Search this site for: search engine by Netcreations

Wednesday, September 15, 1999
 
 

The Years of Living Hypocritically

When all hell broke loose on East Timor last week, it looked as if President Clinton was going to be more Rwanda than Kosovo. After nearly 80 percent of the residents of East Timor voted on August 30 for independence from Indonesia, its occupier, anti-independence squads working with the Indonesian military, forcibly evacuated 200,000 East Timorese--nearly one-quarter of the region's population--from their homes. Hundreds of people, including nuns and priests, were slaughtered.

How did Clinton respond at first? With bombs? With this-cannot-stand rhetoric? No, with neither. As the militias took over, Clinton said, "I'm very concerned about the continuing violence, and the people who lost the election should recognize that they lost it fair and square and should now find a way to go forward peacefully." No doubt that made the military goons of Indonesia quiver. Instead of sending a clear signal to the military men behind the terror, Clinton's gang publicly maintained that East Timor is not Kosovo. "The question of East Timor and Kosovo are not the same," State Department spokesman James Rubin said last Wednesday. "It doesn't mean we care less about East Timor than we care about Kosovo." But that same day Administration officials were telling reporters that Clinton and Company had, as _The New York Times_ put it, "made the calculation that the United States must put its relationship with Indonesia, a mineral rich nation of more than 200 million people, ahead of its concern over the political fate of East Timor, a tiny, impoverished territory." National security adviser Sandy Berger, in making the case for doing nothing, told reporters at a briefing: "You know, my daughter has a very messy apartment up in college; maybe I shouldn't intervene to have that cleaned up." Yeah, sounds like he cares a whole lot. Such a crass statement warrants resignation.

The Clinton Administration's initial plan was to have Pentagon officials persuade Indonesia military chief General Wiranto to end the military-backed violence in East Timor. That is, to rely on the good graces of the man in charge of the marauders. This was a fool's mission, for Wiranto had already had done nothing to reign in the military commanders mounting the paramilitary violence in East Timor. At one point last week, Wiranto even had told an adviser to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that he could not insure the safety of the UN personnel in Dili.

But toward the end of the week, the Clinton Administration took a half-step: it suspended relations with the Indonesian military. This meant no more joint military exercises or exchanges of liaison officers. But, a Pentagon spokesman said, it was not clear whether the suspension would interrupt US arms sales to Indonesia. This was hardly a bold move. (Days later, the Administration explained that weapons sales would be covered by the military suspension.) Indonesia's leaders might have been more concerned had Clinton heartily supported a cut-off of assistance from the International Monetary Fund. Instead, he noted, "My own willingness to support future assistance will depend very strongly on the way Indonesia handles this situation." Not much of a threat, there. And at a press conference he referred to East Timor as a legitimate part of Indonesia--which it is not. It took a week for Clinton to state the obvious: "It is now clear that the Indonesian military is aiding and abetting the militia violence." Why the delay? Did the CIA, State Department and National Security Council not know what everyone in East Timor knew?

Clinton went slowly, for the US government, including the Clinton Administration, has long cared little about the East Timorese and has long maintained a cozy relationship with the abusive Indonesian government and military. One historical fact left out of most of the reporting on the current East Timor crisis is that Washington in 1975 condoned Indonesia's bloody invasion of East Timor, which is one half of the island of Timor. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were in Jakarta in December 1975, and they were told of Indonesia's intention to invade the former Portuguese colony. They did not protest. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was then US ambassador to the United Nations, later wrote in his memoirs that the Ford-Kissinger policy was for the United States to stall UN efforts to reverse the invasion.

Since the US-approved invasion, administrations in Washington have happily shipped tons of weapons to the Indonesian military, even as its occupation of East Timor resulted in the deaths of up to 200,000. The militia-men who attacked UN personnel in Dili, the capital city, did so with M-16 assault weapons--firearms that originated in the United States. Up until a few years ago, the United States was a key supplier of guns and ammunition to Indonesia. Then Congress imposed a ban. But, still, the Clinton State Department licensed the sale to Indonesia of ammunition manufacturing technology and the raw materials for ammunition--items not covered by the ban. Despite Indonesia's lousy human-rights record, the Clinton Administration has not turned off the tap of weapon sales to the Indonesian military. In 1996, the United States peddled $28 million worth of military goods to Jakarta. In 1998, it licensed the sale of $33 million of equipment, including tear gas and spare parts for fighter jets, missiles, missile launchers, radar systems and tanks.

The recent ban on gun sales, unfortunately, came too late. (And an immediate total cut-off in military sales to Indonesia would also be too late to help directly those being massacred now.) Over the years, the Indonesian military received enough guns from the United States so that there are plenty to go around today. "We've been making this point for a while," says Luke Warren, an analyst at the Council for a Livable World Education Fund, a nonprofit watchdog group that monitors US weapons sales abroad. "The Indonesian military has used American weapons and riot gear for years in East Timor and other provinces. Some of the most egregious activity it has engaged in has been done with American weapons. Once you sell them these things, you can't get rid of them. The United States should have seen this coming for a long time."

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has been the number-one arms dealer in the world, and the leading supplier of weaponry to developing nations, many of which cannot truly afford these goods or are not stable, human-rights-respecting democracies. There are approximately 6000 people employed by the US government to promote arms sales overseas. The Clinton Administration generally has opposed constraints on arms deals, favoring a laissez-faire policy that boosts sales for US arms manufacturers. Remember the campaign theme of the first Clinton presidential campaign? Putting People First. Regarding its arms export policy--the consequences of which are now being seen on the streets of Dili--the Clinton White House, like its predecessors, believes in Putting (American) Profits First, and (Foreign) People Second.

The United States armed and supported the Indonesian military for years. It helped create the current mess. Unlike his daughter's room, East Timor is a situation for which Sandy Berger, as a representative of past and present US foreign policy, is obligated to help clean up.
 
 

Waco Whiplash

Why do Republicans hate Attorney General Janet Reno so much?

The recent revelations about the Waco debacle--exploding tear gas canisters, it turns out, were used by the FBI during the siege's violent finale, although the FBI and Justice Department had said they were not--have led to a frenzied attack on Reno. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott called on Reno to resign, blasting her for being incompetent. Senator Orrin Hatch declared that "the Justice Department is in shambles." Representative Dan Burton, the ethics-challenged Republican who screwed up the House hearings on campaign finance abuses and who has pursued Vince Foster conspiracy theories, rushed forward to announce he would hold hearings on Waco. None of these gentlemen criticized FBI chief Louis Freeh and his Bureau. True, Freeh was not on the job when Waco occurred and some 80 people were killed, including about two dozen children. But it was FBI agents--not Reno advisers--who fired the pyrotechnic canisters, and it was the FBI--under Freeh--that had failed to reveal that they had been deployed. (All the chest-pounding aside, it appears unlikely that these canisters, launched by the FBI away from the compound and hours before the final fire began, sparked the flames that destroyed the Branch Davidian compound.) Has Freeh disciplined anyone in the Bureau for not coming clean?  Not so far. Yet Republicans and conservatives on the Hill and on the tube aimed their hostile fire at Reno. National Review Kate O'Beirne took a typical line: "Ultimately, Janet Reno bears more responsibility for learning this so late.... Ultimately, it underscores her stonewalling."

If the FBI stonewalled the information, why is Reno "ultimately" the fall-gal?

Reno hasn't been such a bad Attorney General for the Republicans. She's requested independent counsels to investigate several of her fellow Cabinet members, including Bruce Babbitt, Henry Cisneros, Ronald Brown, Mike Espy, and Alexis Herman. She authorized Kenneth Starr's expansion of his Whitewater inquiry to cover the Monica matter. Republicans remain pissed that she said no to an independent counsel investigation of Clinton's fundraising practices. But had she taken the advice of Common Cause and asked for an independent counsel to probe the shady finances of _both_ parties in the 1996 campaign, the GOP would have been quite inconvenienced. The Bob Dole campaign engaged in many of the same (arguably illegal) soft-money abuses as did the Clinton campaign, and the Republican National Committee, under the auspices of chairman Haley Barbour, brought in Asian money in a scheme that was legally suspect. By letting Clinton off, she handed a pass to Republicans as well. Last week, she chose Senator John Danforth, a well-regarded Republican perhaps best known publicly for his defense of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas during Thomas' contentious Senate hearings in 1991.

Reno should have resigned over Waco long ago. At the time, there may have been no easy way out for her. Perhaps David Koresh was set on torching himself and his followers. But as someone who visited the site of the Branch Davidian compound after the stand-off, I find it hard to believe that there was no way to deal with Koresh other than with tanks. Following the disaster, Reno said she was taking full responsibility. But what did that mean? She got to keep her job. In many European nations, if a minister made a decision that ended up with such tragic consequences, he or she would resign. The minister could say, "I did what I thought was correct, but, nevertheless, it did not work out as I thought it would and, thus, I am tendering my resignation." But Reno, the buck-catcher, paid no price for being responsible.

Six years later, though, it is amusing to see Republicans and conservatives blowing hard on the embers of two or three canisters in a pathetic attempt to ignite a conflagration that will burn Reno at the stake. Perhaps it's progress that Republicans are spouting rhetoric about law enforcement abuses--even if they ignore the FBI, which conducted the raid and which sat on the tear gas information. By making Reno their sole target, they demonstrate that their concerns are mostly political. After all, how many of these Republican now in an uproar over Waco have worried aloud about law enforcement violence--such as the police killings in New York--which cannot be linked to a Democratic political appointee?
 
 

Compassion, Texas-Style

Texas Governor George W. Bush has tried to package his presidential campaign message into two words: "compassionate conservatism." When this caring soul was in South Carolina last week, he was asked about the effort of the NAACP to stop the state government from flying the Confederate flag over the statehouse. Did Bush empathize with his fellow citizens offended by South Carolina's embrace a symbol of slavery? No, this is what the mean-spirited fellow said: "My advice is for people who don't live in South Carolina to butt out of the issue. The people of South Carolina can make that decision." That Texan sure has a funny way of showing his compassion.

Copyright © 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, American Politics Journal Publications.