Obama’s Neocon: The Curious Case of
Richard Holbrooke
By Joshua Frank
CounterPunch, Jan 27, 2009
In wee morning hours on Friday, January 23, a U.S. spy plane
killed at least 15 in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border. It was
Barack Obama’s first blood and the U.S.’s first violation
of Pakistan’s sovereignty under the new administration. The
attack was an early sign that the newly minted president may not be
overhauling the War on Terror this week, or even next.
As the U.S. government fired upon alleged terrorists in the rugged
outback of Pakistan, Obama was back in Washington appointing Richard
Holbrooke as a special U.S. representative to Pakistan and
Afghanistan. Unfortunately, like the remote control bombing that
claimed human life, Obama’s vision for the region, in the
embodiment of Holbrooke, may not be a drastic departure from the
failed Bush doctrine. Or a departure at all.
“[Holbrooke] is one of the most talented diplomats of
his generation,” Obama said during a January 22 press conference
at the State Department. In his speech Obama declared that both
Afghanistan and Pakistan will be the “central front” in the
War on Terror. “There, as in the Middle East, we must understand
that we cannot deal with our problems in isolation,” he
said.
Despite Obama’s insistence that Holbrooke is qualified to
leave the U.S.’s new efforts in the War on Terror, history seems
to disagree.
In 1975, during Gerald Ford’s administration, Indonesia
invaded East Timor and slaughtered 200,000 indigenous Timorese. The
Indonesian invasion of East Timor set the stage for a long and bloody
occupation that recently ended after an international peacekeeping
force was introduced in 1999.
Transcripts of meetings among Indonesian dictator Mohamed Suharto,
Gerald Ford, and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger have shown
conclusively that Kissinger and Ford authorized and encouraged
Suhatro’s murderous actions. “We will understand and will
not press you on the issue [of East Timor],” said
President Ford in a meeting with Suharto and Kissinger in early
December 1975, days before Suharto’s bloodbath. “We
understand the problem and the intentions you have,” he
added.
Henry Kissinger also stressed at the meeting that “the use of
US-made arms could create problems,” but then added, “It
depends on how we construe it; whether it is in self-defense or is a
foreign operation.” Thus, Kissinger’s concern was not about
whether US arms would be used offensively, but whether the act could
be interpreted as illegal. Kissinger went on: “It is important
that whatever you do succeeds quickly.”
After Gerald Ford’s loss and Jimmy Carter’s ascendance
into the White House in 1976, Indonesia requested additional arms to
continue its brutal occupation, even though there was a supposed ban
on arms trades to Suharto’s government. It was Carter’s
appointee to the Department of State’s Bureau of East Asian and
Pacific Affairs, Richard Holbrooke, who authorized additional arms
shipments to Indonesia during this supposed blockade. Many scholars
have noted that this was the period when the Indonesian suppression
of the Timorese reached genocidal levels.
During his testimony before Congress in February 1978, Professor
Benedict Anderson cited a report that proved there was never an US
arms ban, and that during the period of the alleged ban the US
initiated new offers of military weaponry to the Indonesians:
“If we are curious as to why the Indonesians never
felt the force of the U.S. government’s ‘anguish,’
the answer is quite simple. In flat contradiction to express
statements by General Fish, Mr. Oakley and Assistant Secretary of
State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Holbrooke, at
least four separate offers of military equipment were made to the
Indonesian government during the January–June 1976
‘administrative suspension.’ This equipment consisted
mainly of supplies and parts for OV-10 Broncos, Vietnam War era
planes designed for counterinsurgency operations against
adversaries without effective anti-aircraft weapons, and wholly
useless for defending Indonesia from a foreign enemy. The policy
of supplying the Indonesian regime with Broncos, as well as other
counterinsurgency-related equipment has continued without
substantial change from the Ford through the present Carter
administrations.”
If we track Holbrooke’s recent statements, the disturbing
symbiosis between him and figures like überhawk Paul Wolfowitz
is startling.
“In an unguarded moment just before the 2000 election,
Richard Holbrooke opened a foreign policy speech with a fawning
tribute to his host, Paul Wolfowitz, who was then the dean of the
Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in
Washington,” reported First of the Month following the terrorist
attacks in 2001.
The article continued: “Holbrooke, a senior adviser to Al
Gore, was acutely aware that either he or Wolfowitz would be playing
important roles in the next administration. Looking perhaps to assure
the world of the continuity of US foreign policy, he told his
audience that Wolfowitz’s ‘recent activities illustrate
something that’s very important about American foreign policy in
an election year, and that is the degree to which there are still
common themes between the parties.’ The example he chose to
illustrate his point was East Timor, which was invaded and occupied
in 1975 by Indonesia with US weapons – a security policy backed
and partly shaped by Holbrooke and Wolfowitz. ‘Paul and I,’
he said, ‘have been in frequent touch to make sure that we keep
[East Timor] out of the presidential campaign, where it would
do no good to American or Indonesian interests.”
In sum, Holbrooke has worked vigorously to keep his bloody
campaign silent. The results of which appear to have paid off. In
chilling words, Holbrooke describes the motivations behind support of
Indonesia’s genocidal actions:
“The situation in East Timor is one of the number of
very important concerns of the United States in Indonesia.
Indonesia, with a population of 150 million people, is the fifth
largest nation in the world, is a moderate member of the
Non-Aligned Movement, is an important oil producer – which
plays a moderate role within OPEC – and occupies a strategic
position astride the sea lanes between the Pacific and Indian
Oceans … We highly value our cooperative relationship with
Indonesia.”
If his bloody history in East Timor is anything, it’s a sign
that Richard Holbrooke is not qualified to lead the US’s
policies in a new direction in today’s Middle East — a
region that has been brutalized by the illegitimate War on
Terror.
