Richard Holbrooke, Samantha Power, and the "Worthy-Genocide" Establishment (Kafka Era Studies Number 5)
by Edward S. Herman; March 24, 2007 It may seem odd to speak of a worthy-genocide establishment, with Richard Holbrooke and Samantha Power as notable members, but we are living in the Kafka era, when major genocidists and their friends and allies can get very passionate and even win Pulitzer Prizes for their denunciation of some genocides and "problems from hell" while actually facilitating, ignoring and apologizing for others. [1] Worthy genocides are those mass killings carried out by bad people, notably U.S. enemies and targets, and they receive great attention and elicit much passion; the unworthy ones are carried out by the United States or one of its client states, and they receive little attention or indignation and are not labeled genocides, even where the scale of killings greatly exceeds those so designated, obviously based on political utility. As the United States is an aggressive superpower that has been "projecting power" and opposing popular and revolutionary movements on a global scale since World War II, a very good case can be made that the unworthy genocides that it has carried out or supported have been predominant over the past half century-that it has been the source of more "problems from hell" than any other state. It follows that a man like Richard Holbrooke, who has been a part of the U.S. foreign policy establishment for over 40 years, is likely to have been a participant in the genocides that have taken place during that period. Thus, while Holbrooke regularly speaks and gets a warm welcome from the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard and from Human Rights Watch, [2] we should recall that he was an official of the U.S. government during the Vietnam war era, from 1962 through 1969; he was the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in charge of Indonesian relations during the Carter administration, and during the worst and most genocidal phase of Indonesia's occupation of East Timor in 1977-1978. He was also an official of the Clinton administration, and eventually the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, in the years when the United States was enforcing the "sanctions of mass destruction" on Iraq. If we measure "genocide" by the numbers deliberately and intentionally killed and the threat these actions pose to the survival of the target population, all three of these episodes in which Holbrooke was involved qualify for inclusion. In the case of Vietnam, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, given the lack of U.S. establishment interest in Vietnamese casualties the actual number killed is uncertain within the range of millions, but serious estimates run up to three million or more dead, unknown millions more injured or traumatized, a land devastated and widely ruined by bombs and chemicals, and as late as 1997 an estimated 500,000 children mentally or physically deformed as a result of ruthless chemical warfare. [3] Indonesia's invasion-occupation resulted in the death of an estimated 200,000 East Timorese out of a total population of approximately 800,000, or a quarter of the total. The sanctions of mass destruction imposed on Iraq by the UN under U.S. influence and pressure resulted in the deaths of probably a million or more people, only some 6 percent of the total, but an absolutely very large number-ten times the total killed in Bosnia in the years 1992-1995. The two most famous quotes regarding these Iraq sanctions are those of Holbrooke's boss Madeleine Albright, telling Leslie Stahl on CBS in 1996 that the price of the sanctions, 500,000 dead children, was "worth it;" the other quote, by John and Karl Mueller, in Foreign Affairs in June 1999, was that the sanctions of mass destruction "may well have been a necessary cause of the deaths of more people in Iraq than have been slain by all so-called weapons of mass destruction throughout history." Holbrooke was only a lesser official during the Vietnam war era, but on the basis of principles laid down by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) whereby participants in a "joint criminal enterprise" (JCE) will be found guilty if they pursued a military-political end in common with other criminals, [4] Holbrooke would easily qualify. His role as a genocidist is far clearer in the East Timor case where he was the highest State Department official dealing with Indonesia and its East Timor occupation, visiting with Suharto and other Indonesian leaders while the fields were being strewn with dead bodies, and helping implement a policy that aided the genocide. During his tenure Indonesian terror and killings reached their peaks, in the years 1977 and 1978, and during that time the United States continued its support of Indonesia and did nothing to curb the violence. In testimony before Congress on December 4, 1979, Holbrooke lied about the origins of the war and Indonesian responsibility for the deaths, telling Congress that the "welfare of the Timorese people is the major objective of our policy toward East Timor"-a blatant falsehood-and he gave congress a highly favorable portrayal of the genocidal state. [5] U.N. Security Council resolutions condemned Jakarta's invasion and occupation, but the Carter-Holbrooke team provided Jakarta with advanced counter-insurgency aircraft, which the Indonesian military employed to bomb and napalm the East Timorese, as well as diplomatic protection and steady apologetics for a genocidal pacification progam. No UN Security Council resolution was adopted regarding East Timor after April 22, 1976, through the rest of the Carter administration, despite the escalated killings in the years after 1976. An Australian parliamentary report later described the period as one of "indiscriminate killing on a scale unprecedented in post-World War II history." [6] Read the rest of this very enlightening and informative Article Here: http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=12404 <http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=12404§ionID=80> §ionID=80 Recommended Resources <blocked::http://www.kpfk.org/> http://www.kpfk.org/ <blocked::http://www.commondreams.org/> http://www.commondreams.org/ Ara [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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