It’s nice that the Nation gets outraged about Obama approving cooperation between the US military and one of the more infamous Indonesian murder squads:
Yesterday’s announcement by the Obama administration that it is resuming military ties with the mass-murdering war criminals of Indonesia’s special forces ought to give us pause. Because the new relationship with Kopassus, the Indonesian thugs, has little or nothing to do with concrete U.S. interests in Indonesia – do we have any, anyway? – and everything to do with building a Great Wall around China.
But it would be nice had the article also acknowledged America’s important role in enablihing the Kopassus to commit their crimes. It was in an earlier struggle against supposed communism that several million people got murdered for being communist, or socialist, or just leftist or in the way. It’s was the US who armed the killers and led the killing and who supported the Indonesian military as they committed one warcrime after another, from the invasion of East Timor to the counterinsurgency in Papua New Guinea. In short, while this article does criticise current policy, by its silence on the history of American support for Indonesia, it helps whitewash this history, making the US seem more innocent in this than it really is. All that remains for a reader not familiar with this history is a vague awareness that this Indonesian unit is bad and Obama in the wrong for wanting to support it, but unaware that the very crimes for which Kopassus was responsible were instigated on behalf of America and that America has supported it throughout these crimes.