[Marxism] Re:Australian troops back in East Timor

[Ggregray@xxxxxxx]

The exchanges on this thread have become increasingly strange as those who
continue to justify the 1999 call for the intervention of Australia's
imperialist forces in East Timor  demanding evidence that intervention has been 
used to
justify further imperialist adventures by Australia.

I can't accept they can have lived in Australia and had the slightest
interest in politics since then and not seen that was a serious outcome of the
Australian intervention and the fact that it had been called for by a large 
section
of the left.

In the introduction to his book "reluctant Saviour" Clinton Fernandes wrote:
"When troops were finally sent in, a significant segment of Australian
society took the view that Australia was standing up to the Indonesians and
liberating the East Timorese at the same time. Since both causes were popular, 
and
since it 'all worked out in the end', there was little public pressure to ask 
why
matters had come to a head. A successful military deployment after all, does
not produce calles to examine what went wrong-- since nothing, apparently, did
go wrong"

This seems, to me,to give a pretty good summary of the impact of Australian
imperialist intervention when it is presented by a range of the left as a force
for liberation.(With a nasty admixture of the the not very far from the
surface racism that has a ready influence in reactions to Indonesia by many in
Australia including some on the left)

Yet when Tom Olincoln ends a post by saying:
"..tthere is quite a bit of evidence backing up what is surely common sense:
a popular miltary intervention abroad presenting itself as liberation and not
just accepted but DEMANDED by most of the left, from the unions through to the
DSP is going to legitimise militarism it would be strange if it didn't."

Clinton Fernandes responds:
"The intervention was DEMANDED by most of the left but OPPOSED by the Howard
government. It has certain negative implications in the same way that the
civil rights movement or the feminist movement have had certain negative
implications in alienating conservative white males. That's life."

I am at a loss to make sense of this. Does he seriously equate  what
O'Lincoln calls"legitimising militarism" to the discomfort or disappointment of 
those
who feel they have lost out due to the gains of the oppressed. Or is he
suggesting that those who oppose imperialist interventions  are just another 
bunch
of  "conservative white males"?

I would argue that amongst the "negative implications" of the "successful"
and left-sponsored intervention in East Timor in 1999 was the strengthening of
the Howard government's hand when it joined the coalition of the killing in
invading Iraq in 2003. It strenghthened and legitimised Australian intervention
in  Papua-New Guinea and the Solomon Islands and has laid the basis for the
latest intervention in East Timor.

Whatever  can be said about the Howard government's initial reponse to calls
for intervention in East Timor  the fact that it did 'successfully' intervene
has proven to be a very useful bit of political capital for Howard. Are these
"negative implications" just for "conservative white males"?

Fernandes  writes in "Reluctant Saviour";
"(East TImor) finds its political independence constrained by its dependent,
neo-colonial economy. There is a pronounced Australian and Portugese influence
over the East Tmorese economy."

This was  written before the latest intervention but it is only strenghtened
by the fact that forces from the two imperialist countries mentioned are now
in East Timor. This intervention again has support from some on the left as
Peter Boyle makes clear in his recent clarifying statement on the DSP's
position on East Timor. This time around it is not in the form of a strident 
demand
for imperialist intervention as much as a sort of caving in to others and
leaving open the possibility of calling for troops out at some later date.

Clinton Fernandes has his own world view and does not look at these issues
from a Marxist perspective. But it could have been expected that a party which
proclaims itself to be Marxist may have taken a clear and open position against
Australian imperialism.

I am not  sure whether that expectation underlines my status as a
"conservative white male" or confirms the penetrating analysis of DSP theorist 
and self
proclaimed mentor of the Timor Socialist Party ,Nick Fredman, that I am "a
patronising git".


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