========
Newsgroups: alt.anarchism,alt.society.anarchy,talk.politics.theory,
talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.economics,alt.fan.noam-chomsky,
alt.politics.radical-left,alt.politics.libertarian,
talk.politics.libertarian,alt.individualism
Subject: East Timor moral questions [was Re: Chomsky's bad faith proven]
From: fishe@merle.acns.nwu.edu (Carwil James)
Date: 24 Sep 1996 02:51:09 GMT

In article <526q5s$1e0@news-central.tiac.net>,
Hugo S. Cunningham  wrote:
|(reissued under my own name.  For those puzzled by its brief
|appearance under "FAIR (by Hugo S. Cunningham)", that mixup occurred
|because I was considering posting a message I had received from FAIR,
|and got it mixed up with this one.)
|
|fishe@merle.acns.nwu.edu (Carwil James) wrote:
|
|>In article <522jq3$4jd@news-central.tiac.net>,
|>Hugo S. Cunningham  wrote:
|>|hallinan@borg.com (Terry Hallinan) wrote:
|>|
|>|A common estimate is 200,000 dead, a third of a far smaller population
|>|than in Cambodia.
|>|
|>|I repeat:  there was a war in East Timor.  When the shooting lets up,
|>|military operations and damage by the Indonesian government lets up.
|>|(Whether that war was advisable is another question.) 

For the record, that war began with bombings and mass killings by the
Indonesian army.

|>That is a ghastly ultimatum. Even more so when you consider that
|>Indonesian army violence is directed primarily at the civilian
|>population. That there is a war confers no moral equality, especially
|>when only one side's territory (and villages) are the battlefield.
|
|Such an "ultimatum" used to be routine, and remains common.  I list
|some other former colonies that were eyed by surrounding states.

The ultimatum has nothing to do with the nature of the states. What the
ultimatum that you discuss is this:

   We invade you.
   You resist militarily.
   We inflict massive damage on your civilian population.
   Now we tell you that if you end resistance, we will stop killing your
    civilians.

It is a moral disgrace and war crime to issue such an ultimatum (though I
don't have the specific evidence that Indonesia has made this sort of
statement directly). 

Furthermore, Indonesia has rejected offers to demilitarize the entire
nation of East Timor (troop withdrawal and guerrilla disarmament).

Indonesia's violence does not trace its routes to the violent resistance.
It has shown itself more than willing to kill people for nonviolent
opposition to the occupation (not even resistance, just the voicing of
an opinion).

|Question:  would you rather be ruled by (1) a regime that will leave
|you alone and let you earn an honest living if you don't fight them,

irrelevant to the issue at hand. As noted above, political opposition
(talking rather than fighting) is enough to precipitate government
attacks on you. So too is having children... Indonesian doctors have
been documented sterilizing Timorese women without their consent
during routine medical procedures. The Timorese haven't been left alone,
they've been herded to government controlled villages in the countryside,
had their land stolen to make way for Indonesian settlers, been killed
for their suspected political view or their level of education.

|or (2)  a regime that will kick down your door and shoot you (or send
|you on a death march) for no reason at all?

This seems to accurately describe both the Cambodian and the Timorese
situations (though I suppose, one could argue that escape was possible
by rallying to the side of the army, but that simply isn't realistic).

|   (And please don't answer that you refuse to dignify such an
|outrageous "ultimatum" with a response.  It is a question billions of
|people are faced with every day.)

It would seem to be irrelevant to the case at hand, but I'd have to go
choice number one. Although if conditions were bad enough under such
a government, it might be better to die from random gunfire than random
distributions of hunger and disesase. But any genocidal regime qualifies
as number two anyway.

As for the billions facing that ultimatum, how many people get to
choose which sort of miserable government they have? If people have
an actual choice, it is unlikely that a government which engages in
random violence is one of the options. Neither the Timorese nor the 
Cambodians had such a choice.

|     As for violence being directed "at the civilian population," some
|blame must also be shared by those who choose a guerrilla strategy,
|deliberately blurring the line between civilians and combatants.

Oh, so the government thought is was killing guerrillas when it
starved villages, shot demonstrators, and marched whole towns to
mass death.

|Sometimes a cause is indeed important enough to justify putting
|civilians in the line of fire, but those who do so should at least
|give conscious consideration to the risks involved.

The East Timorese guerrilla war is being fought in the mountains
and countryside, primarily. The early record of the war shows that
the Indonesians had few qualms about killing civilians without any
excuses; providing them an excuse would seem less of a moral issue
as a result.

|>|In contrast, Cambodia lay unresisting, prostrate at the feet of the
|>|Khmer Rouge.  In 1975, the US wanted no part of any further Indochina
|>|entanglements.  Khmer Rouge Cambodia had diplomatic support from
|>|China, and neither of its important neighbors (Thailand and Communist
|>|Vietnam) was looking for trouble.  The Khmer Rouge were as secure in
|>|power as Stalin was on the eve of the Great Purge (1936).  Their
|>|attack on their own people was pointless viciousness and bloodlust.
|
|>While Indonesia was defending itself? Was engaged in a "legitimate"
|>invasion?
|
|No.  I previously said it was a stupid, unnecessary invasion:  a
|protectorate or "Finlandization" option would have served Indonesia
|far better.  Nevertheless, the invasion was within the bounds of
|common international practice in "de-colonization."

The precedents you cite are other brutal crimes. And an invasion was
outside the bounds of international law. It was a murderous act, for
which there is no exuse.

|>Indonesia was under no threat. It was quite secure, with
|>a powerful military. Outside powers, especially the West, had no
|>intentions of intervening. The US had given the green light. Suharto,
|>orchestrator of genocide 1965-67, was as secure as Stalin.
|
|East Timor was being handed over by a far-Left Portuguese government
|to a Left-wing guerrilla movement.

And nations have the right to decide their own political stance.

|Suharto might logically have
|feared a local version of Castro's Cuba, chronically exporting
|guerrillas and poison, if unfriendly powers were once allowed to
|consolidate a foothold.

This debate has enough fronts without discussing Cuba.

An invasion (or a protectorate or "finlandization") based on the
political composition of a state is clearly illegitimate. "Fear"
of tiny East Timor is nothing but paranoia, and does not "logically"
support any strategic decision.

|Good clarification.  Quite possibly in Irian Jaya, brutal colonization
|came before any sustained resistance.

As I've noted, brutal action (initial mass killings and preliminary
bombings) came before sustained resistance in Timor. I lack specific
knowledge of Irian Jaya on that issue.

|>Indeed, the initial resistance was to an invasion (still illegal
|>under international law, you know). Indonesia has a weaker claim to
|>East Timor than Iraq does to Kuwait.
|
|     Neither Iraq nor Indonesia could prove a continuous chain of
|title to the territories in question (Kuwait, East Timor).
|    Kuwait, however, had a  m.u.c.h  longer history of independence,
|dating back before Iraq's founding in 1921.  Kuwait had at least since
|1961 been recognized by all countries in the world (except possibly
|Iraq).  In contrast, East Timor's claimed independence from Portugal
|was hardly a year old (if that), not universally recognized.

Which is irrelevant to the invalidity of an Indonesian claim over the
nation.

|>|>Some people have the effrontery to resist
|>|>torture, rape, and murder.  The only hope for the people of East Timor
|>|>is the bad publicity that was generated by a recent massacre that was
|>|>witnessed by foreigners.
|>|
|>|Another difference between the Indonesian regime and the Khmer Rouge
|>|is that foreign witnesses are allowed.
|
|>East Timor has been closed to outsiders for most of its history. The
|>foreign witnesses were beaten by Indonesian troops and videotape
|>footage escaped capture by being buried in a graveyard. The reporter
|>on the scene, Allan Nairn is now persona non grata in all of Indonesia
|>because he is a "national security threat."
|
|On Saturday 21 Sep 96, I ran across a Western pro-East-Timor activist
|who matter-of-factly mentioned plans to see the place for himself.  He
|told me East Timor has been opened up to tourism, and that some human
|rights activists believe the presence of numerous foreign witnesses
|will help deter renewed repression.  (The Indonesian government,
|perhaps, hopes that a little prosperity may heal some wounds and coopt
|some former opponents.)

My only point was that foreign witnesses were not allowed to the 
genocide in East Timor.

|Such apparent naivete highlights an illogical aspect of human nature:
|part-time warriors (like Suharto) frequently leave off killing once a
|war ends, allowing former enemies to recover and prosper.

Apparently, to lose one's naivete, one must kill the entire population
of your "enemies".

|>|>At least one was a casualty.  Businesses
|>|>like to keep their nefarious activities in the shadows as it tends to
|>|>repel customers and stockholders and such and there are currently some
|>|>hopes of a semi-autonomous government.  The only other option for the
|>|>Indonesian government is to complete their extermination of the
|>|>population.
|>|
|>|>I have seen few postings where the hypocrisy of the writer was so
|>|>evident.  Strange how he condemns Noam Chomsky's blind ideology.
|>|
|>|Where in my posting did I say that all was sweetness and light in East
|>|Timor?
|
|>You merely state that Indonesia had "legitimate fears" of East Timor and
|>suggest that they should have declared a protectorate over it. In short,
|>the threat to the 5th largest country in the world from a nation of
|>600,000 (and its ability to host opposition guerrillas, with no
|>evidence that they would) justified ignoring the fundamental right of
|>those people to self determination. By your own logic, you are obligated
|>to condemn Suharto as a murderous thug (he's on "your side").
|
|If I am as vile a hypocrite as the other poster claimed, my proposed
|remedy for East Timor (protectorate, or "Finlandization") would have
|to be as bloody and evil as the Khmer Rouge regime I condemn.  Surely
|you can see the silliness of such a comparison?

I guess what the other poster expects from you is a sense of right and
wrong about East Timor as well as Cambodia. To criticize any wavering on
the KR death toll as evil, but then to concede "legitimate fears"
underlying the Timor bloodbath seems hypocritical. It's not vile hypocrisy
in support of genocidal actions. But it does seem to be poor logic
in support of Indonesian imperialism.

I your (somewhat reasonable) denial you confuse your view of Chomsky and
Herman's alleged hypocrisy with that of the poster. You see yourself
being compared to a KR apologist, while (s)he does not, perhaps, intend
to draw that comparison.

|    In East Timor, Suharto has been a blood-spattered incompetent.  

I would argue that like US action in Vietnam, Indonesia's invasion
was not just tactically stupid, but morally wrong. It subverted the
basic right of the Timorese to determine their own future.

|    To Suharto's credit, however, he ended Sukarno's pointless war
|against Malaysia, allowing both countries to prosper.  He has given
|over 100 million people a generation of peace, and a broad-based rise
|in living standards.  (It is instructive that anti-corporate activists
|have condemned some multinationals for moving some low-wage factories
|out of Indonesia to lower-wage new markets like Vietnam.  Under
|Suharto, wages have risen enough to make such a move worthwhile.)

Your omission of the 1965-7 bloodbath which accompanied Suharto's 
rise to power does not serve you well. I can only assume that you
were unaware of the hundreds of thousands slaughtered, solidifying
Suharto's ideological control.

Carwil James

--
 /\  / Chan | Fish-E Carwil James |    Seek Peace & Justice Everywhere     |
/o \/- bpen | Northwestern Univ.  | CTD '88, '89, '90, '91, '94, '95 '96   |
\/ /\- bplah| Class of '96  | "But there is | "Life's a beach and the tide |
 \/  \      |               |  no context"  |  just came in."  ~Osadczuk   | 

========
Newsgroups: alt.anarchism,alt.society.anarchy,talk.politics.theory,
talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.economics,alt.fan.noam-chomsky,
alt.politics.radical-left,alt.politics.libertarian,
talk.politics.libertarian,alt.individualism
Subject: Re: East Timor moral questions [was Re: Chomsky's bad faith proven]
From: hcunn@tiac.net (Hugo S. Cunningham)
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 21:34:42 GMT

fishe@merle.acns.nwu.edu (Carwil James) wrote:


[deleted]

>|Such an "ultimatum" used to be routine, and remains common.  I list
>|some other former colonies that were eyed by surrounding states.

>The ultimatum has nothing to do with the nature of the states. What the
>ultimatum that you discuss is this:

>   We invade you.
>   You resist militarily.
>   We inflict massive damage on your civilian population.
>   Now we tell you that if you end resistance, we will stop killing your
>    civilians.

    I do not know the details of the Indonesian war in East Timor.

    Perhaps (as your last posting implies)  it has gone differently
from guerrilla campaigns in most other parts of the world, which,
whether involving left-wing "freedom fighters" or right-wing "freedom
fighters," often look like this:

We invade you
You disappear into the civilian community
You, dressed as civilians, ambush us from civilian facilities.
We fire back, inflicting massive damage on said facilities (and
various bystanders as well)

In the 19th Century, negotiators tried to codify a distinction between
civilian non-combatants and uniformed military.  It has proven too
tempting for powers of all ideological hues to ignore it.
    Guerrilla strategy has a wonderful cost-benefit ratio.  A British
commander against the 1950s Communist insurgency in Malaya estimated
that the defender needs a 10 to 1 superiority in resources and
manpower to win.  Confronted with a Communist guerrilla campaign in El
Salvador in the early 1980s (with various other countries next on the
list), Reagan was smart enough to counter it by supporting a guerrilla
campaign in Sandinista Nicaragua, supply base and sanctuary of the El
Salvador guerrillas.  Over a billion dollars spent defensively in El
Salvador bought Reagan only a precarious stalemate, but a mere $100
million in 1985 (before a Left-influenced US Congress cut off funds)
spent on anti-government guerrillas brought Nicaragua's Sandinistas to
the brink of collapse.
     Guerrilla war is the chemical warfare of the late Twentieth
Century:  dirty, but so devastatingly effective that nobody can afford
to renounce it unilaterally.

>It is a moral disgrace and war crime to issue such an ultimatum (though I
>don't have the specific evidence that Indonesia has made this sort of
>statement directly). 

>Furthermore, Indonesia has rejected offers to demilitarize the entire
>nation of East Timor (troop withdrawal and guerrilla disarmament).

Such offers sound reasonable to me, though there may be some "fine
print."

[deletion of material on Indonesian atrocities in East Timor, which I
am not expert on]

[deletion of Q&A on "lesser of two evils"]

[deletion of more on Indonesian atrocities in East Timor] 

[deletion of arguments on justifications for invasion]

>An invasion (or a protectorate or "finlandization") based on the
>political composition of a state is clearly illegitimate. "Fear"
>of tiny East Timor is nothing but paranoia, and does not "logically"
>support any strategic decision.

There are degrees of being "illegitimate."  Soviet pressure on
capitalist Finland was somewhat "illegitimate," but far less so than
than the wretched regimes they inflicted on Central Europe,  not to
mention the decimation of the three Baltic States.
    A "Finlandization" option could have left East Timor's internal
"political composition" up to the locals.

[Irian Jaya material deleted]

[deleted]

>|    Kuwait, however, had a  m.u.c.h  longer history of independence,
>|dating back before Iraq's founding in 1921.  Kuwait had at least since
>|1961 been recognized by all countries in the world (except possibly
>|Iraq).  In contrast, East Timor's claimed independence from Portugal
>|was hardly a year old (if that), not universally recognized.

>Which is irrelevant to the invalidity of an Indonesian claim over the
>nation.

but is relevant to whether said "nation" might, in de-facto
international practice, be considered "up for grabs" by everyone.

[deletion]

>|On Saturday 21 Sep 96, I ran across a Western pro-East-Timor activist
>|who matter-of-factly mentioned plans to see the place for himself.  He
>|told me East Timor has been opened up to tourism, and that some human
>|rights activists believe the presence of numerous foreign witnesses
>|will help deter renewed repression.  (The Indonesian government,
>|perhaps, hopes that a little prosperity may heal some wounds and coopt
>|some former opponents.)

>My only point was that foreign witnesses were not allowed to the 
>genocide in East Timor.

>|Such apparent naivete highlights an illogical aspect of human nature:
>|part-time warriors (like Suharto) frequently leave off killing once a
>|war ends, allowing former enemies to recover and prosper.

>Apparently, to lose one's naivete, one must kill the entire population
>of your "enemies".

     Actually, I was talking about "naivete" of the "Western
pro-East-Timor activist," not of Suharto (though my grammar was
ambiguous).
    Nevertheless, taking your remark at face value, one doesn't have
to kill all (or even most) of one's "enemies" in order to win a war.
(One potential exception was Fascist Japan in World War II, whose
people accepted indoctrination that surrender was a fate worse than
death.)

[deletion]

>|>|
>|>|>I have seen few postings where the hypocrisy of the writer was so
>|>|>evident.  Strange how he condemns Noam Chomsky's blind ideology.
>|>|
>|>|Where in my posting did I say that all was sweetness and light in East
>|>|Timor?
>|
>|>You merely state that Indonesia had "legitimate fears" of East Timor and
>|>suggest that they should have declared a protectorate over it. In short,
>|>the threat to the 5th largest country in the world from a nation of
>|>600,000 (and its ability to host opposition guerrillas, with no
>|>evidence that they would) justified ignoring the fundamental right of
>|>those people to self determination. By your own logic, you are obligated
>|>to condemn Suharto as a murderous thug (he's on "your side").
>|
>|If I am as vile a hypocrite as the other poster claimed, my proposed
>|remedy for East Timor (protectorate, or "Finlandization") would have
>|to be as bloody and evil as the Khmer Rouge regime I condemn.  Surely
>|you can see the silliness of such a comparison?

>I guess what the other poster expects from you is a sense of right and
>wrong about East Timor as well as Cambodia. To criticize any wavering on
>the KR death toll as evil,

I admit that the words "bad faith" in my original title were
needlessly provocative.  Better would have been "ideological bias."  I
had responded over-"hastily" in my first post to original poster
Arnold Chien's claim that Chomsky "is not on either side."

    In a follow-up, Terry Hallinan ("the other poster") condemned me
for trying "to justify the distinction by a body count and
resistance."  To that, I must plead guilty as charged.  While in a
perfect world, no regime would kill anybody, in the real world one has
to choose between regimes that kill thousands and regimes that kill
millions.

>but then to concede "legitimate fears"
>underlying the Timor bloodbath seems hypocritical. It's not vile hypocrisy
>in support of genocidal actions. But it does seem to be poor logic
>in support of Indonesian imperialism.

>I your (somewhat reasonable) denial you confuse your view of Chomsky and
>Herman's alleged hypocrisy with that of the poster. You see yourself
>being compared to a KR apologist, while (s)he does not, perhaps, intend
>to draw that comparison.

But while I offer partial explanations for horridness in East Timor, I
don't juggle reports to imply a vastly downsized version of its
extent.  

>|    In East Timor, Suharto has been a blood-spattered incompetent.  

>I would argue that like US action in Vietnam, Indonesia's invasion
>was not just tactically stupid, but morally wrong. It subverted the
>basic right of the Timorese to determine their own future.

    Not all foreign interventions are intrinsically evil.  The USA
owes its independence to French intervention in a civil war of the
British Empire.
    The US intervention in Vietnam was wrong not because it tried to
force capitalism down the throats of people who didn't want it (in
fact, Vietnam seems to be evolving that way anyhow), but rather
because the cost of defeating a well-organized military state was
wildly disproportionate to any benefit to be gained.
    Relatively few questioned George Bush's 1992 intervention in
Somalia on moral grounds.  (Nevertheless, there was nothing in the
character of Somalia to suggest the intervention would do any good,
and it didn't.)

>|    To Suharto's credit, however, he ended Sukarno's pointless war
>|against Malaysia, allowing both countries to prosper.  He has given
>|over 100 million people a generation of peace, and a broad-based rise
>|in living standards.  (It is instructive that anti-corporate activists
>|have condemned some multinationals for moving some low-wage factories
>|out of Indonesia to lower-wage new markets like Vietnam.  Under
>|Suharto, wages have risen enough to make such a move worthwhile.)

>Your omission of the 1965-7 bloodbath which accompanied Suharto's 
>rise to power does not serve you well. I can only assume that you
>were unaware of the hundreds of thousands slaughtered, solidifying
>Suharto's ideological control.

    Now that you remind me, I was aware of a large bloodbath
(300,000?) in 1965, which arose directly out of a failed Communist
coup.  The army and the Communists had apparently been making plans
for each other for a long time.
      I do not know the details of this bloodbath.  Nevertheless, it
sounds more what I dislike most in the Khmer Rouge, than does the East
Timor campaign, which I persist in seeing partially in military terms.
    A few years later (1970?) we would see the notorious "Operation
Phoenix," where the CIA and South Vietnamese security wiped out
perhaps 20,000 Vietcong operatives in South Vietnamese villages.
(After the failed Tet Offensive [1968] and Operation Phoenix, the
Vietcong virtually ceased to be a significant force).  Fewer people
remember, however, that the Communist forces had sponsored their own
"Operation Phoenix" in 1962-63, wiping out similar numbers of
government officials (including, I understand, schoolteachers) in
rural South Vietnam.
     Such seems to be the way politics was conducted in Southeast Asia
in the 1960s.

--Hugo S. Cunningham


========
Newsgroups: alt.anarchism,alt.society.anarchy,talk.politics.theory,
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alt.politics.radical-left,alt.politics.libertarian,
talk.politics.libertarian,alt.individualism
Subject: Re: East Timor moral questions [was Re: Chomsky's bad faith proven]
From: hcunn@tiac.net (Hugo S. Cunningham)
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 19:53:35 GMT

I repost this "decolonization"  list from an earlier message, for the
convenience of newcomers.  It was the message Carwil James used for
his posting above. 


fishe@merle.acns.nwu.edu (Carwil James) wrote:

>In article <522jq3$4jd@news-central.tiac.net>,
>Hugo S. Cunningham  wrote:

[deleted]

>|
>|I repeat:  there was a war in East Timor.  When the shooting lets up,
>|military operations and damage by the Indonesian government lets up.
>|(Whether that war was advisable is another question.) 

>That is a ghastly ultimatum. Even more so when you consider that
>Indonesian army violence is directed primarily at the civilian
>population. That there is a war confers no moral equality, especially
>when only one side's territory (and villages) are the battlefield.

Such an "ultimatum" used to be routine, and remains common.  I list
some other former colonies that were eyed by surrounding states.

date             colony  former          fate
de-colonized             owner
?

1950            Tibet     balanced     Occupied by China
                          betw China
                          and British
                          India

1956            Cyprus    Britain      Turkey demands partition,
                                                secures it in 1974

1962        West Irian    Netherlands  given to Sukarno's Indonesia

1963            Goa       Portugal     India sends in army

1970s       Belize     Britain     British garrison defends
                                                 it from Guatemala,
                                                with Mexican approval

1970s     W. Sahara    Spain        Empty waste seized by Morocco.     
                                             Algeria harasses Morocco,
                                            due to other border claims
         
1982?      Falklands   Britain      Defended from Argentina for
                                              domestic British reasons

1997       Hong Kong   Britain      To be given to China

?         Gibraltar    Britain      Spanish claims resisted by
                                                 Britain


[rest deleted]

(To repeat:  the message this came from has already been answered, by
Carwil James's posting above.]

Hugo S. Cunningham

View a related East Timor thread.