Probably the word "crap" was rude, sorry. What I meant to describe as "crap," maybe I should have used the politer word "nonsense," is the equation of Belgrade and Jakarta - the difference being that Jakarta has been in our pocket for decades. Belgrade accepted ninety-five percent of Rambouillet but NATO still went ahead and destroyed Yugoslav industry and public health utilities with aerial bombing. Jakarta responds to a greater-than-three-quarters majority in a referendum for Timorese independance by flipping off the West, chasing the U.N. out, and openly slaughtering Timorese by the thousands, but the West hasn't lifted a finger yet. I would be delighted to be proven wrong about the U.S. government's intent but I ain't holding my breath waiting for them to do anything.
The difference is obvious: Belgrade defied Washington and Wall Street and got pounded hard for it, whereas Jakarta is doing their bidding.
At any rate I am not at this moment in favor of military intervention, any more than I am in favor of invading Canada with the U.S. Army because I want to buy a used book from a store there. Why bring out the guns when I can get what I want by picking up the telephone and reciting a credit card number? Similarly if the U.S. government wanted to (but it doesn't) I'm reasonably sure it could shut down the massacre in East Timor overnight with one phone call to Habibie, or maybe a conference call to the CEOs of Indonesia's banks and big corporations: "Say, you know those eleven billion IMF dollars you were relying on to keep your economy from going under, and to keep your millionaire class from going bankrupt? And, hey, what proportion of Indonesia's export trade goes to the U.S.A.? Call off your mad dogs and let U.N. monitors in TODAY or you won't get another penny, ever, and your economy can go rot."
If that didn't work, which is hard but not impossible to imagine, then we could start considering armed intervention. Conversely, if our arm is too weak to lift a telephone handset, probably it is also too weak for another round of jungle combat in Southeast Asia.
But isn't this all highly hypothetical, a fantasy, really? A quick glance at today's headlines from Yahoo!: "Indonesia forces to crack down on rampagers in E. Timor," "Britain rules out sanctions over Timor crisis," "Top U.S. military commander to visit Indonesia" (do you suppose he's carrying another CIA shopping list of local Communists they desire executed, like in 1975?) ," "World yet to hit Indonesia in the wallet over Timor terror: analysts," and the punch line: "U.N. mission to pull out of bloodied E. Timor."
Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net