Posts by Neil Morrison
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It looks like US diplomats (you know James, the ones who have come out of all this so well) telling lies to ingratiate themselves with their masters. I think the same is obvious in the Wellington cables concerning our anti-Nukes policy.
The truth if any particular cable is proportional to how much it supports pre-exising political views.
Either that or you are just parroting a few paragraphs of unsupported gibberish without quite knowing what they mean. Do you seriously believe that any such talk if it exists is transmitted at this level?
Saudi Arabia urging the US to bomb Iran was one of the first cables released.
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I'm beginning to wonder if you read not only the information that is presented to you by others but also the stuff you write yourself.
People can consider the same information and reach different conclusions.
My views aren't that result of having less information than you. I could, off the cuff, give a reasonably historically detailed account of the mis-use of US power in Nicaragua under Reagan if there's some need to prove moral and historical credentials.
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Holbrooke denied that the Carter admin were ever the enablers of Suharto. It's worth considering the life-long commitment to and achievements in human rights and democracy promotion of Jimmy Carter and compare that to the allegations that he enabled the human rights abuses of Suharto.
Carter and Clinton admit that the US got it wrong in the mid 70s, but Carter came to office in 1977, two years after the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, and at the time he had very little that he could do to stop what Suharto was up to. Carter was at the forefront of turning round US foreign policy away from cold war realpolitic to human rights. But he faced a world that already had people like Suharto entrenched in power.
I think there's very good reason why Obama's team is made up of people like Holbrooke.
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Hard News: The Wellington Cables, in reply to Simon Grigg,
"don't have any idea what you are talking about on this."
actually, I do. But I am a bit tired of the condescention. Carter inherited the remnants of the cold war as fought by Kissenger and Nixon. He didn't have a lot of good options and Indonesia was not a client state that the US could tell what to do.
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I'm gone, bye
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so your problem is i said "Holbrooke stopped Melosevic" whereas you think I should have said "Holbrooke stopped the killing in Bosnia"?
well, OK I concede the point. Holbrooke stopped the killings in Bosnia. I hope you don't mind me pointing out that Melosevic was the primary cause of the vast majority of those killings. So stopping the killings did have a causal connection to Melosevic being stopped (from killing).
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He was, thereafter, the primary enabler in the delivery to Suharto of A-4 Skyhawks and extra Ov-10 Broncos which were specifically required for East Timor.
That would have been difficult. The US arms used in the invasion of East Timor were sold to Indonesia by the Ford and Nixon administrations prior to Carter being elected. Carter, and hence Holbrooke, came to office in 1977, two years after the invasion.
Carter continued selling arms but had very little leverage over Suharto. I don't see how that makes Holbrooke culpable. Carter also, quite famously, made human rights a much bigger part of US foreign policy and as that cable shows was working towards a rapproachment with Vietnam.
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Melosevic was responsibe the vast majority of killings. The US stopped him. Not sure how that's contradicted by what you have said.
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If anyone has any evidence that the US did not stop Melosvic and that Holbrooke played a major part then put it foward.
To quote from the article that Simon believes contradicts that:
Triumph and controversy will go hand in hand into the legacy of Richard Holbrooke. That includes the story of Bosnia and the Dayton peace accord, for which he is being hailed this week as a master negotiator. While the 1995 agreement ended the killing in Bosnia—a resident of Sarajevo told me this year that many still think of him as "God"—Holbrooke is also remembered for having left the small country deeply divided between Serbs and largely Muslim Bosniaks, with separate governments working (in theory at least) in a weak federal coalition.
If the accusation against Holbrooke was that he didn't cure the ethnic divisions, only stopped the killings, then that might be a bit ungenerous.
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The US stopped Melosevc. It is a fact. Not quite sure how what you have quoted refutes that. I'm not sure why Holbrooke should have been held to account for Serbian intransigence.
As for East Timor, if you go to the original document Holbrooke reportedly informed Suharto of Jimmy Carter's, the new US president, concern for human rights. Something Carter has manitained a very credible involvment with over the years. I hardly see how that makes Holbrooke culpable for Indonesia's actions in East Timor.