The Democrats & Suharto: Bill Clinton & Richard Holbrooke Questioned on Support for Brutal Dictator

On Dem. Now! today:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/28/the_democrats_suharto_bill_clinton_richard

The Democrats & Suharto: Bill Clinton & Richard Holbrooke Questioned on Their Support for Brutal Indonesian Dictatorship

Democracy Now! re-airs Allan Nairn’s questioning of Richard Holbrooke (who is now a senior foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton) and Bill Clinton on how the Carter and Clinton administrations backed Suharto despite his brutal human rights record.


In 1997, Richard Holbrooke, former US ambassador to the United Nations under President Clinton, was given an honorary degree from Brown University. He delivered an address about everything from Indonesia and East Timor to Bosnia.

Richard Holbrooke was the State Department officer in charge of East Asia when Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975.

Allan Nairn questioned Holbrooke shortly after his Brown University speech.

On East Timor’s independence day, May 20, 2002, former President Bill Clinton led the US delegation to the official ceremony. He gave a speech celebrating the US role in bringing about East Timor’s independence. Allan Nairn questioned President Clinton shortly after his speech.

Brad Simpson, Director of the Indonesia and East Timor Documentation Project at the National Security Archive in George Washington University. He is also Assistant Professor of US History and Foreign Relations at the University of Maryland in Baltimore County. His forthcoming book is called “Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S. – Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968.”

Allan Nairn, award-winning investigative journalist who has reported from Indonesia for years. He runs the web-blog “News and Comment.”

He still dodges the sanctions on Iraq, which were shown to be ineffective at anything except starving innocent children....

with the reagainizing of Bill Clinton. I wish more Democrats were aware of this history

fire on the citizens. :wow: They kept on shooting until no one was left standing. :cry:

The scale of the protest was unprecedented; the killing was not. Since Indonesia illegally invaded the former Portuguese colony in 1975 at least 200,000 people have been killed—one third of the population. While not the largest massacre in this genocidal history, the Santa Cruz massacre was witnessed and photographed by foreign journalists, inspiring a worldwide outcry which continues today.

In fact, demonstrations against the occupation of East Timor will be held all over the world today, including here in the United States. Major protests are planned for Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Washington, DC and New York.

The protests come in the midst of a series of high-level engagements between the United States and Indonesia. President Clinton himself meets with Indonesian dictator Suharto next week and Defense Secretary William Cohen is off to Jakarta this week. And Washington has backed a $30 billion support package for the Indonesian economy in the wake of the collapse of the Indonesian currency earlier this year.

-snip

http://www.democracynow.org/1997/11/12/massacre_the_story_of_east_timor

This, after the fact that the US tacitly gave Suharto the permission to invade and brutally slaughter several hundred thousand East Timorese, often with American weapons sold to Suharto. The irony is bitter and very thick.

And I was born in Indonesia right before "the Year of Living Dangerously" there... I'm glad I didn't use my option to get citizenship there.

At what point do we stop sweeping everything under the rug.

Forty plus years later, will anyone tell the truth :(

http://www.democracynow.org/2006/12/27/president_gerald_ford_dies_at_93

"Former President Gerald Ford died last night at the age of 93. We begin our coverage of Ford’s time in office with a look at his support for the Indonesian invasion of East Timor that killed one-third of the Timorese population. We’re joined by Brad Simpson of the National Security Archives and journalist Alan Nairn. ...

Less well known is President Ford involvement in East Timor. Both the New York Times and Washington Post failed to mention in their obituaries today that Ford and Henry Kissinger, his Secretary of State, offered advance approval of Indonesia’s brutal invasion of East Timor..."


Amy Goodman Speaks on the Genocide in East Timor
5 minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvs41WylohA



CIA STALLING STATE DEPARTMENT HISTORIES
STATE HISTORIANS CONCLUDE U.S. PASSED NAMES OF COMMUNISTS
TO INDONESIAN ARMY, WHICH KILLED AT LEAST 105,000 IN 1965-66

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB52/


Ford and Kissinger Gave Green Light to
Indonesia's Invasion of East Timor, 1975:
New Documents Detail Conversations with Suharto

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/


The Indonesia/East Timor
Documentation Project

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/indonesia/index.html

classified.

http://www.democracynow.org/2006/12/27/president_gerald_ford_dies_at_93

"...AMY GOODMAN: Brad, how difficult was it to get this declassified? The memos that you got? And how long were these memos about Ford and Kissinger’s meeting with the long reigning Suharto? How long were they kept classified?

BRAD SIMPSON: Well, they are kept classified until the fall of 2002. We now know, actually, that a Congressman from Minnesota, Donald Fraser, had actually attempted to declassify the memo, the so-called Smoking Gun Memo, the transcript of General Suharto’s conversation with Gerald Ford, in December of 1975. Congressman Fraser actually tried to declassify this in document in 1978 during the Suharto adm--or during the Carter years and Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, realizing full well the explosive nature of this cable would show that the United States had been an accomplice in an international act of aggression, recommended that the State Department refuse to declassify the memo, a mere three years after the invasion.

And it took another 25 years after this episode before the cables were finally declassified and of course much more has come out. And I think it’s incontrovertible that the United States played the crucial role in enabling the Indonesian invasion of East Timor..."

Presidential Frontrunners

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/3/vote_for_change_atrocity_linked_us


"...AMY GOODMAN: Are you saying that there’s no difference between these candidates?


ALLAN NAIRN: Well, fundamentally, there’s no difference on the basic principle of, are you against the killing of civilians and are you willing to enforce the murder laws. If we were willing to enforce the murder laws, the headquarters of each of these candidates could be raided, and various advisers and many candidates could be hauled away by the cops, because they have backed various actions that, under established principles like the Nuremberg Principles, like the principles set up in the Rwanda tribunals, the Bosnia tribunals, things that are unacceptable, like aggressive war, like the killing of civilians for political purposes. So, in a basic sense, there is no choice.


But there is a difference in this sense: the US is so vastly powerful, the US influences and has the potential to end so many millions of lives around the world, that if, let’s say, you have two candidates that are 99% the same—there’s only 1% difference between them—if you’re talking about decisions that affect a million lives—1% of a million is 10,000—that’s 10,000 lives. So, even though it’s a bitter choice, if you choose the one who is going to kill 10,000 fewer people, well, then you’ve saved 10,000 lives. We shouldn’t be limited to that choice. It’s unacceptable. And Americans should start to realize that it’s unacceptable.


But that’s the choice we have at the moment..."

About 20 minutes

http://www.archive.org/details/Massacre_The_Story_of_East_Timor_vid

"A documentary produced by Amy Goodman and journalist Allan Nairn on the Santa Cruz massacre and the history of Indonesian and US involvement in the Southeast Asian nation.

This is the 2002 video version of the 1991 radio documentary by Amy Goodman.

This item is part of the collection: Democracy Now!

Producer: Democracy Now!
Audio/Visual: sound, color"