Monday, January 28, 2008
Reflecting On A Sad Legacy in Suharto's Indonesia: "One Of The Greatest Campaigns Of Slaughter In Modern Asian History."
"One of the greatest campaigns of slaughter in modern Asian history. I think, as an historian and as an American, that it is one of the most morally troubling episodes in the history of American foreign policy, and one which the U.S. government has never taken any responsibility for."
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This episode greatly undermines any claim of moral superiority in the West when compared with the crimes against humanity of Stalin and Mao. The Cold War seemed to spawn the idea among Western governments, especially the U.S., that they were justified in doing anything whatsoever to prevent the spread of communism, real or imagined. Equal enormities were not only acceptable, but encouraged. Obviously, witnessing Iraq, this is still the way our government collectively thinks.
Most Americans are completely unaware of what their own government did in Indonesia (or in any of the other nations where we have the blood of many people on our hands).
We can expect more Indonesia-like slaughters to take place in the future, as long as the American people are blissfully unaware of what's going on (even as they eagerly tune in to see the latest episode of "American Idol").
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