East Timor: FROM HUMANITARIAN BOMBING
TO INHUMANE APPEASEMENT
by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
[East Timor; Indonesia]

"What is so special about Indonesia that nobody will directly call them the liars, thugs and mongrels that they are? Why can't the world help?"
— Sister Anne, Sisters of Mercy,

Dili, September 9

Within half a year the western establishment moved without embarrassment from "humanitarian" avenger in Operation Allied Force, the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, to Operation Don't Ruffle Indonesia's Feathers, the callous appeasement of Indonesia's campaign of terror in East Timor. While the war against Yugoslavia was allegedly rooted in what British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the West's "moral perspective and conscience," the inaction in East Timor was based on western "interests" and a recognition, according to National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, that the West cannot "go everywhere, do everything."

The contrast has been especially marked for several reasons: the indignation with which the NATO leadership and supportive media declared the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo morally unacceptable, hence intolerable; the aggressive documentation of Serbian crimes; the claims that the world had entered a "New Era" in which the Great Powers have the responsibility and are willing, according to Blair, "to right wrongs and prosecute just causes," irrespective of questions of national sovereignty; and the alleged "yawning gap between the West and much of the world on the value of a single life."1

Less than three months after NATO troops rolled into Kosovo, the value of single or even thousands of East Timorese lives seemed to mean nothing to western leaders and elites. Now, there was no mention of war crimes by Madeleine Albright or Robin Cook. Sharp limits on Great Power responsibilities and Washington's ability to police the world were discovered; furious indignation over human rights violations was replaced by token regrets and de facto indifference to what Berger called a "chaotic situation"; and hollow appeals to the killers to restrain themselves were substituted for sanctions and, in the case of Yugoslavia, bombing.

The contrast is also notable in other respects. One is that both the U.N. and Great Powers had committed themselves to a "popular consultation" in which the people of East Timor, long abused by Indonesia, would finally be given the right to vote whether they accepted or rejected Indonesia's "proposed special autonomy for East Timor within the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia."2 In the wake of the August 30 vote, in which the large majority of East Timorese rejected the "special autonomy" option, the Indonesian army and army- sponsored militias went on a pre- planned rampage of destruction and killing. The United States and other western powers continued to refuse to take any serious action to stop the killings. This non- response amounted to a betrayal of western honor as well as a direct violation of the "humanitarian" principles for which it supposedly waged its war against Yugoslavia.

Another important feature of the western response to the East Timor crisis is that, in contrast to their long- hostile relationship with Yugoslavia, the U.S. and Australian governments have enjoyed very close relationships with the Indonesian armed forces in training, supplying intelligence, and provision of arms, dating back several decades. As described below, substantial evidence has surfaced indicating western intelligence foreknowledge of Indonesia's plans for vicious attacks on the population of East Timor, should it opt for independence. That the West did not take direct preventive action or empower the United Nations Assistance Mission to East Timor (UNAMET) to prepare for this contingency, makes it complicit in the murders, and casts its foot dragging, even after Indonesia's rampage began, in a still more sinister light.

The West's inaction in 1999 underscores a continuity with earlier U.S. and western acquiescence in, and support of, the Indonesian invasion and genocidal occupation of East Timor, which, from 1975 to 1979 resulted in the death of some 200,000 East Timorese, one- fourth or more of the population. Philip Liechty, a CIA desk officer in Jakarta in 1975, told the Australian journalist John Pilger, "Suharto was given a green light by the United States to do what he did. We sent the Indonesian generals everything they needed to fight a major war against somebody who doesn't have any guns ... they got it direct, straight to East Timor."3

The difference between then and now is that, whereas in the 1970s hardly anyone knew about the atrocities Indonesia was committing against East Timorese (except, of course, Free World officials4), in 1999 the U.N.- sponsored referendum and the global publicity that accompanied it have made the Indonesian atrocities front page news. Since August 30, the day of the referendum, Cable News Network has aired daily reports from East Timor, after having virtually ignored the story for the entire preceding year. Although the terror forced CNN's crew to evacuate Dili by September 5, its coverage remained steady through the arrival of the first Australian troops in Dili on September 20. Coverage by the major U.S. print media was much the same.5 By the time the 21- member Asian- Pacific Economic Cooperation group (to which both Indonesia and the U.S. belong) convened for its annual summit in Auckland over the weekend of September 11- 13, the high- profiled bloodshed in East Timor could no longer be ignored. The West's continued support of Indonesia is thus more exposed, and it has been obliged to make at least gestures of concern and action.

Why Was a Referendum Held?

The referendum was a spinoff from the Asian financial crisis of 1997- 1998, the resultant collapse of the Indonesian economy, and the ouster of Suharto in May 1998. In a sense, the market helped bring Suharto down, along with the policies of the IMF and World Bank. Market enthusiasm for Suharto's "investors' paradise" had led to a huge influx of speculative capital prior to the start of the financial crisis in July 1997, and the rapid exit of these same funds ravaged the economy, leading to a 90 percent fall in the Indonesian rupiah by March 1998, a debt and banking crisis, soaring inflation, food shortages, massive unemployment, and serious urban riots.6 Student protesters, whom Suharto's forces in the past had either crushed or confined to university campuses, now tried to take over the streets of Jakarta and elsewhere. Importantly, workers joined them. By May, massive riots were striking Indonesia's major cities. As the Singapore- based analyst Chia Siow Yue noted at the time, "Restoring confidence has gone beyond pure monetary and financial measures. The political- social environment has so deteriorated that [correcting] it has become a crucial part of confidence- building."7

This collapse of "confidence" was centered in the West, whose investors and transnationals with interests in the Asian- Pacific region were then gripped by a panic over their deteriorating positions overseas. Western apologists have contended that the Indonesian meltdown shows the global "market" declaring for democracy. Thus, the New York Times's Thomas Friedman stated that "When market forces concluded that Indonesia's economic growth was unsustainable without more democratic reform, they stampeded."8 But this ignores the fact that the "market"—and the governments serving its interests—had supported the Suharto dictatorship for 32 years with lavish capital inflows and government financial and diplomatic support, and was now toppling its prized dictator in a panic reaction to its own prior excessive enthusiasm.

At the same time that the "market" was helping destabilize Indonesia, so was the IMF. Although it had put together a $43 billion bailout package for Indonesia by early 1998, the IMF conditioned the delivery of the funds on policies that would both intensify hardships within Indonesia and force it to accept structural changes that would begin the dismantlement of the vast empire of family, military, and ruling party corruption sardonically known as "Suharto, Inc." Both the IMF and the World Bank seized upon the crisis as an opportunity to reduce corruption and open up further opportunities within Indonesia for transnational investors. As Suharto was an obstacle to these ends—resisting the IMF changes, in political trouble anyway, and obsolete as a heavy handed dictator—the western political and economic élite was prepared to see him go in favor of a civilian leader in their familiar compliant mold.

However, the United States was by no means withdrawing its support from the armed forces that were the base of Suharto's authoritarian rule and directly responsible for the mass killings and repression so integral to his exercise of power. As a swift countermeasure to the panic over Indonesia, Washington's response was to step up its training and support for the Indonesian military, while it ushered Suharto out the back door. As U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen said after a 1998 meeting with the Indonesian military in Jakarta, "The U.S. is close to and loves the Indonesian army."9 In an important sense, the Indonesian army has long been and remains today a U.S.- agent army, supplied and trained, and serving perceived U.S. interests in southeast Asia, which for 32 years included protecting the dictatorship from internal democratic ("security") threats.

      It is crystal clear, then, that the East Timor referendum was not the result of any western desire or demand for freedom for the East Timorese. It happened because the Indonesian crisis and turmoil weakened Indonesian control, diminished U.S. and western support for the Indonesian government, and created a small opening that East Timor and its supporters were able to take advantage of. In the first month after he replaced Suharto, the new President, B. J. Habibie, therefore raised the possibility of reviewing the status of East Timor, perhaps even granting it some form of "special autonomy." Negotiations toward this end between the governments of Indonesia and Portugal over the next eleven months led to the signing of an agreement at the United Nations on May 5 of this year to hold a referendum allowing East Timorese to choose between remaining within or exiting from Indonesia—an "historic opportunity to resolve the question of East Timor," Secretary General Kofi Annan rightly called it.

UNAMET's Built- In Flaws

It should be recognized that the West's response to the possibility of East Timor's freedom and the referendum plan was something less than enthusiastic. At best, the West merely tolerated the referendum arrangements. Its leading members remained attached to the ruling military- Golkar regime in Jakarta that had created the "investors' paradise." The leading western powers continued to regard Indonesia as an ally to be cosseted and protected, whatever its behavior. Its military may have killed hundreds of thousands of innocents at home and abroad, but by virtue of its client- state status, Indonesia has never been declared a "state sponsor of terrorism," much less a "rogue" regime. It should also be noted that while the U.N. has never recognized the illegal Indonesian seizure of East Timor, the United States and its allies have done so for years.

This basic stance of friendly and supportive relationship undermined the possibility of a successful referendum in advance. It manifested itself in the strategic handicaps built into the General Agreement of May 5. Foremost among these, responsibility for the "general maintenance of law and order" in East Timor until such time as Indonesia officially disengaged from the territory was to rest "with the appropriate Indonesian security authorities."10 But by May 5, Indonesia had already displayed its unwillingness to honor such a responsibility. Beginning in July 1998, then escalating dramatically last January, Indonesia's regular military had been organizing and providing technical assistance to upwards of 24 armed "militia" groups that were guilty of committing some of the worst atrocities in East Timor since the Indonesian army massacred more than 250 mourners at Dili's Santa Cruz cemetery in 1991.11

Indeed, that the May 5 agreement suffered from grave weaknesses was recognized from the start. In the very first of what would be several reports to the Security Council on East Timor (May 5), Secretary General Kofi Annan acknowledged the "logistical and other problems that the United Nations will face in carrying out the consultation in such a short time- frame." These included the "high level of tension and serious incidents of political violence" which had already become commonplace, and the "opposition to the proposed consultation by some political elements in East Timor," namely the pro- Jakarta militias and their backers.12 Worse, UNAMET's relatively spartan $52.5 million mandate allowed it no more than 271 civilian police officers, and a meager 50 liaison officers whose job it was to work with the Indonesian military.13 (These numbers were to be modestly increased—but only after the referendum.) Crucially, no member of the UNAMET staff was permitted to carry firearms, leaving them completely at the mercy of the militias, which repeatedly harassed the mission after its members began arriving in June. When one considers the vast amount of resources and human talent that the U.N. has committed to its more successful diplomatic and peacekeeping efforts—for example, the 1992- 94 U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia had a $1.9 billion budget and consisted of close to 16,000 armed troops from 34 different countries, 3,359 civilian police monitors, and recruited the help of more than 50,000 Cambodian nationals14—it is tempting to conclude that in UNAMET's case, the United Nations was set up to play the fool.

In the months leading up to the referendum, Kofi Annan insisted that several conditions had to be met before he would give the referendum the go- ahead. On the two occasions when he postponed the referendum, his reason was the failure of the Indonesian authorities to live up to their responsibility to guarantee a secure environment. Moreover, at no stage in his several reports to the Security Council (May 5, May 22, June 22, July 20, and August 9) had the Secretary General ever concluded that the "necessary security conditions exist" for the "holding of a free and fair popular consultation" on the question of East Timor—Annan's main responsibility under the May 5 agreement. In fact, by August 9, Annan dropped all references to East Timor's non- existent security from his report to the Security Council on the status of UNAMET's mission—after the referendum, "the situation in East Timor will be rather delicate," was all he could bring himself to say.15

Despite repeated warnings from international human rights groups and, more important, from UNAMET's own staff that elements of the Indonesian military were clearly behind the violence and terror gripping East Timor, the U.N. decided to take a gamble and proceed with the referendum. "Nobody had the balls to say, ‘Excuse me, the whole reason we are here is because of your brutal behavior in East Timor. It doesn't make any sense for you to be in charge of their security,'" one source told the Australian Financial Review. "But nobody wants to offend the Indonesians. This is what we get when we don't push them. How much worse could it be?"16 Of course, underlying the U.N.'s lack of willingness to challenge Indonesian authority was the fact that Indonesia's western allies would have brooked no such challenge in the first place.

The Killings: What the West Knew

"In January, the army and the militias worked out a division of labor," American journalist Allan Nairn writes. "‘Now the ABRI [Indonesia's regular army] was "protecting" the [pro- independence] Fretilin,'" militia leader Herminio da Costa told Nairn back in May, "‘and we were the ones who were assaulting Fretilin and CNRT [pro- independence] homes.'"17

This "division of labor" served Jakarta well. On countless occasions prior to the referendum, militia attacks on independence supporters took place in plain view of the military, which did nothing to stop them. "We talk about the ‘militias,' but they are really just a mask for the Indonesian military," pro- independence leader David Ximenes told the Los Angeles Times.18 As the summer passed, the truth of this observation became very clear. In early July, the Sydney Morning Herald's David Jenkins reported that "senior army officers," infuriated at the Habibie Government's decision to hold a referendum on the future of East Timor, "are working to have the vote called off or, if that is not possible, to ensure that it goes the right way." At the heart of their effort was Kopassus, the red- bereted Special Forces unit notorious for its brutality. A "well- placed source in Jakarta" told Jenkins that Kopassus was conducting a "psy- war" operation in East Timor. "You remove not only your opponents but the people who provide leadership in that community. It's Phoenix." State terror would have been the better term, but the point is well taken. The "tactics being pursued in East Timor bear a more than passing resemblance to those pursued during the CIA's Phoenix program in South Vietnam," Jenkins noted, alluding to the CIA's notorious assassination program. "They also have more than a little in common with the tactics employed by the Contras."19

Clearly, the Indonesian military hoped that by setting up the "militias" and directing them to terrorize East Timorese independence supporters, it would be able to maintain plausible deniability, the military leaders back in Jakarta feigning confusion and frustration over their inability to control what was going on. Reports from East Timor during the first days after the referendum told grim tales of the "implementation of a ‘scorched earth' policy—under the direction of the Indonesian military," in the words of the Security Council Mission that visited Jakarta and Dili from September 8 to 12. This campaign included the assassination of "many pro- independence activists and other community leaders, including the clergy," with as many as one- half of East Timor's Catholic priests and nuns having been murdered, the Vatican feared. In Dili, "virtually every home or building has been systematically looted of its contents, and a large proportion of them have been burned."20

In the eastern regencies where the militia terror was most severe, there was "massive forced displacement of the population to refugee camps in West Timor."21 Estimates at the time put the number of East Timorese refugees forcibly removed to West Timor at between 140,000 and 250,000.22 Allan Nairn reported that while he was being held by the Indonesians at the Koren military base in Dili, he saw "a police intelligence document referring to a specific operation which had moved out a total of 323,564 people from East Timor."23 There the military was holding the refugees under concentration- camp- like conditions, banning independent media and foreign observers, and purging them of any leading independence supporters they could identify.

In yet another important lapse of U.N. authority, the U.N.- sponsored multinational force sent to East Timor on September 20 was unable to gain a mandate to police the refugee camps in West Timor, leaving refugees at the mercy of the militias. Literally hundreds of thousands more had fled into East Timor's mountainous interior regions, though no one knew for sure; the International Committee of the Red Cross estimated that as many as 600,000 people had been displaced internally.24 If these estimates were even remotely accurate, it meant that virtually the entire population of East Timor had been driven from their homes during the first two weeks after the referendum. By the second week of September, old and young alike faced harsh conditions, including starvation and lack of drinking water, disease and lack of medical care. Many thousands more were presumed dead, often by the most horrific means.25

    "The preparations to launch a campaign of terror in East Timor were spotted as early as July 1998," a group of investigators for the London Observer Service reported, "when it was reported that the Indonesian army was starting to establish civilian militias in East Timor. No one paid any serious attention to the report." Their investigation revealed that "western intelligence services were also aware of the army's plans—and warned the United Nations, many months ago." The evidence western intelligence had accumulated was considerable, including documents of the Indonesian army and the militias, intercepted cables and satellite telephone conversations, satellite photographs of troop movements along the border of East and West Timor, and of course first- person testimonies.26 By March 4, 1999, the Australian Defense Intelligence Organization had already concluded that the Indonesian military was "clearly protecting and in some cases operating with" the militias. In one of the intercepted telephone conversations, senior officers in Dili and Jakarta "said the militias would implement a scorched- earth policy if the vote went against them." One captured document dated "May" instructed that the "Massacres should be carried out from village to village after the announcement of the ballot if the pro- independence supporters win," and targets "should be eliminated from its leadership down to its roots."

All of this intelligence was passed along to the U.N.; Washington, Canberra, and London at the very least must have shared it as well. A UNAMET security briefing in mid- August shows that it believed the Indonesian military and militias would conduct a "full- scale offensive after the [referendum]," precisely as they did.27 After studying several militia- related incidents over the course of the summer, UNAMET also reported—internally, that is, never publicly—that the "operations' modalities demonstrate an intention to create an impression of a conflict between East Timorese, with the Indonesian authorities hopelessly caught between two warring factions."28 While western intelligence possessed such rich evidence of Indonesian complicity in the militia terror, straight- faced western officials, like U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Stanley Roth in Jakarta last summer, reminded the Indonesian military "that they have a responsibility to discuss every possible way to ensure the situation does not deteriorate." This surpasses criminal negligence; indeed, by its silence and its unwillingness to take any kind of preventive action, the West was an accessory before the fact.

Slaughter and Appeasement

On the same day in September that the first Australian troops with the International Force for East Timor landed in Dili, Kofi Annan delivered his Annual Report to the U.N. General Assembly—the 54th and last of the 20th Century. "[O]ur commitment to humanitarian action must be universal if it is to be legitimate," he said in his prepared remarks, echoing a theme espoused by the international human rights movement, if not by sovereign states. "Even the costliest policy of prevention is far cheaper, in lives and in resources, than the least expensive use of armed force."29

In East Timor, the West's latest failure to live up to Annan's principle of "humanitarian action" was blatant. In this case, the West eschewed the least costly policy of all: simple prevention, or bringing real political pressure to bear on the Indonesian government to persuade it not to disrupt the referendum or destroy East Timor in its aftermath. Instead, with full knowledge of what Indonesia was planning, the West adopted a policy of malign neglect that it had every reason to believe would prove terribly costly in terms of East Timorese lives, but far less costly in terms of its relations with Jakarta's military- Golkar regime.

In a nationally televised speech the night NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia began, allegedly concerned with the "dangers to defenseless people and to our national interests," President Clinton stated that, "I am convinced that the dangers of acting are far outweighed by the dangers of not acting."30 But the real danger in Kosovo turned out to be NATO's decision to resolve the conflict by military force, dramatically worsening the situation for both Serbs and Kosovo Albanians.31 In Kosovo, real prevention (i.e., real negotiations, not threats and "final warnings") would have been far cheaper, but the West ruled it out in favor of a policy of violence. In East Timor, prevention (i.e., serious pressure on Jakarta to call off its planned slaughter) also would have been far less expensive, but the West did not select this option, but chose instead to let the Indonesians destroy East Timor.

The "division of labor" that Indonesia worked out between its regular military and the "militias" served the West as well. Western leaders joined Indonesia in the denial game. "[W]e don't want to create a situation in which the responsibility that is the Government of Indonesia's is shifted to the international community," a Clinton administration official explained as the terror soared following the referendum.32

Australian Prime Minister John Howard's comments were even more revealing. "Unless the Indonesian authorities agree for the deployment of some peacekeeping force then it's just not legally possible. If we try to send troops without the permission of the Indonesian Government, we are in effect invading Indonesia."33

The formulas for taking no real action were clearly understood in Jakarta—just as Jakarta had always understood that UNAMET's unarmed and grossly understaffed mission posed no real threat to its plans to disrupt the referendum during the months leading up to it.

On September 9, while on his way to the Asian- Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Auckland, President Clinton made his first public comments on the slaughter, comments hardly intended to send shivers down Jakarta's spine. "If Indonesia does not end the violence, it must invite the international community to assist in restoring security," he said.34 At the time, UNAMET chief Ian Martin described Dili as a "ghost town"; the UNAMET compound was under siege; and security had become so grave that the U.N. had ordered the staff evacuated within 24 hours. Even so, an emergency session of the Security Council on September 8 decided against taking any action; the "obligation to restore security and stability [in East Timor]" remained Jakarta's, the Council announced, in complete denial of the facts on the ground.35 In Washington, U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen was asked whether the "United States at least [was] making contingency plans to possibly put peacekeepers in [East Timor]?" He answered: "The United States, like other nations, are calling upon Indonesia to deal with this problem as swiftly and effectively as possible. We're calling upon the government of Indonesia to bring the East Timorese situation under control. The responsibility is theirs. They understand the consequences of failing to act in terms of what the reaction of the international community would be."36

The "reaction of the international community" had already proved quite unthreatening, and the West's deference to Indonesia's killers continued long after they had demonstrated their deadly intentions. The indifference toward East Timor from the same western power that only months before in Kosovo had discovered a "new willingness to do what it thinks right—international law notwithstanding,"37 underscores the prevailing hypocrisy. What the West was demonstrating once again was that in the New World Order, just as in the Old, power is used or not used on grounds that have no connection whatever to human rights and moral values.38

The Media on the Timor Crisis

The mainstream media's treatment of the East Timor referendum and related Indonesian terrorism put U.S. inaction and de facto support of Indonesian terror in the best possible light.39 The killing in East Timor was still sometimes labeled a "civil war,"40 although the media rarely questioned, at least in the wake of the post- referendum killings, that the strife was organized by the Indonesian army. The genocidal Indonesian operations of 1975- 1979 are still described by Seth Mydans in the New York Times as "clumsy and self- defeating," the war of resistance a "separatist" war, and the Indonesian army is portrayed sympathetically as "defeated ... humbled, hesitant, embittered and compulsively [not calculatedly] violent."41 The use of the word genocide for the earlier or current Indonesian operations is exceedingly rare, in contrast with word usage in reference to Kosovo.

The apologetic framing of issues suggests there is a split in authority, between Habibie and the army, and within the army, with some army units out of control. This was how the New York Times and other media dealt with friendly state terror in Argentina and El Salvador, asking whether the "moderates" at top would bring the uncontrolled "extremists" to order.42 This formula allows selective condemnation of the extremists while treating the people on top as reasonable, and it distracts attention from murderous behavior to whether the "moderates" will be able to control their underlings.

This model was employed comprehensively throughout the East Timor crisis, the media spending a great deal of time on Habibie's and Defense Minister General Wiranto's alleged efforts to bring order, and western appeals to these moderates to provide the "security" that they promised. Thus in the New York Times: "The moderates at the top who seek to professionalize and modernize the army face resistance from some hard- line subordinates," and peacekeepers have been called in from abroad because of "the inability of military commanders in Jakarta to rein in their troops...."43 An earlier article entitled "Jakarta Concedes A Loss of Control" takes a self- serving claim by the "moderates" as truth.44

 With targeted enemy states, by contrast, it is taken for granted that people at the top are in control and are therefore to be held strictly responsible for reprehensible behavior. With the splintered- authority model, we can appease as we placate the moderates and wait for their internal discipline to do the job. Thus, people like Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein are leaders responsible for their subordinates' behavior and can be labeled war criminals, while Habibie and Wiranto, moderates who "concede" their inability to prevent the killings done under their authority, are therefore not cast as war criminals by western leaders or editorial writers.

Evidence that the Indonesian Army had long- standing plans to disrupt the election, and to wreak havoc in case of loss, had to be ignored to sustain the splintered- authority model. Such plans, of which the upper echelons of the army were fully aware—indeed participants in—make the pretense of an army divided between moderates and extremists untenable. And if Habibie is powerless to contain the army, this suggests that the army still rules and that Indonesia is still a far cry from a working democracy. The media handled these problems by simply suppressing the information on western intelligence's advance knowledge of the army's pre- planned terror, playing down the evidence that the army has simply overridden Habibie, and gullibly accepting the splintered- authority model.

The media also played down long- standing links between the U.S. and Indonesian military, suggesting apologetically that because our military aid to Indonesia was now only a mere $6.8 million, our "leverage" with the Indonesian military is weak.45 This, of course, fails to explain why our "democratic values" had no impact over 32 years, when, at times, our aid was much larger.

The fact that intelligence knew of Indonesian terror plans and did nothing about it, the extremely unthreatening Clinton- Blair response to Indonesian terror, and the long record of support for Suharto and his earlier genocide in East Timor, suggest that the United States and Britain have not merely appeased Indonesia, but have colluded with it to give it freedom of action within the limits of constraining global opinion. Thus, "leverage" is irrelevant—we do not use leverage to constrain friends and clients; "quiet diplomacy" and "constructive engagement" serve to reassure them of our support and that our occasional slaps on the wrist, done to satisfy public relations needs, are not to be taken seriously.46

This view of the U.S.- Indonesian relationship as one of tacit support and protection is excluded from the mainstream media altogether, as is the context that would give it credibility: the history of U.S. support for the Suharto dictatorship; its consent, arms supply, and diplomatic support during Indonesia's first genocide; and the facts produced by Allan Nairn and others on the continued warm and supportive relations between the U.S. and Indonesian armed forces.

What the media do countenance, however, is the Big Picture, or Realist Model, which justifies U.S. and western inaction on the grounds that Indonesia is big, important strategically and financially, and is allegedly a "fragile" economy and democracy that we wouldn't want to "destabilize."47 While offering this model, the media do not stress the closely related fact that "realism" led to U.S. support of the Suharto dictatorship and his triple genocide (Indonesia, West Papua, East Timor) over three decades. The media also fail to raise two questions: Can U.S. support for "democratization" be taken seriously in light of its long alliance with Suharto; and wouldn't "destabilization" that weakened army power in Indonesia and loosened its murderous grip be a big plus for democracy?

The media accepted the argument that NATO "credibility" called for protecting the Kosovo Albanians, but they have not pressed the point that U.S. and U.N. credibility were seriously damaged by the failure to protect the East Timorese. Before the referendum, little attention was paid to the army- sponsored militia violence, and no one in the mainstream media uncovered the army's planned post- referendum assault. Barbara Crossette mentioned the failure of the May 5 agreement to provide for independent peace- keepers and protectors of the election,48 but neither she nor her colleagues ever criticized those weaknesses. This reportorial failure "followed the flag" as the Clinton administration did nothing in the face of the gathering threat.

In the post- referendum holocaust, as the administration continued to appease and defer to the killers, the media played down the sordid record, refused to attack the administration's feeble response, and called at most for more pressure on Indonesia, perhaps modest sanctions. They did not contrast such inaction with the aggressive resort to violence in Yugoslavia. The big question for weeks was "will Indonesia allow peacekeepers into East Timor," with no hint that Indonesia never had valid authority in East Timor, or had forfeited such as it had by the commencement of a second genocide. The fact that the peace- keepers were landing only in East Timor, with little attention to the many thousands of East Timorese forced into West Timor, in dire conditions and under serious threat, was also off the media agenda. The notion that the Clinton administration is not only appeasing but at least tacitly colluding with Indonesia in its second genocide is unmentionable.

Conclusion

The system works! The U.S. and its allies can manufacture a war of destruction against Yugoslavia on "moral grounds," shortly thereafter appease and collude with a murderous client state as it destroys a country and people that had simply voted for their freedom under a U.N.- and Great Power- sponsored referendum, and come out of this essentially untarnished as leaders in the ongoing "global spread of freedom and democracy."49 This required a large dose of doublespeak and doublethink, with moral indignation for the one and pragmatic realism for the other, the responsibility model for one and the splintered- authority model for the other, a massive dichotomization and selectivity of information, an ignoring of the historical continuity of western support for the genocidal Indonesian army, and a blacking out of a great deal of other information on western military and intelligence cooperation with Indonesia. The media's success in normalizing and putting a positive gloss on the U.S. and western policy turnabout from "humanitarian war" to "inhumane appeasement"—and de facto support of further genocide in East Timor—would be hard to surpass.

Endnotes:

Edward S. Herman is an economist and media analyst. His latest book, just released, is The Myth of the Liberal Media: An Edward Herman Reader (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1999). David Peterson is an independent journalist living in the Chicago area.

1._Michael Wines, New York Times, June 13, 1999.

2._Annex II, sec. B of the General Agreement of May 5, 1999.

3._From a speech delivered by John Pilger on the campus of University of New South Wales in Australia, July 17, 1999, "Timor Conspiracy: Australia's Role," reprinted in Green Left Weekly, July 28, 1999.

4._Pilger also states: "The Australian government, along with other western governments, watched the genocide unfold. We now know from leaked documents that the Defence Signals Directorate spy base in northern Australia knew everything the Indonesians were doing. This was confirmed to me by Philip Liechty." Ibid.

5._In sharp contrast to the Australian media, U.S. print media reports on East Timor were virtually non- existent until just days before the August 30 referendum. For example, until the New York Times published an op- ed by Dili's Roman Catholic Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo on August 24, it had not run anything more than a blurb on East Timor since July 20.

6._In a report that it released in September, Moody's Investors Service estimated that stabilizing the Indonesian banking system will require an injection of some $140 billion in new loans, an amount worth approximately 70 percent of Indonesia's GDP. Concluded Moody's: "The cost of the bank guarantee and restructuring program relative to Indonesia's GDP looks set to become the highest of any country in modern history." Tim Dodd, "Indonesia paints itself into tight economic corner," Australian Financial Review, Sept. 13, 1999.

7._"The Asiaweek roundtable tackles the problem of regional confidence," Asiaweek, Mar. 27, 1998.

8._"Where's the Crisis," New York Times, May 23, 1998.

9._Allan Nairn, "Indonesia's killers; U.S. support of military repression in Indonesia," The Nation, Mar. 30, 1998.

10._General Agreement, Annex III, para. 1, May 5, 1999.

11._Estimates of the number of separate "militia" groups that have operated in East Timor vary. We take the number 24 from the Secretary General's May 22 Report to the Security Council, S/1999/595.

12._Question of East Timor, S/1999/513.

13._UNAMET Fact Sheet, Aug. 9, 1999.

14._The United Nations and Cambodia 1991- 1995, The United Nations Blue Book Series, Vol. II, 1995, pp. 12, 23.

15._S/1999/862, Aug. 9, 1999.

16._Joanne Gray, "US eyes wide- open on Timor," Australian Financial Review, Sept. 13, 1999.

17._"License to kill in Timor," The Nation, May 31, 1999.

18._David Lamb, "Odds of Curbing East Timor Violence Seen as Slim," Los Angeles Times, Sept. 3, 1999.

19._"Army's dirty tricks brigade unleashed in fight for East Timor," Sydney Morning Herald, July 8, 1999.

20._"East Timor Capital Dili in Ruins," AP Online, citing Fides, the Vatican news agency, Sept. 13, 1999. The Vatican also described the killings in East Timor as "genocide," and accused leading western nations of a "huge hypocrisy" for their refusal to take any action.

21._"Report of the Security Council Mission to Jakarta and Dili," S/1999/976, Sept. 14, 1999.

22._"Horror in East Timor worse than U.N. believes: support group," Agence France- Presse, Sept. 13, 1999. These estimates are only tentative. In fact, virtually all of East Timor was under a news blackout as the terror escalated after the referendum, and drove foreign observers from the land.

23._Lim Yun- Suk, "Deported American activist says military chief behind Timor killings," Agence France- Presse, Sept. 20, 1999.

24._David Lamb, "Peacekeeping Troops Arrive in East Timor," Los Angeles Times, Sept. 20, 1999.

25._One Sister of Mercy described to a reporter with the Sydney Morning Herald what she had seen done to the East Timorese nephew of one of her fellow sisters: "The militia hammered nails into his head and cut off his flesh," she said. "They told other people that they were going to eat the flesh, but I doubt that they did that." Lindsay Murdoch, "Time to pray, and run the militia gauntlet," Sept. 10, 1999.

26._Details of intercepted messages proved so concrete that at one point, Australian intelligence was able to acquire "copies of the militias' catering orders—paid by the Indonesian military!" Paul Daley, "Timor's pain, Australia's shame," The Age (Melbourne), Sept. 11, 1999.

27._"How the Indonesian army plotted to destroy a nation," Toronto Globe & Mail, Sept. 13, 1999.

28._Craig Shehan, "U.N. finds high- level army terror role," The Age (Melbourne), Sept. 6, 1999.

29._Kofi Annan, "Secretary General Presents His Annual Report To General Assembly," SG/SM/7136, Sept. 20, 1999.

30._"In the President's Words: ‘We Act to Prevent a Wider War,'" New York Times, Mar. 25, 1999.

31._See, e.g., Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo (Monroe, Me.: Common Courage Press, 1999), pp. 16- 17.

32._"US not keen on Australian peace- keeping coalition plan," Australian Financial Review, Sept. 6, 1999.

33._"UN staff to be airlifted from Dili," Asia Pulse, Sept. 6, 1999. These comments were reported on Monday, September 6 (September 5 in the United States), just one day after the U.N. announced the outcome of the referendum, and after the Indonesian military had resumed the terror. Australia's Rapid Deployment Force had been sent to Darwin and was ready to go as far back as July—but only in case Australian nationals needed to be evacuated from East Timor, not to deter Indonesia from killing East Timorese.

34._Joanne Gray, "US offers strong words but little action," Australian Financial Review, Sept. 11, 1999.

35._Michael Richardson, "Peace Operation in East Timor Enters Critical Phase," International Herald Tribune, Sept. 22, 1999.

36._Federal News Service, "Q&A With Defense Secretary William Cohen," Sept. 8, 1999.

37._Michael Glennon (University of California at Davis, School of Law), "The New Military Interventionism," Foreign Affairs, May/June, 1999.