Re: East Timor: Last Words

["Alan Bradley" <alanb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Comrades, my ISP was down from Wednesday night to this morning, more or
less.  As such, I'm going to post *my* last words somewhat belatedly.

Clearly there are quite distinct schools of thought here:
-  There are those who are prone to reject the legitimacy of the East
Timorese struggle, for various reasons.  In my opinion, this school makes
serious sectarian errors.

-  There are those who accept the legitimacy of the East Timorese struggle,
but reject the imperialist intervention.  This school very clearly has a
point, but, towards the end of this discussion, have (IMHO) themselves
fallen into a certain tendency towards sectarian cartooning.

-  Then, there are those who tend to follow the line of the East Timorese
leaderships, and accept the intervention.  The dangers of this are obvious.
 Personally, I doubt that the consequences are likely to be as drastic as
some of the members of the previous trend think.  I guess I belong in this
group.

The last two groups, at least, have the prospect of resolving their
differences, though not amicably, through future struggle around the issue.

There has been another substantial side-debate, which hasn't fallen along
the same lines as the main argument.  This is, of course, the revival of
what are in effect theories of "ultra-imperialism".  This has tended to
flow from a view of the imperialist response as being driven by the
interests of the US, rather than as a collective response from various
imperialist states, including Australia and New Zealand, whose interests
are not exactly identical.  My position is the latter.

A secondary debate has been around the characterisation of the Australian
and New Zealand states as imperialist.  My position, clearly, is that it
is.

Unfortunately, I can't really avoid some mild polemics:

> From: Gary MacLennan
> 1. Howard was forced into intervening in East Timor by a movement lead by
> the DSP.

In my opinion, the DSP has been overly tolerant of straw man positions in
this debate.  This caricature of their position has them claiming that
"they did it" - a delusion only a sect could hold.

Gary again:
> Our demand should not have been to send the Australian Army in but for
> the Americans to tell their puppets to stop the death squads.

"Our demand" should have been directed at the Australian state, not the
American one.  Strangely enough, it was.  Whether or not it was correct
beyond that is what we have been arguing about for the last few weeks...

Alan Bradley
alanb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx