[Marxism] Re: Australian and NZ intervention in East Timor

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Basically, I think Peter Boyle is wrong on the principle as far as
Australian-NZ intervention in East Timor, but I think most of the
disagreement the Australian comrades get is, well, a tad smug.

>From the standpoint of Freitilin, they faced a no-win situation in the
earlier period.  If they did not get foreign military help, they would
have been destroyed  by the Indonesian forces and their de facto allies
within East Timor society.

Sometimes you do not have the power to do the right thing, you have to
make a fundamental concession and, if you are a revolutionary, probe for
any possibility to reverse the inevitable loss of ground that will
result, and the strengthening of Australian imperialism.

So I think the Australian comrades were wrong to support the
intervention, although I think I would have been opposed (and certainly
did not voice at the time) any criticism of the Freitilin leadership for
trying to head off the destruction not only of their movement but of the
population by calling on the UN (the US) and Australia, imperialist
powers that had an interest in manipulating and exploiting the East
Timorese rather than simply smashing them as the less well-provided
Indonesian militaryu sought to do.

This did not mean a huge campaign for troops out.  There was no basis
for one.  It did mean a careful and factual campaign of exposure,
motivated by the understanding that the Australian occupation would have
one interest and one only in mind: advancing the regional interests of
Australian imperialism (and by extension the interest of the US
imperialist hegemony) in the region.

The wrong decision the Australian revolutionists made was not unique.
In 1982,  after the heroic Palestinian fighters led by Yasir Arafat
(whose greatness as a Palestinian leader, despite his eventual decline
under the impact of defeats, has yet to be adequately assessed, in my
opinion), the PLO called for US troops to guarantee their exit from the
country to Tunisia, where they had been offered asylum.  Otherwise they
faced the danger of being exterminated by the Israeli troops under the
command of Sharon.

The Militant newspaper supported this call, and defended the presence of
the US troops as they oversaw the evacuation of the PLO troops.

Of course, the US troops didn't go anywhere.  They kept doing their real
job, which included providing cover for the massacres by Israeli forces
at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

And going on from there to the war against the nationalist forces that
only ended after Shia warriors gave their lives to kill 250 occupiers,
as US ships were shelling Shia neighborhoods in defense of a pro-Israel,
pro-US, regime dominated by the Christian minority.

Certainly, the PLO had committed no unforgivable crime by seeking
arrangements for getting out alive after their heroic fight.  But this
did not give any progressive character to the US occupation even though
they decided it was in their interest to get the PLO troops out, and
they did not want responsibility for their extermination by Israel.

I admit I sometimes wish theat Freitlin had or could imagine having the
option of calling on Cuban troops.  But the Cubans might not have been
able to respond, as they did in Angola against South Africa -- saving
the independence of the country.  And Freitilin was not ready to pay the
cost in terms of loss of acceptability to the UN and its imperialist
sponsors, even if a Cuban option had been an option.   So they called on
the UN, and by way of the UN, the Australian and NZ imperialists. And
they have done their job from the get-go which has been to strengthen
their capitalists' position, and undermine the nationalist movement and
the independence of East Timor.

I learned a lesson from what the Militant did in Lebanon initially,
which I think was not a Barnesian crime but simply a mistake.  We should
have reported the situation, hailed the successful getaway of the PLO --
without a hint of criticism of the PLO diplomacy, which had no
alternative under the circumstances.  But our position should have been
unyielding that nothing progressive could come from the US imperialist
presence. (We of course did oppose them at all the subsequent
conjunctures in Lebanon. Later, however, a similar problem did arise in
supporting US sanctions against Haiti which set the stage for the US
occupation that sought to control and restrict the return to the
presidency of Aristide.)

Freitilin had little choice.  But we had the choice of telling the harsh
truth about what this imposed choice would mean to East Timor unless the
nationalist leadership found openings in the class struggle that would
lead out of the trap they had been forced into.
Fred Feldman





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