[Peace-discuss] Dem. killers

[C. G. Estabrook]

	January 26, 2009
	The Blood on Holbrooke's Hands
	by Joshua Frank

In the wee morning hours on Friday, Jan. 23, a U.S. spy plane killed at least 15 
in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border. It was Barack Obama's first blood and 
the U.S.' first violation of Pakistan's sovereignty under the new 
administration. The attack was an early sign that the newly minted president may 
not be overhauling the War on Terror this week, or even next.

As the U.S. government fired upon alleged terrorists in the rugged outback of 
Pakistan, Obama was back in Washington appointing Richard Holbrooke as a special 
U.S. representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, like the 
remote-control bombing that claimed human life, Obama's vision for the region, 
in the embodiment of Holbrooke, may not be a drastic departure from the failed 
Bush doctrine.

"[Holbrooke] is one of the most talented diplomats of his generation," Obama 
said during a Jan. 22 press conference at the State Department. In his speech 
Obama declared that both Afghanistan and Pakistan will be the "central front" in 
the War on Terror. "There, as in the Middle East, we must understand that we 
cannot deal with our problems in isolation," he said.

Despite Obama's insistence that Holbrooke is qualified to lead new efforts in 
the War on Terror, history seems to disagree.

In 1975, during Gerald Ford's administration, Indonesia invaded East Timor and 
slaughtered 200,000 indigenous Timorese. The Indonesian invasion of East Timor 
set the stage for a long and bloody occupation that recently ended after an 
international peacekeeping force was introduced in 1999.

Transcripts of meetings among Indonesian dictator Mohamed Suharto, Ford, and 
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger have shown conclusively that Kissinger and 
Ford authorized and encouraged Suharto's murderous actions. "We will understand 
and will not press you on the issue [of East Timor]," said President Ford in a 
meeting with Suharto and Kissinger in early December 1975, days before Suharto's 
bloodbath. "We understand the problem and the intentions you have," he added.

Henry Kissinger also stressed at the meeting that "the use of U.S.-made arms 
could create problems," but then added, "It depends on how we construe it; 
whether it is in self-defense or is a foreign operation." Thus, Kissinger's 
concern was not about whether U.S. arms would be used offensively, but whether 
the act could be interpreted as illegal. Kissinger went on: "It is important 
that whatever you do succeeds quickly."

After Ford's loss and Jimmy Carter's ascent to the White House in 1976, 
Indonesia requested additional arms to continue its brutal occupation, even 
though there was a supposed ban on arms transfers to Suharto's government. It 
was Carter's appointee to the Department of State's Bureau of East Asian and 
Pacific Affairs, Richard Holbrooke, who authorized additional arms shipments to 
Indonesia during this supposed blockade. Many scholars have noted that this was 
the period when the Indonesian suppression of the Timorese reached genocidal levels.

During his testimony before Congress in February 1978, Professor Benedict 
Anderson cited a report that proved there was never a U.S. arms ban, and that 
during the period of the alleged ban the U.S. initiated new offers of military 
weaponry to the Indonesians:

"If we are curious as to why the Indonesians never felt the force of the U.S. 
government's 'anguish,' the answer is quite simple. In flat contradiction to 
express statements by Gen. Fish, Mr. Oakley, and Assistant Secretary of State 
for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Holbrooke, at least four separate 
offers of military equipment were made to the Indonesian government during the 
January-June 1976 'administrative suspension.' This equipment consisted mainly 
of supplies and parts for OV-10 Broncos, Vietnam War-era planes designed for 
counterinsurgency operations against adversaries without effective anti-aircraft 
weapons, and wholly useless for defending Indonesia from a foreign enemy. The 
policy of supplying the Indonesian regime with Broncos, as well as other 
counterinsurgency-related equipment, has continued without substantial change 
from the Ford through the present Carter administrations."

The disturbing symbiosis between Holbrooke and figures like überhawk Paul 
Wolfowitz is startling.

"In an unguarded moment just before the 2000 election, Richard Holbrooke opened 
a foreign policy speech with a fawning tribute to his host, Paul Wolfowitz, who 
was then the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies 
in Washington," reported Tim Shorrock following the terrorist attacks in 2001.

Shorrock continued: "Holbrooke, a senior adviser to Al Gore, was acutely aware 
that either he or Wolfowitz would be playing important roles in the next 
administration. Looking perhaps to assure the world of the continuity of U.S. 
foreign policy, he told his audience that Wolfowitz's 'recent activities 
illustrate something that's very important about American foreign policy in an 
election year, and that is the degree to which there are still common themes 
between the parties.' The example he chose to illustrate his point was East 
Timor, which was invaded and occupied in 1975 by Indonesia with U.S. weapons – a 
security policy backed and partly shaped by Holbrooke and Wolfowitz. 'Paul and 
I,' he said, 'have been in frequent touch to make sure that we keep [East Timor] 
out of the presidential campaign, where it would do no good to American or 
Indonesian interests.'"

In sum, Holbrooke has worked vigorously to keep his bloody campaign silent, and 
it appears to have paid off. In chilling words, Holbrooke described the 
motivations behind his support of Indonesia's genocidal actions:

"The situation in East Timor is one of the number of very important concerns of 
the United States in Indonesia. Indonesia, with a population of 150 million 
people, is the fifth largest nation in the world, is a moderate member of the 
Non-Aligned Movement, is an important oil producer – which plays a moderate role 
within OPEC – and occupies a strategic position astride the sea lanes between 
the Pacific and Indian Oceans. … We highly value our cooperative relationship 
with Indonesia."

If his bloody history in East Timor is anything, it's a sign that Richard 
Holbrooke is not qualified to lead the U.S. in a new direction in today's Middle 
East, a region that has been brutalized by the War on Terror.

http://www.antiwar.com/frank/?articleid=14137