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CounterPunch.org
Weekend Edition January 6 / 7, 2007
Standards for Rembrance
Crimes Against Humanity From Ford to Saddam
By JOSEPH NEVINS
Now that both Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein are dead and buried,
the question of how they will be remembered here in the United
States arises. If the talk of officialdom and the mainstream media
outlets thus far is any indicator-and surely it is-the U.S.
collective memories of the two leaders will be diametrically
opposed.
As one might expect, official Washington's reactions to the two
deaths have been as different as night and day, with Democrats
following the White House lead in lockstep. President Bush expressed
sadness in the wake of Ford's death, calling the former president a
"great man" while Representative Nancy Pelosi voiced respect for
Ford's "fair and reliable leadership." By contract, George Bush
welcomed Hussein's execution, characterizing it as "an important
milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy," and Senator
Joseph Biden, the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, declared with satisfaction that "Iraq has . . . rid the
world of a tyrant."
On the surface, it makes sense to judge the two men in such
divergent ways. After all, an Iraqi court convicted Hussein of a
crime against humanity for ordering the deaths of 148 Shiite
villagers in Dujail. While the court was of the kangaroo variety,
there's no doubt that the Dujail massacre was only one of many
atrocities he oversaw while ruling Iraq. Gerald Ford, to the
contrary, was never even indicted for any such crime.
But this distinction, it turns out, reflects a double standard
for judging similar conduct. If we do not limit our analysis of Ford
to his role as a U.S. "statesman," and instead examine his behavior
through an internationalist lens similar to that employed to judge
Saddam Hussein and concerned with crimes against humanity, we find
that Ford, too, was responsible for mass murder-in East Timor. The
responsibility goes further than Ford's now-well-known giving to
Indonesia the proverbial green light to invade. What the green light
metaphor obscures is just how decisive Ford's authorization was, and
how his complicity with Indonesia's crimes continued throughout his
brief White House occupancy.
On Dec. 6, 1975, Ford and Henry Kissinger, his secretary of
state, were in Jakarta, Indonesia to meet the country's dictator,
General Suharto. Ford was fully cognizant of Indonesia's plans to
launch an imminent invasion of the former Portuguese Timor.
According to declassified documents published by the
Washington-based National Security Archive, Ford assured Suharto
that with regard to East Timor, "[We] will not press you on the
issue. We understand . . . the intentions you have." (1)
Suharto needed Washington's go-ahead due to a 1958 agreement that
prohibited Indonesia from using U.S.-origin weaponry, which made up
90 percent of Jakarta's arsenal at the time, except for "legitimate
national self-defense." (2) For this reason Kissinger suggested that
the invasion be framed as self-defense, thus circumventing any legal
obstacles.
Kissinger then expressed understanding for Indonesia's "need to
move quickly" and advised "that it would be better if it were done
after we [he and Ford] returned [to the United States]." About 14
hours after their departure, Indonesian forces invaded neighboring
East Timor.
While Indonesian forces massacred civilians during the first
hours of the Dec. 7 invasion, Ford spoke at the University of
Hawaii. There, he declared-apparently with a straight face-his
commitment to a "Pacific doctrine of peace with all and hostility
toward none," and spoke of an Asia "where people are free from the
threat of foreign aggression." (3)
Ford and his White House successors helped make sure that his
lofty vision was not realized in Indonesia-ravaged East Timor.
According to the now-independent country's truth commission report,
released late last year, Indonesia's war and illegal occupation
resulted in many tens of thousands of East Timorese deaths,
widespread rape and sexual enslavement of women and girls, and, in
the waning days of Jakarta's presence, systematic destruction of the
territory's buildings and infrastructure. (4) Today, East Timor is
one of the world's poorest countries. It is, according to a 2006
United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report, a country "chained
by poverty." (5)
Over the almost 24 years of Indonesian rule, Democratic and
Republican administrations alike provided invaluable diplomatic
cover and billions of dollars' worth of weapons, military equipment
and training, and economic aid to Jakarta. For such reasons the
truth commission report characterizes U.S. assistance as
"fundamental" to the invasion and occupation, and calls upon
Washington to apologize and pay reparations to East Timor.
Washington's considerable share of the blame for East Timor's
plight does not rest solely at Ford's feet. But it was Gerald Ford
that opened the door to this dreadful chapter in history.
There is little doubt that Ford's authorization was key to
Indonesia's invasion. Intelligence and diplomatic documents reveal
that Jakarta was so worried about how the U.S. would react to its
aggression that Suharto had vetoed earlier plans to invade. Had the
United States (along with its allies, especially Australia and
Britain) said "no" to Jakarta's invasion prior to its launching, the
Suharto regime would have been in a very difficult bind and most
likely have reversed course. And, given the profound anti-communism
of the regime, it could hardly have turned to the likes of the
Soviet Union as an alternative.
As William Colby, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency in
1975, told an interviewer during the 1990s, if the United States had
vetoed Indonesia's plan to invade, "[w]e certainly would have had a
little diplomatic strain there," but nothing beyond that, the
implication being that Jakarta would have backed down. He went on to
suggest that Jakarta had no other options apart from securing
Washington's compliance and to ask rhetorically, "where would have
[Suharto] gone" had the Indonesian ruler not been not happy with the
U.S. position? (6)
Nonetheless, Ford's administration had previously warned
Indonesia against using American weaponry in any planned aggression.
But any reservations that the administration may have had about the
employment of U.S. weaponry seem to have disappeared by Dec. 6,
1975, with horrific results for the people of Timor-Leste, as the
now-independent country is officially known..
One week after the meeting in Jakarta, Ford sent Suharto a
package of golf balls as "a personal gift." (7) In the months that
followed, his U.N. ambassador, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, prevented
the United Nations from taking effective steps to compel Jakarta to
end its illegal aggression. (8) Later in 1976, Ford's administration
shipped a squadron of U.S. OV-10 "Bronco" ground-attack planes to
Indonesia's military, ones ideal for counterinsurgency of the type
it was waging in East Timor.
In the 1990s, journalist Allan Nairn interviewed Gerald Ford and
asked him if he had authorized the invasion, Ford replied, "Frankly,
I don't recall." As Nairn recounted recently on Democracy Now!, Ford
explained that there were many topics on the December 6, 1975
meeting agenda, and East Timor was one of the lesser items. (9)
While Ford had the luxury of forgetting-an example of what we
might call imperial privilege-the people of East Timor are condemned
to remember: they will live with the physical, social, and
psychological effects of the horrific war and occupation for
decades.
According to the 2006 UNDP report, 90 out of 1,000 children there
die before their first birthday; half the population is illiterate;
64 percent suffers from food insecurity; half lack access to access
to safe drinking water; and 40 percent live below the official
poverty level of 55 cents a day. Meanwhile, a study conducted by the
International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims determined
that about one-third of East Timor's population suffers from
post-traumatic stress disorder. (10)
This is a legacy for which we should remember Gerald Ford, just
as Saddam Hussein will justifiably be memorialized for his role in
crimes against humanity.
Joseph Nevins is an assistant professor of geography at Vassar
College. He is the author of Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the
"Illegal Alien" and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (Routledge,
2002) and, most recently, A
Not-so-distant Horror: Mass Violence in East Timor (Cornell
University Press, 2005).
Notes
(1) Quotes taken from William Burr and Michael L. Evans, eds.,
East Timor Revisited: Ford, Kissinger and the Indonesian Invasion,
197576, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 62,
Document 1, December 6, 2001. Available online at
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/.
(2) Text of agreement reprinted in United States Congress, House
of Representatives, "Human Right in East Timor and the Question of
the Use of U.S. Equipment by the Indonesian Armed Forces," Hearing
before the Subcommittees on International Organizations and on Asian
and Pacific Affairs of the Committee on International Relations,
March 23, 1977, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1977: 76.
(3) Address of President Gerald R. Ford at the University of
Hawaii, December 7, 1975; available online at
http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/speeches/750716.htm
(4) Chega!, Final Report of the Commission for Truth, Reception,
and Reconciliation (CAVR) in East Timor, Dili, 2005; available
online at http://www.etan.org/news/2006/cavr.htm
(5) United Nations Development Programme,
The Path out of
Poverty: Timor-Leste Human Development Report 2006, Dili,
Timor-Leste: United Nations Development Programme, January 2006.
(6) Quoted in Allan Nairn, "Foreword," in Constâncio Pinto and
Matthew Jardine, East Timor's Unfinished Struggle: Inside the
Timorese Resistance, Boston: South End Press, 1997: xiii-xiv.
(7) See Brad Simpson, "'Illegally and Beautifully': The United
States, the Indonesian Invasion of East Timor and the International
Community, 1974-76," Cold War History, Vol. 5, No. 3, August 2005:
281-315; available online at http://www.etan.org/etanpdf/pdf3/CWHarticle.pdf
(8) Daniel Moynihan (with Suzanne Weaver), A Dangerous Place,
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1978: 247. In the same statement,
Moynihan boasts of blocking U.N. action to end Morocco's illegal
(and ongoing) occupation of the Western Sahara.
(9) See "President Gerald Ford Dies at 93; Supported Indonesian
Invasion of East Timor that Killed 1/3 of Population," Democracy
Now!, December 27, 2007; transcript available at
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/27/1638254
(10) J. Modvig et al., "Torture and Trauma in Post-Conflict East
Timor," The Lancet, Vol. 356, Nov. 18, 2000: 1763.
see also
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