`Indonesiagate': Obama's Historic U.S. Embassy Family Connection--Conclusion

(See below for parts 1-4)

Even before the U.S. Embassy-supported right-wing Suharto dictatorship invaded East Timor during the 1970s and massacred many, many civilians in East Timor, many, many Indonesian civilians had previously been massacred during the 1960s by the U.S. Embassy-supported Suharto regime. According to the preface to the 1999 edition of East Timor: Genocide In Paradise by Matthew Jardine, “in 1965, under General Suharto, the army—and civilian death squads affiliated with it—slaughtered more than a million alleged enemies of the state (including women and children) in just a few months.” Noam Chomsky also wrote in the introduction to this same book:

“…Suharto came to power in 1965 with a `boiling bloodbath,’…a `staggering mass slaughter of Communists and pro-Communists,’ mostly landless peasants…(New York Times)…

“…Not only did the…bloodbath destroy the only mass-based political party in Indonesia, but it opened the rich resources of the country to Western exploitation…”

According to the East Timor: Genocide In Paradise book:

“…Worried that the area might move beyond U.S. control, Washington began (in the 1950s) to curry favor with the Indonesian army, through military assistance and training programs.

“The US soon reaped the benefits of this policy. In 1965, using an alleged Communist plot to overthrow the government as an excuse, pro-U.S. General Suharto assumed control of the military and launched one of the great slaughters of our time. Hundreds of thousands of Indonesians were killed, mostly landless peasants and members of the Communist Party of Indonesia (many of whose names had been supplied to the army by the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta)…

“Suharto’s government repealed the previous regime’s `extremely restrictive’ investment laws and paved the way for large-scale foreign investment. By the 1970s, the US was investing more in Indonesia than in any other Southeast Asian country…U.S. companies supplied about 90 percent of the weapons used during the invasion of East Timor.

“…The minimum wage is less than $2 a day…Extensive mining, logging and oil extraction takes place there, as well as manufacturing by and for a wide variety of US companies, including Nike, Levi Strauss, Toys R Us, General Motors, DuPont, Liz Claiborne and Tommy Hilfiger…”

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`Indonesiagate': Obama's Historic U.S. Embassy Family Connection--Part 4

(See below for parts 1-3)

Prior to the U.S. Embassy-backed right-wing Indonesian army coup in 1965, the most popular Indonesian political party was the PKI [the Communist Party of Indonesia]. As Pretext For Mass Murder by John Roosa recalled in 2006:

“Imagine the following scene in Jakarta on May 23, 1965. The main stadium, which is not far from the presidential palace and the legislature, is overflowing with people. Tens of thousands are in the stands that circle the field, while thousands more stand in the field below. Outside in the parking lot and nearby streets more than 100,000 are milling about…The occasion is the forty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the PKI…This May 23 celebration is almost a replay of the May Day celebration held in the same stadium only three weeks earlier…The PKI has demonstrated…that it is the largest and best-organized political party in the country…

“All observers believed at the time that the [Indonesian] Communist Party would win the plurality of votes if elections were held again…For the anti-PKI elements Sukarno’s handpicked national legislature was better than a democratically elected one controlled by the PKI…”

But the U.S. Embassy-supported right-wing Indonesian army generals still controlled more than 300,000 armed soldiers in the Fall of 1965, while most of the Indonesian civilians who were PKI members or PKI supporters were unarmed.

So following a failed September 30, 1965 mutiny by mostly junior Indonesian army officers against the U.S. Embassy-supported right-wing Indonesian generals, the right-wing Indonesian army generals “began fabricating evidence against the PKI in early October 1965” (which falsely claimed that all civilian PKI leaders, PKI members and PKI supporters were responsible for the September 30, 1965 events) to create a pretext for exterminating PKI members and supporters in Indonesia, according to the Pretext For Mass Murder book. The same book also observed in 2006:

“The tragedy of modern Indonesian history lies not just in the army-organized mass killings of 1965-66, but also in the rise to power of the killers…No monument marks any of the mass graves that hold the hundreds of thousands of people killed…”

Next: “Indonesiagate”: Obama’s Historic U.S. Embassy Family Connection—Conclusion

`Indonesiagate': Obama's Historic U.S. Embassy Family Connection--Part 3

(See below for parts 1-2)

The U.S. Embassy in Indonesia that employed Barack Obama’s mother in the late 1960s apparently played an historically significant role in supporting the 1965 right-wing military coup in Indonesia. As Pretext For Mass Murder by John Roosa recalled in 2006:

“An NSC [National Security Council] committee approved a proposal in March 1965 for covert actions such as `support to existing anti-Communist groups,’ `black letter operations,’ and `media operations.’…

“U.S. officials repeatedly informed the [Indonesian] army generals that the United States would support them if they moved against the PKI [Communist Party of Indonesia]…

“As the death squads fanned out across the country to hunt down PKI members, the embassy was delighted. [U.S.] Ambassador Green observed in early November [1965] that even the `smaller fry’ in the PKI were `being systematically arrested and jailed or executed.’ In Central Java the army was mobilizing and arming militias of Muslim youth to `keep them out in front against PKI.’

“Green noted in the same memo that the embassy had `made clear’ to a contact in the [Indonesian] army `that Embassy and USG (U.S. Government) generally sympathetic with and admiring of what army doing.’…Green assured Washington that the army was…`working hard at destroying PKI and I, for one, have increasing respect for its determination and organization in carrying out this crucial assignment.’

“The United States backed up its words of encouragement with material aid. The army needed communications equipment to link its various headquarters around the country so it could better coordinate the drive against the PKI. Sometime in late 1965 the United States flew in state-of-the-art mobile radios from Clark Air Base in the Philippines…The United States…had a blow-by-blow account of the army’s assault on the PKI, overhearing for instance, `commands from Suharto’s intelligence unit to kill particular person at given locations.’ A member of the embassy’s political affairs section, Robert Martens, helped the army by providing lists of the names of PKI members. Martens admitted in a letter to the Washington Post that he handed over the names of `a few thousand’ members, whom he disingenuously termed `leaders and senior cadre’—as if a list of that many names could include only the hard-core leadership.

“The embassy also transferred a large sum of money to the army-created civilian front called the Action Front for Crushing the September 30th Movement (Kap-Gestapu). The actions of this organization were, as Ambassador Green noted, `fully consonant with and coordinated by the army.’ To help this front hold demonstrations and carry out its `current repressive efforts targeted against PKI,’ Green authorized in early December [1965] the granting of 50 million rupiah to the front’s representative, Adam Malik…”

Next: “Indonesiagate”: Obama’s Historic U.S. Embassy Family Connection—Part 4

`Indonesiagate': Obama's Historic U.S. Embassy Family Connection--Part 2

(See below for part 1)

The role that folks at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta (where Barack Obama’s now-deceased mother, Ann Dunham, worked in the late 1960s) played in 1960s Indonesian history apparently involved some involvement in covert operations against the Indonesian people. As Pretext For Mass Murder by John Roosa noted:

“In addition to training [Indonesian military] officers, the U.S. government promoted `civic action’…

“…The Indonesian army’s…civic action program was largely under the control of Colonel George Benson whose official title from August 1962 to July 1965 was special assistant to the U.S. ambassador for civic action. Benson enjoyed the full confidence of the army commander Yani, whom Benson knew from his days as U.S. military attache’ at Jakarta embassy (1956-59), and so was allowed a free hand to work within the Indonesian army.

“One virtue of civic action was the cover it proved for covert operations against the Communist Party [of Indonesia]. The NSC [National Security Council] committee on counter-insurgency agreed in December 1961 to spend money in Indonesia `to support civic action and anti-Communist activities’ that would involve the `covert training of selected personnel and civilians, who will be placed in key positions in the [censored] civic action program.’ The many excised passages in the declassified document suggest that the civic action program involved sensitive covert operations in Indonesia…

“Trained, armed, funded and encouraged by the United States to attack the Communist Party [of Indonesia], the army high command decided in January 1965 to begin contingency plans for doing so…”

Next: “Indonesiagate”: Obama’s Historic U.S. Embassy Family Connection—Part 3

`Indonesiagate': Obama's Historic U.S. Embassy Family Connection--Part 1

U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Member Barack Obama may not be very interested in pushing for a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the exact role that the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia played during the 1960s in Indonesian internal politics. One reason might be because Obama’s now-deceased mother, Ann Dunham, was employed by the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia following the U.S. Embassy-backed 1965 right-wing military coup in Indonesia.

If you ever saw the 1982 movie The Year Of Living Dangerously, you probably realize that more Indonesian civilians were apparently killed as a result of the U.S. Embassy-backed right-wing coup in Indonesia during the Democratic Johnson Administration than were killed as a result of the U.S. Embassy-backed 1973 right-wing coup in Chile during the Republican Nixon Administration. As the 2006 book by John Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder, recalled:

“In one of the worst bloodbaths of the twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of individuals were massacred by the army-affiliated militias, largely in Central Java, East Java, and Bali, from late 1965 to mid-1966…

“Suharto’s army usually opted for mysterious disappearances rather than exemplary public executions. The army and its militias tended to commit large-scale massacres in secret: they took captives out of prison at night, trucked them to remote locations, executed them, and then buried the corpses in unmarked graves or threw them into rivers…

“The post-Suharto parliament has maintained the laws forbidding public discourse about Marxism-Leninism and the participation of ex-political prisoners (and their children and grandchildren) in political parties…

“…The U.S. government had been preparing the Indonesian army for a showdown with the PKI [The Communist Party of Indonesia] and a takeover of state power. From 1958 to 1965 the United States trained, funded, advised, and supplied the army precisely so that it could turn into a state within a state…

“In the NSC [National Security Council]’s assessment the PKI `would probably have emerged as the largest party in Indonesia,’ if Sukarno had not canceled the election scheduled for 1959…

“In accordance with the policy of building up the army as the bulwark against the PKI, the U.S. government trained army officers in the United States, donated and sold weapons, and provided financial aid…

“In August 1958 the United States began a military assistance program that supplied equipment to the military, especially the army, and trained officers in the United States. From 1958 to 1965 the United States annually spent between $10 million and $20 million on military assistance. The program for training Indonesian army officers in schools such as those at Fort Bragg and Fort Leavenworth was extensive. From 1950 to 1965 about twenty-eight hundred Indonesian Army officers were brought to the United States for training—most of them after 1958. That number represented about one-fifth to one quarter of all army officers. Through this training the United States was able to develop extensive contacts within the Indonesian army…”

Next: “Indonesiagate”: Obama’s Historic U.S. Embassy Family Connection—Part 2