Posts by Simon Grigg
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Swedish Department of Justice caught bending Swedish law to cooperate with US in 2008.
I doubt if it means anything but it's kerosene when least needed.
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The problem is James, it doesn't actually say much of anything at all aside from putting up a straw man which the writer then demolishes. But, hey, if you like it it, who am I to burst your bubble.....
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Hard News: The Wellington Cables, in reply to Neil Morrison,
He didn't have a lot of good options and Indonesia was not a client state that the US could tell what to do.
So he gave them more guns and planes? Really Neil, you are so far off the mark here it's not worth pursuing it. Look back through this sub-thread and ponder at the stream of erroneous statements which you've tossed out. I'm happy to discuss in good faith but when you fire out stuff like:
That would have been difficult. The US arms used in the invasion of East Timor were sold to Indonesia by the Ford and Nixon administrations prior to Carter being elected.
when the errors that statement encompasses, when placed with what it was responding to, have not only been explained to you several times before but to any even casual pupil of SEA history kinda glare back, it's hard not be condescending (although I'd rather use the word 'frustrated').
That Carter armed Suharto is indisputable and to argue otherwise repeatedly really does make it seem that you don't know what you are talking about.
P.S. Thanks, Joe.
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Hard News: The Wellington Cables, in reply to Che Tibby,
philosophical quibble: they were communists (if it's the butchering i'm thinking of), and hence not his countrymen...
Actually some were communists (PKI - Partai Komunis Indonesia) but many were simply scores that needed settling. In Bali between 5 and 10% of the population was slaughtered.
You miss Rob, don't you?
Nah, we're good mates these days - chat online daily. He's in Japan now although his NZOA report is in the wild and really is worth a read (I'll stop now).
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Hard News: The Wellington Cables, in reply to Neil Morrison,
That would have been difficult. The US arms used in the invasion of East Timor were sold to Indonesia by the Ford and Nixon administrations prior to Carter being elected.
Gosh Neil - the OV-10s were sold in 1976 to Indonesia. They were grounded in 1977 for lack of spares. Holbrooke was the enabler in that spares release, as Secretary of State for East Asia - it all went via him. They added 4 extra Broncos too. The Skyhawks were ex-Israeli and USN. They were released, by the Carter administration in 1979.
These were, BTW, gifts.
Carter continued selling arms but had very little leverage over Suharto
I guess that lack of leverage is pretty clearly illustrated by the documented fact that he asked for a go ahead from both Australia and the USA before going in, and they, because they had no leverage, continued to arm him under Carter.
"We've got no leverage so we'll just agree to your request for more planes to use against the civilian population" yep that sounds reasonable.....
The East Timor massacre went on for many years and the worst of it happened when Carter was in office. Invasions and suppression of a population don't just happen one day and then it's all over.
The Indonesian military was fighting there for years, and had no appreciable heavy arms industry of it's own. Prior to Suharto it was armed by the Soviets and then the Chinese when Sukarno fell out with Khrushchev. Much of what it had, even in 1975, was old and simply didn't last. Western arms took up the slack over the next few years. At the same time, as Joe pointed out, they were being trained by the west including NZ.
You really, and I'm being kind, don't have any idea what you are talking about on this.
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Hard News: The Wellington Cables, in reply to Neil Morrison,
Not sure how that's contradicted by what you have said.
And I'm not sure you actually read anything anyone posts.
I'm just grateful that Holbrooke had a better grasp of an awful situation where three nationalities and their various militias were doing all sorts of horrific things to each other than you seem to. His victory was pulling them all apart and saving lives, at least in the short term.
Kosovo was several years later. Milosevic was not stopped by Dayton.
It may pay to read that link you first used to tout Holbrooke.
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Hard News: The Wellington Cables, in reply to Neil Morrison,
Hell, Neil, if anything that document you've linked to machine guns your arguments to bits. Did you read it? Here we have a guy having tea with and reassuring Suharto, who at the time had just finished massacring a million of own countrymen (he would get back to that in due order) and was in the process of doing the same to a small ex-Portuguese territory it shared a border with, that he's on the right track. He 'acknowledged efforts Suharto was making to resolve Indonesian problems'.
That cable, and the words in it are one of the major reasons his history is so clouded.
In the 24 months after this cable Suharto ramped up the assault on East Timor and 200,000 people died. This was done with US (and UK) weaponry facilitated by the Secretary of State For East Asia, Richard Holbrooke. None of this is controversial stuff - it's documented and supported by now unclassified documents many of which are online.
When later confronted by this, Holbrooke attempted to blame the bulk of the deaths on food issues caused by the long departed Portuguese despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary. It was shameful.
Re: the Balkans - Did you even read that link you are dismissing? Serbian intransigence really isn't the point.
Nobody denies that he played a big - crucial - part in the 1995 Dayton Accords, but that tells only part of the story. It was, however, a job unfinished and deals were done which seem to have allowed various parties to walk. The first part of that was perhaps inevitable, the second not.
The point is, and it's one I tried to make earlier (hell, I did make it), is that his legacy is very mixed. There are some dark parts in it that you seemed to happily sidestep when you proclaimed boldly him earlier in the thread.
that Simon believes contradicts that
I didn't say that Neil, please don't put words in my mouth. I said it it was 'a part of a fact somewhat misrepresented'. He didn't 'stop Milosevic', he played a substantial and laudable part in stopping the killing (which was, if you care to check) not exclusively Serbian - there was ugly stuff from both sides. Milosevic remained president for another five years.
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Hard News: The Wellington Cables, in reply to Simon Grigg,
Of course there are still plenty of left-wing sites that saw and still see this as merely US imperialism.
The quote above came from The Nation, Neil - a 155 year old respected organ of the centre-left most closely affiliated with those radicals The Democratic Party. It's hardly an extreme arm of the Marxist Workers Party.
Who in hell's name mentioned 'US Imperialism' here?
I do find that there is an unseemly and uncomfortable clash between you simply proclaiming "Its a fact" and a journalist, who I imagine has spend some time on the story and maybe knows a bit, posting an analysis as above.
I'd be more interested to know why you think the second paragraph is wrong and why the deals Holbrook allegedly did with some of the worst monsters of Bosnia are not relevant. Since he 'stopped Melosevic'.
That sort of thing.
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Hard News: The Wellington Cables, in reply to Neil Morrison,
Holbrooke was instrumental in stopping Milosevic, that's a fact
Actually Neil it's a part of a fact somewhat misrepresented:
Triumph and controversy will go hand in hand into the legacy of Richard Holbrooke. That includes the story of Bosnia and the Dayton peace accord, for which he is being hailed this week as a master negotiator. While the 1995 agreement ended the killing in Bosnia—a resident of Sarajevo told me this year that many still think of him as "God"—Holbrooke is also remembered for having left the small country deeply divided between Serbs and largely Muslim Bosniaks, with separate governments working (in theory at least) in a weak federal coalition.
Serbs retained the power to obstruct a healing of ethnic wounds by denying or downplaying atrocities that took place on a scale not seen in Europe since World War II. Bosnian women, targeted for rape by Serbs or widowed in the mass killings of Bosnian men, as in Srebrenica, have suffered most during the past two decades. European institutions, left to finish the job of putting Bosnia and Herzegovina back together again, have not been able to undo this decision, the price of an agreement that has left paralysis in its wake.
On East Timor, his record of enabling the Indonesian / Suharto bloodbath which took the lives of a third of that nation and has left it as the world's poorest nation is fairly well documented:
From one cable:
Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke’s visit to Jakarta in April 1977 and his lengthy meeting with President Suharto was the first by a high-ranking Carter Administration official. The visit occurred during the run-up to tightly-controlled Presidential and parliamentary elections in which hundreds of Suharto opponents had been arrested and critical newspapers shuttered. It thus represented, in the words of the U.S. Embassy, an “unusual opportunity” to advance concerns about human rights and democracy more generally - had that been Holbrooke’s intention. In his meeting with Suharto, however, the Assistant Secretary offered no criticism of Indonesia’s human rights record while “acknowledging efforts President Suharto appeared to be making to resolve Indonesian problems,” especially on East Timor, where he “applauded” the President’s judgment in allowing Congressional members to visit the territory but remained mute on reports of ongoing atrocities.
He was, thereafter, the primary enabler in the delivery to Suharto of A-4 Skyhawks and extra Ov-10 Broncos which were specifically required for East Timor.
He was also a major hawk on Iraq and we know how well that worked out.
To be generous, despite the rhetoric this week, his record is at best patchy.
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There seemed to have been a rush to get the first tweet out when bail was granted.
@newsbrooke seemed to beat @AlexiMostrous to the punch. You can almost see the smoke rising from Washington.