Carrol is saying that working out an exact moral 'position' satisfying to his or her individual self shouldn't be confused with working out a political principle, embedded in a political program that is to be used in mobilizing all that can be united for this or that political action. Too much efforts expended in the former not only diverts our energy from the latter; it actively hinders the latter in many cases, in that moral ambivalence tends to breed nothing but fence-sitting or else an impotent statement that can appear only incoherent and impracical (and tragically so) under the present conditions of capitalism & imperialism ("Stop the Bombing! Self-Determination for Kosovo Albanians!").
Imperialists, when they do undertake a military intervention, do *not* require individual leftists to offer moral legitimations full of ifs and buts, not to mention cheers. They only need the *acquiescence* of *their respective working-class masses*, especially now that the most advanced military forces are *professionalized*. Therefore, Chris Burford's 'opinion' was redundant in the case of Yugoslavia. (Besides, though I don't want to be too personal, I very much doubt if Chris or anyone who thought like him did anything more than posting his or her sentiments to e-lists. An individually-held moral opinion that doesn't result in any political action counts for nothing, except that it adds to the masses of acquiescence.)
In the case of East Timor, it doesn't seem to make sense at all (even if we set aside the aforementioned reasons) to even consider asking the govenments that have not even ceased all military and economic aids to Indonesia to _militarily intervene_ in support of the East Timorese. Why not try to stop the aids? Why not try to mobilize workers in our own countries to ban the shipment of military equipment, ammunitions, etc. to Indonesia?
Yoshie