Chris White – Not 8 hours into this day and google retrieved over 100 American news articles that have been published commemorating the day that will forever live in infamy. 62 years ago today, 2,400 Americans lost their lives in Pearl Harbor.
Just for kicks, I did a search for East Timor and found nothing. I figured it must have been a mistake, because it was also on December 7, but 28 years ago, that the Ford administration supported the Indonesian invasion of unknown-to-Americans island, leading to the slaughter of 200,000 people, 1/3 of the population.
How could the so-called "liberal", "objective", "independent" or "fair and balanced" media have overlooked such an anniversary, while commemorating the hell out of another, while East Timor lost 83 fold the number of Pearl Harbor? Does the American public know what happened that fateful day, 28 years ago?
In 1975, and I am drastically oversimplifying history here, in the wake of the collapse of Portuguese colonial rule in East Timor, civil strife erupted, ending with the left-wing Fretilin political party in power. The Indonesian military dictatorship under General Suharto felt threatened by this independence movement within 1000 miles of Jakarta, and therefore, on December 6, asked President Gerald Ford and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, for their blessing to invade the tiny island with American-supplied weaponry, at a meeting in Jakarta.
According to National Security Archive editors William Burr and Michael L. Evans, "On 4 or 5 December, while still in Beijing, Kissinger received a cable from the State Department suggesting that the Indonesians had 'plans' to invade East Timor," which reveals that Kissinger understood Suharto's intentions prior to meeting with him on December 6.
On December 6, Ford responded to Suharto's request with: "We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem and the intentions you have."
Kissinger was much more direct in his support and in the potential international backlash of such an event: "the use of US-made arms could create problems," but "It depends on how we construe it; whether it is in self defense or is a foreign operation." Kissinger then made a point of saying: "It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly," and that, "Whatever you do, however, we will try to handle it the best way possible." (Embassy Jakarta Telegram 1579 to Secretary State, 6 December 1975, National Security Archives, pgs. 9, 10)
When the UN debate over the invasion of East Timor was addressed by the US, the most influential and powerful nation in the world, and the one providing most of the material and political support to the invasion, UN representative Daniel Patrick Moynihan blocked any efforts to stop the bloodshed. He later stated these words: "The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook [with regard to East Timor]. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success."
Thus, Kissinger ordered Moynihan to obstruct any resolution condemning the invasion, for it was our largest Muslim world ally that was in the process of eliminating the East Timorese.
To sum up, our nation fails to officially acknowlede our role in the invasion and genocide of the peoples of a tiny, defenseless island, while on the same day honoring American victims of an attack in the then-colonial territory of Hawaii. In one case, we applauded and provided the means for the murder of 200,000 people, and in the other we lost 2,400 Americans and therefore, it must forever be "a day that will live in infamy".
Had East Timor been a lone case in the realm of collective American historical amnesia and hypocritical US foreign policy, I would not have written this commentary. Had we not supported dictatorships a hundred times more than democracy in the past, and had we not invaded, intervened, and sabotaged dozens of impoverished nations in the past century, my words would not be as compelled as they are to exist. Had I not been indoctrinated, as student in public school, and later as a US Marine, that America stood for "liberty and justice for all", maybe I would have overlooked this little glitch in our matrix.
[Chris White is a former Marine Sergeant who is currently working on his PhD in history at the University of Kansas. He served in the infantry from 1994-98, in Diego Garcia, Camp Pendleton, CA, Okinawa, Japan, and Doha, Qatar. He is also a member of Veterans for Peace.]