Michael Pollak wrote:
> Well, no one's ever lost money betting on the evil intentions of the
> powers that be. And you are much better informed than I am, Angela, both
> by virtue of being you, and virtue of being Australian, where East Timor
> has been better covered for decades. But still and all, since it is in my
> nature, let me sketch an optimistic scenario.
>
Michael sets out his view of events (snip)
Your logic is fine, Michael, but your scenario can work only if you ignore certain facts, which should now be well known to all on this list in particular, thanks to the tireless work of Ange and others.
The massacre in East Timor had been planned by the Indonesian military for more than a year, with, at a minimum, the acquiescence of the politicians in Indonesia. No one was going to stop them. Including the major international players, the US, Oz, and the UN, all of whom knew of the plans as well. The Indonesian military planned to completely destroy the East Timorese independence movement, particularly its more radical element, and at the same time obliterate the infrastructure of existing Timorese society.
The vote was part of the plan. It's purpose was to map out the extent of the problem for the military, to add more names to their list of people that were to be murdered, to separate those to be murdered from those to be trucked across the border, and to give them some idea about how many West Timorese favorable to them needed to be trucked into to East Timor for the reconstruction of an East Timor that would do their bidding. This is why the terror subsided around the time of the vote. They *wanted* everyone to vote; they wanted a complete record of the problem to be eradicated.
With the benefit of hindsight, it's now clear that the only demand by the East Timorese that could have made any sense was that international intervention at all levels, from attacks on Indonesian capital to "peacekeepers on the ground, had to be in place *before the vote* to help them survive after it, or there would be no vote (a boycott if it came to that). The Indonesian military would not have accepted this, but their massacre would have been disrupted for a time, and a new dynamic would have emerged.
The East Timorese movement knew about the impending massacre too, of course. That is why they changed from their historic position against foreign involvement in their fight to urgently calling for help from wherever it could be gotten. Why? They knew their survival was a stake.
What has been the response of an appalling number of marxists here, and more so, on Louis' marxism list? Did they try to understand, and give some credit to, the materialist analysis of their comrades on the scene that timely help was absolutely critical. No. Such help, they claimed, would violate the "principle" (I refuse to add "marxist" in front of such bullshit, though that's what they claim the principle is, a marxist one) that you must never aid the imperialists, since, of course, any help of sufficient scope to matter would have to come from imperialist sources. Who can forget Carrol's statement in this regard. "Western intervention in East Timor would be criminal", he blustered. Intervention to save the lives of East Timorese radicals would have only one outcome, these marxists concluded: the subjugation of the movement to imperialist imperatives. In other words, we must allow the East Timorese to be killed to save the purity of their movement.
Sound harsh? None of these marxists wanted to see the East Timorese die. But they simply swept aside these concerns for their brothers and sisters for the advocacy of the greater "principle", one that can be trotted out to cover all conceivable circumstances and would override all else, relieving them from anything but a passing reference to actual material conditions. How, as the facts of the case unfold to mock them, unmarxian of them.
So it is now clear that the terms under which much of the debate has been held–whether or not intervention should be called for or supported–are false. All the major players have been there all along watching the plan unfold. The massacre has been allowed to run its course. Capital gets what it wants. There will be more skirmishing about who can comprise the "peacekeepers" and when they can go in, in order to allow the job to be finished, at least as completely as could be expected to be done (some of those dastardly rebels escaped to the mountains, and, actually, you can go a long time without food–more than most people think). Financial threats have been made to Indonesian capital and you knew they would be. Who knows how that will play out. The "peacekeepers" will arrive at some point, and that too, was inevitable once the first shot was fired in the massacre. It was always just a question of when each of these things would be done, not if. With the longer view, strategic plan in place and working well, such are the tactical questions, left to the elites to ponder and make adjustments as needed.
Since the marxists who opposed intervention to save the East Timorese relied so heavily on their perceived principle, most of them spent little time discussing the facts, certainly not as I have laid them out here. I would like to give them an opportunity to make their analysis more concrete. What did the East Timorese die for? What can capital *not* do now in the whole region (take your pick) under the way things have played out, that they could have done had the intervention been performed so as to prevent, or greatly truncate, the massacre. Put another way, please specify the unique advantages to capital you claim would have occurred if the East Timorese had gotten their wish for an intervention that had saved their movement, advantages that capital does not or cannot now have.
Roger