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>The case for East Timor is better than that for Kosova.
>The independence movement is more democratic, its overlords
>the Indonesian regime more revolting. The power imbalance
>is obvious. There is no threat to Indonesia worth honoring
>implied by East Timor independence, not that Indonesia's
>national interests deserve any consideration in the first place.
>There is no issue of western imperial expansion.
Max, I think you miss an important point - there is a difference between a bona fide humanitarian military intervention (I think Somalia and Haiti fall into this category despite their shortcoming), and humanitarian reasons serving as the Orwellian "defense of the indefensible" - a pretext devised to, say, save NATO from obsolescence. I hate to fall into a biblical mode, but you can tell the difference between the two in the same way you tell the difference between true and false prophets - by the fruits they deliver - ground troops versus indiscriminate aerial bombardment of mostly civilian targets.
To my knowledge, nobody proposes sending cruise missiles and F-16's to Indonesia, they talk about sending ground troops - and that makes all the difference in the world. That is why I supported US mission to Haiti and would support one to E. Timor, but opposed the bomardment of Yugoslavia.
wojtek