Right off the top of my head.
- East Timor intervention would respect international law. The US intentionally and gleefully wiped its ass with it in Kosovo - in fact, I see this ass-wiping as a major goal of the intervention. US to world: don't ever think that international law will protect your water plants from cruise missiles.
- Intervention in East Timor has a good chance of stopping an existing humanitarian catastrophe. Intervention in Kosovo caused a humanitarian catastrophe much wrose than the ugly counterinsurgency campaign it allegedly tried to stop.
- Intervention in East Timor will involve ground troops, rather than terror bombing of civilians from 15,000 feet.
- There seem to be no ulterior motives for intervention in East Timor. In Kosovo, there was the issue of rescuing NATO from obsolescence.
Enrique
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> --Nathan Newman