>
>Australia is poised to lead of a force of international peacekeepers
>into East Timor after the Indonesian President, Dr B.J. Habibie,
>succumbed to international pressure to restore order in the new nation
>last night.
>
Now comes the inevitable: encomiums to the humanitarian impulses of the West. How 'we' saved the East Timorese from a terrible fate at the hands of rogue elements. Military intervention as another principle of American theology. More career-making propaganda from columnists in the W. Post and the NY Times. Not a slaughter, one hastens to add, but nevertheless distasteful in the extreme.
-d