East Timor [was East Timor: the optimist's scenario]

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Wed Sep 15 19:54:43 PDT 1999



>All the major players
>knew about the massacre beforehand. None was going to stop it, meaning
>each wanted it, or acqiesced to it, for their own reasons. The debate
>you and others were having about intervention and aiding imperialism was
>false, in the sense that the only interevntion that mattered--that could
>have saved the East Timorese--wasn't going to happen.
<snip>
>Roger

Maybe it is a surprise to you, but no 'military intervention' by imperialists was ever undertaken for the purpose of saving some oppressed people's lives, nor will be in the future, for all their rhetoric -- period. If they invade another country, that's because they see either a chance or need or both for asserting their direct control over a given situation (as opposed to indirect control), the result of which is not pretty, even for people in whose name such an 'intervention' is conducted. Look at what happened to Somalia. Or Iraq. Or Bosnia. Or Kosovo. That's our point if you missed it. Had the Left in the West been in better shape & strong enough to pressure our respective governments to _not_ to give a go-ahead & aid to Indonesia when it first invaded East Timor in 1975 (in other words, when Fretilin was better organized and poised to take control of a newly independent nation), it could have prevented the current state of affairs, not to mention past atrocities. But the Left was weak and still is -- hence our inability to save anyone's life -- including lives of peole lost to poverty and misery in our own countries, in our own neighborhoods.

Yoshie



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list