Loathsome Palace Lizards Declare War

pjdillon@attglobal.net
I’m seized by these moments recently of absolute disgust and loathing. Mostly it’s directed at the conscienceless crooks, at the vile, populist whores in high office, and the zealots in the armed forces whose commanders (careerists with at least some sense of military history and the ‘code’ etc) for the most part seem to have learned absolutely nothing from the sacrifices of their forefathers on 10,000 battlefields across multiple millennia.
(I’m talking about Indonesia right now but feel free…)
I’m self-aware enough to fight the pull towards becoming one of those obnoxious and painful ex-pats who’ll bitch and moan 24/7 from the comfort of their plush bar stools or catered golf charity events, but this new, unnecessary war in Aceh is sooo pissing me off.
50,000 soldiers and half again as many police backed by attack aircraft, artillery, tanks and armored vehicles. A khaki-clad zealot in charge of operations, reporting to one of the more reprehensible characters the Indo military (TNI) has spat out in recent years, the point-man for the demolition of East Timor.
All talk is about “crushing” the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), something a nine-year-long military free fire zone (till 2000) failed to do. They did manage to kill something in the order of 7,000 civilians and rape 10,000 women (according to the toothless, widely ignored national human rights commission) during that period. That’s roughly two murders and three rapes a day, every day for almost a decade, in a province of about four million people.
The laugh-till-you-cry part of this is that the head of the Armed Forces reared up on both hind legs last week to say that it is unlikely they’ll be able to get rid of the GAM. And so you’re in there now for what reason…..?
This week he takes it one step further, telling Time magazine that, well, look, pretty much it’s okay to kill civilians and kids because, well, they might have guns. Perhaps we can get our brains around shooting a 12-year-old kid carrying an AK-47. But is it necessary to execute unarmed children (or adults for that matter) who have the temerity to run from a TNI patrol when they’ve been brought up on a steady diet of excesses by those same soldiers?
The West’s golden boy in the palace, security minister Yudhoyono has shown his true colors, his military pedigree; the spineless minister responsible for human rights fights a real guard action, attacking foreign journos who question his ability to deal with the inevitable raft of brutality charges that’ll emerge from Aceh; while right at the top of the shitpile, the feckless bitch who would be Queen (the same one who publicly swore two years ago that she’d never raise a hand to her ‘Acehnese children’; the one who had students arrested and charged for daring to walk on a poster of her face: “I thought I looked quite pretty in that picture” she comments later) refuses to meet foreign envoys appealing for calm and patience as the clock ticks towards the May 19 deadline for peace talks. Basically, she’s not been seen since the fighting began. Last month she emerged from her gilded burrow long enough to see the shadow of a problem (the trials of the Bali bombers) and scurried back again.
The other variety of reptile here is, as always, fairly predictable. The Yanks went to the wall trying to get a last minute deal to prevent this from happening and got nothing. Now that the killing has started of course they’ll line up behind the government while mouthing words like human rights. Post-Iraq Washington needs whatever reluctant support the Indonesians will give, and I’ve a strong feeling that the wily Javanese exacted a high cost for that support before April’s Monster Truck show north of Kuwait.
The British ambassador threw his weight behind the ‘national unity’ line Jakarta has been using to justify this latest abomination, and Alexander Downer, the Aussie foreign minister, when asked what he thinks about human rights abuses committed in Aceh says that he wishes GAM would stop doing them.
I want to meet that smarmy bastard one day. He’s too self-satisfied for his own good and there’s a few people I know lining up to know knock that look through the back of his mouth.
When you think about it, who’s got more to lose geopolitically, The States and it’s allies or Indonesia? It looks, at least on the surface, that the folks at Istana Merdeka have got Bush Younger and his posse over the preverbial barrel. Indeed they have for some time. It’ll be interesting to see how those administrations deal with Indonesia when it returns to a military dictatorship in a few years. Hell, the Army never really stopped running the friggin’ country.
How’s that for a gloomy prognosis.
I’m going to find something else to write about later this week. Like how I've become a Body Nazi, or stumbling across an elementary school radio tucked away in the lush base of the very Fuji-esque Slamet Mtn. Or how cool my new tattoo is. Or something. Tonight, I just needed to vent.