councilor.org
| Source | Robert Naiman |
| Date | 99/09/15/22:50 |
| Sunday Journal Metropolitan Washington, DC September 21, 1999 Robert Naiman "On the Left" Berger: Call Your Daughter! Sandy Berger: call your daughter. Her apartment is on fire. She started the fire and she's pouring gasoline on it. The apartment is full of people. You gave her the matches and the gasoline, knowing that your daughter is a pyromaniac. Call her and tell her to put out the fire. In Washington lying is a credential. A candid resume for a top job in Washington might include: advanced my career by telling a whopper. Like the accountant's job interview: "How much is two times six?" "How much do you want it to be?" Occasionally, though, officials are thrown off balance by the course of events, and before they've had a chance to caucus and figure out what the latest version of the lie is, they tell the truth by mistake. This is what happened to Sandy Berger. Last week people wanted to know why the Clinton Administration was not doing anything to stop the slaughter in East Timor by anti-independence militias and the Indonesian military, after all the high rhetoric used to justify the bombing of Yugoslavia. "Whether you live in Africa, or Central Europe, or any other place, if somebody comes after innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because of their race, their ethnic background or their religion, and it's within our power to stop it, we will stop it," Clinton had said. So the Administration had a "credibility" problem, or a hypocrisy problem. And apparently Administration officials had not gotten their talking points in order. Berger explained why the U.S. was taking a hands-off attitude: "You know, my daughter has a very messy apartment up in college. Maybe I shouldn't intervene to have that cleaned up." We could dismiss this on the grounds that people say dumb things. This was Berger's explanation. After withering criticism from Congress and the press, Berger acknowledged that he gave a "dumb answer" using an "unfortunate metaphor." Almost an apology. A less charitable explanation is that Berger accidentally told the truth, and characterized the situation the way that top officials in the Administration and the U.S. military actually see it. The situation in East Timor is a "mess." A public relations fiasco. Very awkward. Hard to explain. And what are we to make of Berger's comparison of the Indonesian military to his daughter? Perhaps Berger was saying that the U.S. has a long relationship with the Indonesian military, our offspring, if you will, whom we've armed and trained. And thus you can't expect us to criticize them too harshly. "I curse my son and hate the one who says amen," as the Arabic saying goes. We've invested a lot in building up the Indonesian military as a powerful force in Indonesian society. We don't want to jeopardize that over a little mess in tiny Timor. Berger made another interesting comment that day -- one which he did not, apparently, think was dumb or stupid. Mr. Berger asserted that while there was a "humanitarian problem" in East Timor, there were "strong security and strategic consequences" at stake in Kosovo. This is interesting because a few months ago we were told that we were bombing Yugoslavia for humanitarian reasons. And those who questioned whether this was really the case, and whether the Administration wanted to bomb Yugoslavia for other reasons, were dismissed. But now it seems the humanitarian intervention story is no longer useful. It is said that we cannot intervene everywhere, and that's absolutely true. But something is deeply wrong when our government ignores human rights atrocities by our "allies" which it could stop with a few phone calls, while bombing our "enemies" for equal or lesser crimes. When our "friends" are doing the killing, it takes days of televised carnage and public pressure before the Administration will clear its throat to stop military aid, commercial arms sales, and IMF and World Bank loans. And who knows what's going on behind the scenes: as Allan Nairn -- currently a prisoner of the Indonesian military -- reported in the Nation, past instructions to tell the Indonesian government to stop killing in East Timor have been ignored by U.S. military officials. Double standard, or one standard? The investments of multinational corporations, like Nike, Freeport McMoRan, Texaco, Chevron and Mobil in Indonesia, and the maintenance of our military empire trump human rights concerns, until massive public pressure forces the opposite. Sandy, call your daughter -- General Wiranto -- and tell him to stop the killing. |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho