Year 501 (25 page)

In line with his general skepticism, Brands believes these claims to be exaggerated. McNamara's “attempts to appropriate responsibility for the general's rise to power,” he thinks, were a reaction to President Johnson's “enthusiasm for the Suharto regime.” US assurances to the Indonesian military “certainly had
some
effect on Suharto's assessment of his prospects,” but not much, because they “merely reiterated the obvious fact that the United States prefers rightists to leftists”—including rightists who conduct a huge slaughter and install a terrorist “New Order.” As for the war in Vietnam, the CIA doubted that “the US display of determination in Vietnam directly influenced the outcome of the Indonesian crisis in any significant way,” CIA director Helms wrote to Walt Rostow in 1966. As Brands himself puts it, the Johnson administration had been concerned that Indonesia might suffer “the fate from which the United States was then attempting to rescue South Vietnam.” Fortunately, Indonesia rescued itself.

There was no condemnation of the slaughter on the floor of Congress, and no major US relief agency offered aid. The World Bank restored Indonesia to favor, soon making it the third largest borrower. Western governments and corporations followed along.

Those close at hand may have drawn further lessons about peasant massacre. Ambassador Green went on to the State Department, where he presided over the bombing of rural Cambodia, among other achievements. As the bombing was stepped up to historically unprecedented levels in 1973, slaughtering tens of thousands of peasants, Green testified before Congress that the massacre should continue because of our desire for peace: our experience with “these characters in Hanoi” teaches that only the rivers of blood of Cambodian peasants might bring them to the negotiating table. The “experience” to which he referred was the 1972 Christmas bombings of Hanoi, undertaken to force those characters in Hanoi to modify the agreements reached with the Nixon Administration in October but rejected by Washington, then restored without change after the US stopped the bombing because it proved too costly. The events and their remarkable aftermath having been concealed by the Free Press, Green could be confident that there would be no exposure of his colossal fabrications in the interest of continued mass murder.
11

Returning to Indonesia, the media were pleased, even euphoric. As the army moved to take control,
Times
correspondent Max Frankel described the delight of Johnson Administration officials over the “dramatic new opportunity” in Indonesia. The “military showed power,” so that “Indonesia can now be saved from what had appeared to be an inevitable drift towards a peaceful takeover from within”—an unthinkable disaster, since internal politics was not under US control. US officials “believe the army will cripple and perhaps destroy the Communists as a significant political force,” leading to “the elimination of Communist influences at all levels of Indonesian society.” Consequently, there is now “hope where only two weeks ago there was despair.”
12

Not everyone was so enthusiastic about the opportunity to destroy the one popular political force in the country. Japan's leading newspaper,
Asahi Shimbun
, urged caution: “In view of the fact that the Communist influence is deeply entrenched among the Indonesian grassroots, it would cause further deterioration in the confused national state of affairs if a firm crackdown were carried out against them.”
13
But such more somber reflections were rare.

In mid-1966, well after the results were known,
U.S. News & World Report
headlined a long and enthusiastic story “Indonesia: ‘HOPE...WHERE ONCE THERE WAS NONE.'” “Indonesians these days can talk and argue freely, no longer fearful of being denounced and imprisoned,” the journal reported, describing an emerging totalitarian terror state with hundreds of thousands in prison and the blood still flowing. In a cover story,
Time
magazine celebrated “The West's best news for years in Asia” under the heading “Vengeance with a Smile,” devoting 5 pages of text and 6 more of pictures to the “boiling bloodbath that almost unnoticed took 400,000 lives.” The new army regime is “scrupulously constitutional,”
Time
happily announced, “based on law not on mere power,” in the words of its “quietly determined” leader Suharto with his “almost innocent face.” The elimination of the 3 million-member PKI by its “only possible rival,” the army, and the removal from power of the “genuine folk hero” Sukarno, may virtually be considered a triumph of democracy.
14

The leading political thinker of the
New York Times
, James Reston, chimed in under the heading “A Gleam of Light in Asia.” The regular channel for the State Department, Reston admonished Americans not to let the bad news in Vietnam displace “the more hopeful developments in Asia,” primary among them being “the savage transformation of Indonesia from a pro-Chinese policy under Sukarno to a defiantly anti-Communist policy under General Suharto”:

Washington is being careful not to claim any credit for this change in the sixth most populous and one of the richest nations in the world, but this does not mean that Washington had nothing to do with it. There was a great deal more contact between the anti-Communist forces in that country and at least one very high official in Washington before and during the Indonesian massacre than is generally realized. General Suharto's forces, at times severely short of food and munitions, have been getting aid from here through various third countries, and it is doubtful if the coup would ever have been attempted without the American show of strength in Vietnam or been sustained without the clandestine aid it has received indirectly from here.

The news story on Indonesia the same day carried more glad tidings. Headlined “Indonesians View U.S. Films Again,” it described “the biggest public social event in the Indonesian capital these days,” the showing of American films to “smartly dressed Indonesians” who “alight from expensive limousines,” “one sign of the country's rejection of the anti-American pro-Communist policy of the Indonesian Government” before the gleam of light broke through the clouds.
15

Recall that according to the skeptical view of Brands and others, Reston's proud claim that the US government could fairly claim credit for the massacre and the establishment of the “New Order” was exaggerated, though understandable.

Editorial reaction to the bloodbath was judicious. The
Times
was pleased that the Indonesian army had “de-fused the country's political time-bomb, the powerful Indonesian Communist party,” and praised Washington for having “wisely stayed in the background during the recent upheavals” instead of assisting openly and trumpeting its glee; the idea that Washington, or anyone, should have protested and sought to abort the useful slaughter was beyond the pale. Washington should continue this wise course, the editors urged, supporting international aid to the “Indonesian moderates” who had conducted the massacre. A February 1966 editorial outlined the likely advantages for the United States now that the Indonesian military had taken power and “proceeded to dismantle the entire P.K.I. apparatus.” A follow-up in August recognized that there had been a “staggering mass slaughter of Communists and pro-Communists,” with hundreds of thousands killed. This “situation...raises critical questions for the United States,” which, fortunately, have been correctly answered: Washington “wisely has not intruded into the Indonesian turmoil” by “embrac[ing] the country's new rulers publicly,” which “could well hurt them”—the only “critical question” that comes to mind. A month later the editors described the relief in Washington over the fact that “Indonesia was lost and has been found again.” The successes of the “moderates” had been rewarded “with generous pledges of rice, cotton and machinery” and preparations to resume the economic aid that was held back before the “staggering mass slaughter” set matters right. The US “has adequate reasons of state to come to terms with the new regime,” not to speak of more than adequate reasons of profit.
16

Within a few years, a complete role reversal had been achieved. George McArthur of the
Los Angeles Times
, a respected Asia hand, wrote in 1977 that the PKI had “attempted to seize power and subjected the country to a bloodbath,” placing their necks under the knife in a major Communist atrocity.
17

By then, the Indonesian generals, in addition to compiling one of the worst human rights records in the world at home, had escalated their 1975 attack on the former Portuguese colony of East Timor to near-genocidal levels, with another “staggering mass slaughter,” which bears comparison to the atrocities of Pol Pot in the same years. In this case, the deed was done with the crucial support of the Human Rights Administration and its allies. They understand “reasons of state” as well as the
Times
editors, who, with their North American and European colleagues, did what they could to facilitate the slaughter by suppressing the readily available facts in favor of (occasional) fairy tales told by Indonesian generals and the State Department. US-Canadian reporting on Timor, which had been substantial before the invasion in the context of Western concerns over the collapse of the Portuguese empire, reduced to zero in 1978 as atrocities peaked along with the flow of US arms.
18

Times
editors were not alone in extolling the moderates who had stirred up the “boiling bloodbath.” “Many in the West were keen to cultivate Jakarta's new moderate leader, Suharto,” the
Christian Science Monitor
later reported.
Times
Southeast Asia correspondent Philip Shenon adds, more cautiously, that Suharto's human rights record is “checkered.” The London
Economist
described this great mass murderer and torturer as “at heart benign,” doubtless thinking of his compassion for TNCs. Unfortunately, there are those who try to impugn his benign nature: “propagandists for the guerillas” in East Timor and West Papua (Irian Jaya) “talk of the army's savagery and use of torture”—including the Bishop and other church sources, thousands of refugees in Australia and Portugal, Western diplomats and journalists who have chosen to see, Amnesty International and other human rights organizations. They are all “propagandists,” rather than intrepid champions of human rights, because they have quite the wrong story to tell.
19

In the
Wall Street Journal
, Barry Wain, editor of its Asia affiliate, described how General Suharto “moved boldly in defeating the coup makers and consolidating his power,” using “strength and finesse” to take total control. “By most standards, he has done well,” though there have been a few problems, specifically, government involvement in the killing of several thousand alleged criminals from 1982 to 1985. Some lingering questions about earlier years aside, a few weeks before Wain's laudatory column,
Asiaweek
reported another massacre in Sumatra, where armed troops burnt a village of 300 people to the ground, killing dozens of civilians, part of an operation to quell unrest in the province. Suharto is “a Figure of Stability,” a
Wall Street Journal
headline reads, using the term in the PC sense already discussed. The upbeat story does not overlook the events of 1965. One sentence reads: Suharto “took command of the effort to crush the coup attempt, and succeeded.”
20

When the victims are classified as less than human—wild beasts in the shape of men, Communists, terrorists, or whatever may be the contemporary term of art—their extermination raises no moral qualms. And the agents of extermination are praiseworthy moderates—our Nazis, to translate from Newspeak. The practice is standard. Recall the “moderate” General Gramajo, to mention someone who might aspire to Suharto's league.

5. Closing the Books

In 1990-1991, several events elicited some uncharacteristic concern over US-backed Indonesian atrocities. In May 1990, States News Service released a study in Washington by Kathy Kadane, which found that

The U.S. government played a significant role by supplying the names of thousands of Communist Party leaders to the Indonesian army, which hunted down the leftists and killed them, former U.S. diplomats say...As many as 5000 names were furnished to the Indonesian army, and the Americans later checked off the names of those who had been killed or captured, according to U.S. officials... The lists were a detailed who's-who of the leadership of the party of 3 million members, [foreign service officer Robert] Martens said. They included names of provincial, city and other local PKI committee members, and leaders of the “mass organizations,” such as the PKI national labor federation, women's and youth groups.

The names were passed on to the military, which used them as a “shooting list,” according to Joseph Lazarsky, deputy CIA station chief in Jakarta at the time, who adds that some were kept for interrogation or “kangaroo courts” because the Indonesians “didn't have enough goon squads to zap them all.” Kadane reports that top US Embassy officials acknowledged in interviews that they had approved of the release of the names. William Colby compared the operation to his Phoenix program in Vietnam, in exculpation of his own campaign of political assassination (which Phoenix clearly was, though he denies it).