COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
US knew about 1960s
mass killings of communists in Indonesia, declassified documents reveal
Embassy in Jakarta
makes records public from 1963-1966 that expose CIA's knowledge of and support
for mass killings carried out at height of Cold War anti-socialist hysteria
We actually did know this already, although the knowledge
was perhaps not widespread.
Indeed, the State Department was said to be burning the
telephone wires to Jakarta at the time submitting the names of
"communists" for the slaughter.
In every case of genuine genocide in the postwar period, rather
than make an effort to halt the slaughter, the United States has either
contributed in some way to its operation, reflecting political motives, or it
has just ignored the whole thing, as it did under Clinton in Rwanda, not
wanting to get its hands dirty. It is not an enviable record.
America's secret bombings in Cambodia caused the toppling of
a neutral government there and brought into power the Khmer Rouge with their
killing fields. America did not lift a finger against the horror, just as it
did not in Indonesia or Rwanda.
America's armed services do not serve peace or rights of
democracy or human decency. They do not protect the oppressed or brutalized. They
do not fight injustice. They serve only the furtherance of empire. Where that
is not involved, they will not be found at work.
Yet, it is interesting the way we still so often see words
putting America in the place of world protector of democratic and human rights
or dire warnings about genocides predicted from some set of events. The words
are as empty as all the advertising claims for a thousand products blaring
night and day from American television.
At least three times in my adult life, when it might have made
a difference, America in fact did nothing. About 3 million lives snuffed out.
