Dear Noam,
Thanks for the reply.
You are right, I am confused.
I asked, "Where, in short, in the entire article has Chomsky ruled out or criticised the (prospect of) military intervention of those who he already knows are culpable in the establishment and support of the Indonesian regime?"
I'm confused as to why it is, that for all that you know about Australian Govt support for the Indonesian military occupation of East Timor, you "absolutely" support the Australian "peace-keeping force", Interfet.
Aust's was the only western govt to recognise Indonesia's military occupation and has, since the mid-1980s (and in particular, in the post-1989 period), been more important to the ongoing support, training and funding of the Indon military than has the US Govt. Since the Dibb Report, for successive govts, "Australian security" has been entirely premised on the maintenance of "good relations with Indonesia". This should, at the very least, be apparent in the fact that the Australian Government waited for an Indonesian Govt invitation to enter East Timor.
Much like in the case of the US military's intervention in Haiti, this was an instance not of supporting the independence or democratisation movement, but of being in a position to determine the conditions upon which such independence was ostensibly 'won'. Saving lives was and is a grim and hollow pretext. The question, indeed possibility, of US and Australian Government inaction as the conditions for a truly independent East Timor does not arise. It becomes reduced to the option not of action per se, but of benevolent US and/or Aust _govt_ action -- ie., not the possibility of an end to the hegemonial, or indeed regionally hegemonial, actions of those states.
Interfet was not, contrary to the hope that states should -- can -- be moral actors, the only action possible or even occuring in support of an independent East Timor. In fact, trade, shipping and tourist bans were already put in place by Australian unions and escalating -- without this, Australian Government support for the Indonesian Government would have amounted to little more than diplomatic communications, or an attempt to break the bans, which it was not in a political position to accomplish given the widespread support for these.
Announcing over and again that the Australian Government was trying its darndest to send troops to East Timor, but that sadly, there were difficulties or reasons not to go (the first being that the Indon military had matters under control, and when it became more than apparent that the line about "rogue elements" was an outright lie, subsequently: that such an action would constitute an act of war to land on sovereign Indonesian soil; Australia could not mount such an exercise without US troops alongside; and finally, during the APEC meeting, if Australian troops landed in East Timor, this would spark a coup in Jakarta) was a means to redirect the bans on the economic fortunes of the combination military-capitalists in Indonesia toward an exercise which not only granted the time for the scheme of the Indon generals and ministers to be more or less completed, but ensured that the Australian Govt would be in a position to determine the course and character of East Timorese "independence" on terms preferably favourable to both Indonesian but, more importantly, Australian (and US) capitalists.
In any case, any 'delays' in the landing of Australian troops was determined by the Australian Government -- that is, it was intentional. Given what the Aust Govt knew in April of last year of plans to devastate East Timor's infrastructure, remove thousands to West Timor, and murder members of the independence movement and their families -- all the while convincing the UN that a ballot could be held with the only guns in sight being those of the Indonesian army (you will recall the spectacles of disarmament of militia which were really an attempt to disarm Falantil) -- it remains naive to consider the series of excuses put forth by the Australian Government as to why they were not only not intervening, but trying to block the trade, shipping and tourist bans imposed by Australian unions, refusing to break off relations with Indonesia, etc as anything other than an effort to allow the plan to unfold -- which it did.
Interfet did not save one person from the violence of the militia, it did not save one building.
> >There were still plenty of Indonesian-run and US-trained and -armed
> >paramilitary terrorists roaming around, and I'm all in favor of
> >protecting people from them
Interfet did, in its first weeks after landing, make a big show of arresting suspected militia members, which it then handed over to Indonesian police who promptly released them with suggestions that they head for West Timor. There are now only a handful of suspected militia in jail in Dili. It does not take much to realise that anyone who was committed militia -- as distinct from those who were forcibly recruited -- would already have been in West Timor by the time of Interfet's landing. Moreover, given that those who are now in jail in Dili are there because of threats of retaliation -- some of which were found being set upon by understandably angry East Timorese -- one might easily conclude that Interfet is protecting them, rather than others from them.
> >I would also have been in favor of the USAF airdropping
> >food to hundreds of thousands of people starving to death in the
> >mountains to which they had been driven by the forces armed
> >and trained by the US
Well, whilst there were indeed calls from some quarters for food drops, which seems obvious; not a few from Falantil were concerned that this would increase the possibility of militia discovering where people were hiding. In short, without arms being dropped alongside the food, such an action might well have entailed additional dangers to those of slow starvation. To be sure, this was not a certainty and hardly makes for a choice, but it is a complication that indicates a reluctance to allow the East Timorese to themselves fight for independance as distinct from being the 'good and passive victims' who are 'saved' by Australian troops.
> >, and I would be in favor -- right now -- of
> >the US informing the Indonesians to release the 150,000 people
> >they are still holding in concentration camps in West Timor
> >(and probably elsewhere in Indonesia).
I agree, those being held in West Timor should be free to leave. But one needs to be careful with this just a little. There are many different reasons for why there are so many people in the camps in West Timor: people
who regard the UN and Australia as having put them at risk in the first place; people who migrated from Indonesia over the last twenty years and, some of which were born in East Timor, are afraid to return; people who are told and threatened with all manner of things if they do return to East Timor; militia members. On a related note, do you or anyone else know who, in the end, was eligible to vote in the UN ballot?
> >I would also be in favor
> >the US and UK paying huge reparations for the crimes they have
> >committed, right into September 1999, at which point 750,000
> >of the 888,000 population had been violently expelled from their
> >homes, and most of the country destroyed.
Agreed. This would certainly be a priority, especially in light of the monies-with-strings-attached that were announced today by Wolfie of the World Bank.
> >If your correspondent
> >regards this as support of "American imperialism," too bad: I
> >would suggest some more careful thought.
I don't think I mentioned "American imperialism" other than to indicate its limited applicability. You must be thinking of someone else. Yet, what's extraordinary about this passage is not the concrete proposal for food drops, compensation, "informing" (?), but what's best described as playing to a US audience which you assume knows no other means of action other than US state action. Fact: the Australian Government is and has been a more determined supporter, armer, and trainer of the Indon military than the US. It simply isn't plausible to fudge this in order to present the US Government as the singular actor, in a move which not only makes the Australian Govt (as well as the Australians who are not reducible to govt) disappear, but the East Timorese and the Indonesians as well. You're making claims on the US state, and anything not conducive to the making of such claims is rendered void in the analysis and presentation of events and facts. This is extraordinary, because I did have the impression that you were an anarchist or libertarian of sorts, and I already know that you've done some excellent work on Australian Govt support for Soeharto. So, I'm confused by this particular pitch of yours.
I will add that today, as Interfet soldiers return home to ticker-tape parades, the remaining East Timorese refugees in Australia are being forced onto planes by police to take them to an East Timor which can barely feed and sustain those who are there. The blockade by friends, families and supporters was broken in Darwin this evening; tomorrow the those in Sydney will be forcibly deported. Which returns us again to the real reasons why the Australian Govt decided to pressure Habibe into putting the independence question to a ballot in the first place. The thousands of East Timorese refugees here for over a decade are all facing deportation, including those who arrived since the cemetery massacre, and those who arrived in the midst of the recent violence (after, it should be noted, UN staff refused to leave Dili without them and unions began to threaten bans on Aust Govt activity -- the Immigration Minister had refused until the last minute to allow them to come here). Without an East Timor which was nominally independent, the Australian Govt was finding it politically (if not legally) difficult to deport.
In short, today, as Interfet troops return, the Australian Govt, with UN blessing, can re-define East Timorese refugees as "economic refugees". And, we all know this is an illegitimate category in official refugee law. Mission complete.
A too-long post and I haven't even mentioned Aceh, Ambon, West Papua, the Mollucus... A prize to anyone who can spot the differences between these and East Timor.
Cheers,
Angela