffler, Preponderance, 260, 165. See ch. 10.4, and
for the background, ch. 2.1-2. On Japan-SEA, see RC,
ch. 2.1. Below, unless otherwise indicated, see Peter
Dale Scott, "Exporting Military-Economic Development,"
in Caldwell, Ten Years, and "The United States and the
Overthrow of Sukarno," Pacific Affairs, Summer 1985;
PEHR, vol. I, ch. 4.1; Kolko, Confronting.

5 FTR, 457ff.; COT, ch. 8. Marshall, et al.,
Iran-Contra, chs. 7, 8.

6 McGehee, Nation, April 11, 1981. Also News from Asia
Watch, June 21, 1990.

7 Ibid. Rusk cited by Kolko.

8 Brands, "The Limits of Manipulation: How the United
States Didn't Topple Sukarno," J. of American History,
Dec. 1989.

9Johnson cited by Kolko, Confronting. McNamara and
congressional report cited in Wolpin, Military Aid, 8,
128. McNamara to Johnson, Brands, op. cit. Ch. 7.3.

10 Public Papers of the Presidents, 1966 (Washington,
1987), Book II, 563.

11 NYT, March 29, 1973. See ch. 10, n. 64.

12 Frankel, NYT, Oct. 11, 1965.

13Quoted in NYT, Oct. 17, 1965.

14Robert Martin, U.S. News, June 6, 1966. Time, July
15, 1966.

15 NYT, June 19, 1966.

16 Editorials, NYT, Dec. 22, 1965; Feb. 17, Aug. 25,
Sept. 29, 1966.

17 IHT, Dec. 5, 1977, from LAT.

18 PEHR, I, ch. 3.4.4; TNCW, ch. 13; Peck, Chomsky
Reader, 303-13. For an overview, Taylor, Indonesia's
Forgotten War.

19 John Murray Brown, CSM, Feb. 6, 1987; Shenon, NYT,
Sept. 3, 1992; Economist, Aug. 15, 1987.

20 Wain, WSJ, April 25, 1989; Asia Week, Feb. 24,
1989, cited in TAPOL Bulletin, April 1989. Richard
Borsuk, WSJ, June 8, 1992.

21 Kadane, SFE, May 20, 1990. WP, May 21; AP, May 21;
Guardian (London), May 22; BG, May 23, 1990. One
exception to the general dismissal was the New Yorker,
"Talk of the Town," July 2, 1990. Guatemala, ch. 7.7.

22 Wines, NYT, July 12; Martens, letter, WP, June 2,
1990.

23 Budiarjo, letters, WP, June 13; Rosenfeld, WP, July
13, July 20, 1990.

24 Moynihan, NYRB, June 28, 1990.

25 See TNCW, ch. 13. Lewis, NYT, April 16, 1992.

26Shawcross, see MC, 284f.; for more detail, Peck, op.
cit. Chaliand, Nouvelles littéraires, Nov. 10, 1981;
Fallows, Atlantic Monthly, Feb., June 1982. Halliday,
Guardian Weekly, Aug. 16, 1992.

27 Daily Hansard SENATE (Australia), 1 November, 1989,
2707. Indonesia News Service, Nov. 1, 1990. Green left
mideast.gulf.346, electronic communication, Feb. 18,
1991. Monthly Record, Parliament (Australia), March
1991. Reuters, Canberra, Feb. 24; Communiqué,
International Court of Justice, Feb. 22, 1991. PEHR,
I, 163-6. Taylor, Indonesia's Forgotten War, 171.

28 FEER, 25 July, 1991. Carey, letter, Guardian
Weekly, July 12, 1992.

29 ABC (Australia) radio, "Background briefing; East
Timor," Feb. 17, 1991; Osborne, Indonesia's Secret
Wars; Monbiot, Poisoned Arrows; Anti-Slavery Society,
West Papua.

30 Age (Australia), Jan. 11, Feb. 18; IPS, Kupang,
Jan. 20; Australian, July 6; Carey, op. cit.; The
Engineer, March 26, 1992. See also TAPOL Bulletin,
Aug. 1992.



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