Tariq Ali vs Christopher Hitchens. posted by Richard Seymour

Democracy Now has hosted another debate between Tariq Ali and Christopher Hitchens on the occupation of Iraq and the resistance to it. I just want to tease out one aspect of it for consideration. Having explained that he was a supporter of Paul Wolfowitz in response to a question about whether he is now a neocon, he went on to explain why he felt Wolfowitz was fundamentally, and not merely incidentally, different from Kissinger:

Can I recommend a book by James Mann, Jim Mann of the Los Angeles Times written a very good book. It's got the rather vulgar title of The Rise of the Vulcans. It's an examination of the neo-conservative tendency in Washington and within the Republican party. And actually it takes on the question of Wolfowitz versus Kissinger very well. It's the only book I know of that properly does do it. Wolfowitz and Kissinger disliked each other and disagreed very strongly with each other for a long time. I think the origin of the disagreement and the origin of Wolfowitz's political career is that he argued it was important to dump the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. Base or no base, let it go and take the chances that this would have a ripple effect in the rest of Asia, which was just what Kissinger didn't want. As a result, there were outbreaks of democratic insurgency, starting with the Aquino election, in South Korea, in Taiwan, eventuating in Tiananmen Square, in fact, in 1989, which of course, Kissinger also opposed and took the side of the Chinese Stalinists.

Well, even if one knew nothing about Wolfowitz's attitude to the Phillipines, past and present, one would have to think something was up with that statement given the way Wolfowitz skilfully administered Reagan's support for the Indonesian junta, especially on East Timor. However, there are one or two things we are entitled to know and remember about Wolfowitz in South East Asia :

East Timor ... was invaded and occupied in 1975 by Indonesia with US weapons - a security policy backed and partly shaped by Holbrooke and Wolfowitz. "Paul and I," he said, "have been in frequent touch to make sure that we keep [East Timor] out of the presidential campaign, where it would do no good to American or Indonesian interests."

...

During his tenure in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Wolfowitz played a key role in defining US policy toward South Korea and the Philippines at a time of intense repression and growing opposition to authoritarian rule. In a speech last year to the right-wing Heritage Foundation, he castigated those who criticized Reagan for embracing Chun and Marcos, and defended Reagan's policies as the best hope for Asian democracy.

During a 1983 visit to South Korea, he recalled, the Korean government jailed many dissidents, requiring Wolfowitz to become a "poor hapless administration official sent out to brief the travelling press corps on what was going on and to explain what was our human rights policy". That policy, he insisted, was to quietly advise Chun, who was later held responsible for the murders of at least 200 people during the 1980 Kwangju rebellion, to "honor the South Korean constitution and to step down after one term as president". Chun's decision in 1986 not to run again, he argued, "has indeed been far more important in resolving human rights problems in Korea than any number of lists of political prisoners that the American president might have taken to him".

...

In his Heritage speech, Wolfowitz also took credit for the downfall of Marcos. The "private and public pressure on Marcos to reform", he asserted, "contributed in no small measure to emboldening the Philippine people to take their fate in their own hands and to produce what eventually became the first great democratic transformation in Asia in the 1980s". Once again, Wolfowitz was rewriting history, implying that the Filipino people, like the South Koreans, ignored two decades of massive US military and financial support for Marcos. In both countries, US policy toward these dictators (which in Korea would include Park Chung-hee, Chun's assassinated predecessor) only began to weaken when US officials decided that their continued hold on power would lead to further instability, thus threatening US "interests".


...


As late as May 1997, he was telling Congress that "any balanced judgment of the situation in Indonesia today, including the very important and sensitive issue of human rights, needs to take account of the significant progress that Indonesia has already made and needs to acknowledge that much of this progress has to be credited to the strong and remarkable leadership of president Suharto".

Three years later, Suharto had been swept out of office and replaced by an uneasy coalition of reformists, led by President Abdurrahman Wahid. Standing alongside Wahid was the Indonesian army, led by General Wiranto, who for years was a key ally of Suharto and who maintained extremely close relations with the US military. But that coalition was deeply split when Wiranto's military supported the death squads that murdered hundreds of people and laid waste to much of the territory of East Timor in 1999. In February 2000, Wiranto was forced to step down after being accused by international observers and his own government of masterminding the rampage.

A few days later, Wolfowitz appeared on the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer. In the opening segment, reporter Gwen Ifill ran a clip of Holbrooke, then the UN ambassador, calling the struggle in Indonesia one between "the forces of democracy and the forces that look backward". Asked to comment, Wolfowitz quickly agreed with Holbrooke's characterization, saying "the stakes [in Indonesia] are huge ... it's very, very important to the United States". Then Wolfowitz commented on the credentials of General Wiranto - a man he knows well.

"You asked is Wiranto a reformer or anti-reform," Wolfowitz said, "I think the truth is he is history, whichever he was ... Wiranto was the general who commanded the army during the first elections in Indonesian history... where the army genuinely played a neutral role. He may have done bad things in East Timor or failed to stop bad things in East Timor, but that's what makes it so tricky is this president [Wahid] is a reformer. The old president [Suharto] without any question was fighting reform every step of the way ... Wiranto, we don't know. And I think he should be given a fair trial on these charges in East Timor."

Perhaps not, then, the sainted ideologue of democratic revolution.