Hurry Up and Wait

Thursday, Sept. 16, 1999--HONG KONG--There's one particular reader of American Politics Journal with whom I have built up something of a rapport. As an ex-serviceman, like myself, I am sure he will be very familiar with the expression I have used to headline this column. We train hard to learn how to react quickly to a situation. It might save our life--or the lives of others. Our civilian masters in government sanction our military commanders to put us through hell to ensure we can function in the most trying and dangerous circumstances. They put us through exercises that deprive us of sleep, food, water, heat, or, on the other hand, make us sweat profusely! We are, as we should be, ready for anything. Anytime. Anywhere.

Mentally charged, physically fit and on standby to go into action--we are suddenly told to wait. Wait until all the 't's are crossed and the 'i's dotted in some document somewhere, being debated by 'suits' who won't be joining the troops or who are not under any particular personal physical threat to life and limb.

I am sure the folks still hiding in the hills of East Timor appreciate the importance of having everything ship-shape and Bristol-fashion before anyone even considers putting an armed 'peacekeeper' on the ground to protect them… er, naaah, I think not.

For the past couple of weeks we've been hearing how the Australian military has been on a 48-hour standby. From the nano-second that Indonesia said that they would accept peacekeepers, that 48-hours should have been ticking. But no--even from the moment the ink hit the document in the Security Council the 48-hours still hadn't begun to tick. The first peacekeepers will, maybe, if the powers that be can line everything up, arrive in East Timor this weekend.

The soldiers, sailors and airmen were, and are, ready. They could go into East Timor this minute. They are trained to pick up and go. They are trained to do without the luxuries that barracks and headquarters troops expect.

These guys could already be on the ground protecting civilians. I am outraged, and I am sure many other people share this sentiment.

But it is politics. And the political whores who hold the lives of innocent people so carelessly in their bloodied hands have already been impregnated with the seed of a theory that will influence the minds of the newspaper reading and TV watching public--an embryo of deceit that, after a remarkably easy labour, will grow into the whitewash of the truly guilty in Indonesia.

An attempt to be dramatic? No, if I wanted to be dramatic I would say I gagged on my morning McMuffin when I read on the wires that the Security Council team that visited Dili were convinced that Jakarta was really quite unaware of the level of destruction and brutality in East Timor. Military chief General Wiranto was shocked.

Yeah, right. No, I didn't gag, and the hash brown went down nicely too. Another 'big lie' is about to be born.

Last week I wrote that Jakarta would be willing to throw a couple of not-so-well connected officers to the wolves--since then, General Wiranto has named two generals who might be candidates for a tribunal on war crimes. Last week I wrote that Indonesia's major trading partners would accept any semi-plausible lie offered in defense of the rape of East Timor. The 'rogue element' theory is now an accepted fact--and commented on at length by the Foreign and Defense Ministers of countries contributing troops to the multi-national force for East Timor.

It was also amusing to read on the wires 'revelations' regarding the British government's underwriting of arms sales to Indonesia. Go back to my column of two weeks ago.

Disgusted? Yes.

Surprised? No.

I may have mentioned this in a previous column, but it is worth bringing up again. When the 'political cleansing' began after the East Timor 'independence' referendum, I was at work and I'd just finished a newscast that included a piece that quoted Australian government officials saying they would not even consider a unilateral military intervention to protect the East Timorese. As I closed the microphone I let loose with a few choice Anglo-Saxon expressions regarding the parentage of Australian politicians.

One of the DJ hosts in the studio--an American--got quite upset. Why, he asked, should the Australians get involved? What do they owe the East Timorese? A lot, I told him, more than you can imagine.

I suggested he go to the APJ website and searched my previous columns for a piece titled. "Os vossos amigos nao vos esquecem." That's Portuguese for "We will not forget you." It was printed on little pieces of paper dropped by the Royal Australian Air Force on East Timor in 1943--after Australian special forces quit the territory. It was a 'thank you' to the people of East Timor for dying to protect Australian commando units.

I quote from John Pilger's 'Distant Voices', page 237: 

"In December 1941, Australian commandos invaded the neutral Portuguese colony of East Timor in an attempt to prevent the Japanese building airfields from which they could launch an invasion of Northern Australia. The arrival of the Australians had the effect of drawing the Japanese to island communities they might otherwise have spared. The Australians fought a classic guerrilla campaign, disrupting a numerically superior Japanese force, and their exploits passed into popular legend, dramatised by Damien Parer's 1942 film, Men of Timor.

They were able to achieve this only because of a remarkably close relationship forged with the Timorese, who supplied and protected them and who themselves fought like lions.

As a result of this succour, the Australians lost only forty men. The Timorese, however, paid a dreadful price. As many as 60,000 were killed, or 14 percent of the population. Many died under torture after the Australians hurriedly withdrew, having promised to take people with them; they took no one."

For those of you who don't know him, John Pilger is an Australian journalist who tells the story the way it is.

And so we come to today, Thursday, 16th September--meaningless threats, a big lie waiting to whitewash one of the last genocides of this century, and a bunch of soldiers and sailors who've been told to hurry up and wait.