Ironically, Chris Hitchens gets it right on Gerald Ford.

[3121guitarist]

Good for him, for once.

http://www.slate.com/id/2156400/fr/flyout

[Buzz Clik]

1. That was a silly piece.

Hitchens usually manages to say some intelligent things mixed in with his goofiness. He made an exception this time.

Examples:

--Snubbing Solzhenitsyn doesn't rise to the top 20 of Ford's screwups.
--It came out during the Watergate hearings that Nixon did not order the break-in. If Hitchens is disappointed that the Nixon pardon somehow deprived us of the "why" of the break-in, he's twisting history to fit his rant.
--Comparing Nixon to OJ is moronic.
-- "Gen. Suharto of Indonesia ... asked for American permission to impose Indonesian military occupation on East Timor." What? Gee, Chris, a little documentation of that would have been nice.

Sorry, but Hitchens is still out to lunch.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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[Buzz Clik]

4. Beautiful. So I'm a freeper because I want documentation for wild accusations.

I notice you provided no documentation, either.

Pardon me if I'm not impressed with Hitchens or his apologists.

[Igel]

6. Here's a metalink.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/

The site links to PDFs of documents. I disagree with the characterization that it granted permission, and I'm fairly agnostic as to what I'd have done at the time in their position; but Ford/Kissinger said on behalf of the US , IIRC, that they 'had no objection' to an invasion of E. Timor. (Sorry for the cataphora.)

(on edit: I didn't realize how long ago the documents were made public)

[Buzz Clik]

8. You are correct, and here's the link of direct relevance.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/doc4.pdf

In following the string of documents, it's very clear that what Suharto was saying to Ford and what he did were completely different. Nevertheless, he mentioned the possibility of direct intervention in Timor, and Ford and Kissinger made no objection.

[Igel]

5. The document makes it clear they knew and

had no objection to the invasion and annexation of E. Timor.

Genocide, IIRC, wasn't mentioned. I'm not sure it would have mattered, but precision isn't a bad thing.

The presupposition behind "permission" is that the US somehow was or is the world's parent. It grants the US the very authority that people deny it does, can, or should have, and nicely shifts the full blame to the US for others' deeds while mitigating the responsibility of other people for their own decisions. The US has enough "sins" to its account, it's not anybody's Savior.

I don't think the US was about to go to war with Indonesia after Vietnam to protect the E. Timorese. I rather doubt that, given the economics of the time, the US would have been likely to say no to Indonesian oil and raw materials, something an embargo and pissed-off Suharto would have entailed. And, given the rivalry with the USSR, I doubt that the US would have eagerly pissed off Indonesia and supported an E. Timor that putatively would have been friendly with the USSR or China, esp. given then-current events in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Idealism said to side with E. Timor. If it happened now, we'd hear fundies asking for the US to prevent the Muslim domination of a majority-Xian territory; if FRETILIN had been fascist, I don't know that many of E. Timor's defenders in this country would have much cared. I don't know and can't predict what Suharto would have done if threats over E. Timor had been made, or "permission" denied. I tend to think he would have ignored the US, and would have made it known that the US was powerless and could easily be ignored.

However, those were the days of "realism" in foreign policy. I don't recall E. Timor making much of a splash in the news. Distressingly, I hear that nowadays some like the idea of realism in foreign policy, or perhaps "neo-realism."

[SoCalDem]

3. Hitchens loves Hitchens

sums him up

[Warren DeMontague]

7. If you spend enough time around a raging drunk

on occasion, they will make sense for brief periods of time.

[goforit]

9. I love your Gore bumper sticker.

[Warren DeMontague]

10. Thanks! nt

[JeffR]

11. Lemme second that

It's excellent.