"Our son-of-a-bitch"

[sabotabby]

Ah, so it's time for me to engage in another tasteless and immoral—intolerant, even!—celebration of a human being's death. That would be Suharto, the murderer of anywhere from possibly almost 2 million people. Already, the good patriots at FreeRepublic.com are mourning him as "our son-of-a-bitch," keeping the world safe from Islamo-communism, etc. And of course, the current American administration is totally sad about it. Here's a good article on Western complicity with Suharto's crimes. (Thanks gordonzola.)

I wonder how far this rehabilitation will spread. You see it whenever any bloodthirsty former leader dies, be it Pinochet or Reagan. The deceased was "controversial"; he employed brutal tactics to suppress his opponents. But he fought the good fight against communism and, most important, stabilized the almighty economy. It doesn't matter how many brown people get killed or how many civil liberties get trampled, as long as there's some economic growth. You know how it is.

In 1998, I was 19 years old, and like many others who had been involved (peripherally, in my case) with the East Timor Action Network, I celebrated Suharto's downfall. Many of us hoped that Suharto—and the Western interests that supported him—would finally be held accountable for their crimes against humanity. But, like Pinochet, in the end he got off easily—dying in bed instead of in jail or in front of a firing squad.

This said, the world is minus one monster today. Good riddance. I think I might crack open that champagne tonight.

EDIT: lopukhov says it better.

Comments

[lopukhov.livejournal.com]

I was 12 and 3/4 on 12 May 1998 when those kids got shot at Universitas Trisakti. We didn't live in Jakarta at that time, so it was more or less safe where we lived (on a completely different island). But boy, let me tell you, when they said Indonesia plunged into chaos, they really meant Java with Jakarta at the epicentre of the violence. All because some greedy, senile, paranoid shithead who has received US support since the 70s (maybe even since 1965) got more greedy, senile, and paranoid and refused to step down.

[sabotabby]

It's kind of amazing, really. He was a monster after '65 and just kept going with it.