Ford may not be my favorite person in the world, but when he died I told myself I wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it. I wasn't even going to write a full blog post on it. I was just going to content myself with a few links from Media Mouse, and call it a day. (If you've been following this blog the past couple weeks, you've probably been - seeing - those - links).
After all you have to pick your battles. Ford certainly wasn’t as bad as Nixon or Bush (although he was uncomfortably close to both of them. If you look at Ford’s cabinet, it’s amazing how many of them now have jobs in the Bush administration.) But if you make too much noise about what happened during the Ford administration, it takes attention away from much more important and pressing issues, like this train wreck which is the war in Iraq, and the worst president in American history.
However, if you’ve been in Grand Rapids the past couple weeks while Ford’s funeral has been going on, you know the eulogizing has gotten a bit excessive. Even my sister, who has quite different politics from me, thinks the whole thing went way over the top. It’s like they were electing Ford to sainthood. And during the whole time, during all those hours of news coverage, and all those pages and pages in the Grand Rapids Press, not one word was mentioned about what happened in East Timor.
At first I didn’t want to write in to the Press for all the usual reasons people don’t want to write letters to the editor.
Because I wasn’t sure I wanted to be associated with all those nut jobs who usual dominate the “Public Pulse” page.
Because in my younger days I had tried writing into the Press editorial page a couple times, and they always neglected to print my stuff.
Because I was pretty sure someone else would write in about this, and I wouldn’t have to.
Because I first learned about the East Timor thing from the gang at Media Mouse, most of whom are a lot better educated on this topic than me, so it seemed presumptuous to send in a letter with my name attached to it.
And then when nobody from Media Mouse wrote into the Press, I thought maybe everyone else had decided that it was really uncool to write into the “Public Pulse.”
But after reading the 10th day of Ford Tribute’s in the GR Press, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore, and sent in this letter.
If my memory serves correctly, several years ago during the debate over the naming of the now "Gerald R. Ford International Airport," The Grand Rapids Press printed a letter criticizing Ford for his policy in Indonesia. Several angry letters went back and forth in the Public Pulse in the days following.Obviously this has some stylistic issues. That first sentence especially is a real clunker. And I probably should have said “record” in some places instead of “policy”. Plus it’s way too dry, and then you don’t find out what I’m talking about until the last paragraph, by which point people may have stopped reading. My only defense is that it was 3 in the morning when I wrote this, and I didn’t think they would print it anyway so I didn’t spend a lot of time proof reading.
I am curious therefore why The Press has not mentioned one word about this during the past week of Ford coverage. It may not be the most appropriate time to bring this up, but with every single other aspect of Ford's legacy under examination in The Press the last few days, his policy in Indonesia is beginning to be noticeable by its absence.
In particular, Ford gave the green light for Indonesia to invade the country of East Timor, and then supported Indonesia through arms and aid. One third of the population of East Timor was massacred during Indonesia's invasion. The text transcript of the meeting in which Ford and Henry Kissinger give the green light to Indonesian dictator Suharto has been declassified and is available online at the National Security Archives.
Because there were some raw feelings in the Press the last time this got brought up, I tried to take a mild tone in this letter, but if people try and rake me over the coals in the next few days, at least I know in advance what I’m getting into.
Incidentally, the text of the meeting I was referring to is right here. If you think I’m biased (and I guess I do have my biases) then I encourage you to read the transcript yourself and draw your own conclusions.
If you’re not much of a reader, some of this is summed up in the movie “The Trial of Henry Kissinger.” The parts relevant to East Timor are on Youtube. Part 1 is available here:
Part 2, which makes use of the declassified documents is avaliable here.
Also don’t forget about this Chomsky documentary which touches on the US support of Genocide in East Timor. The relevant part begins at 6 minutes in.
Obviously not all of this can be laid solely at Ford’s feet. His Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger was involved. Subsequent administrations also share some of the blame. Carter actually increased arms shipment to Indonesia when the weapons they had weren’t killing the Timorese fast enough. When violence flared up again in 1999, Clinton, to his credit, cut off weapons to Indonesia. But to his discredit it took him 2 weeks to do so. (This Tom Tomorrow Cartoon does an excellent job of satirizing it: “By God, if they’re going to slaughter the Timorese, they’ll have to do it with weapons we’ve already sold them.” “A bold and decisive move sir.”)
But Ford does not escape blame. He obviously knew it was going to be bad because he requested Indonesia delay the invasion until he left the country, and because he and Kissinger instructed Suharto on how to spin the media response. When the rest of the world was outraged about what was going on, Ford’s UN Ambassador, Daniel Patrick Moynahan was instructed to prevent any UN resolution that would have stopped the genocide (as he later wrote in his autobiography).
I do realize that Ford is a hometown boy, and that it is pretty cool we had a President come from sleepy old Grand Rapids. When I had the Japanese students here a few years ago, I made sure I emphasized that and even took them to the Ford Museum. I did the same thing when Shoko came here.
But if I read one more tribute saying that Ford was the greatest human being ever and the rest of us should feel privaleged just to have lived in the same town as him, I'm going to throw up.
Useless Wikipedia Fact
On "Revolution 9": As with Revolution itself, the theme was inspired by the contemporary May 1968 riots in Paris, and "Revolution 9" was meant to capture the violence of a revolution in progress. At over eight minutes it was the longest track on the album, as well as the longest Beatles track ever officially released.
Link of the Day
I recently saw "Blood Diamond" with Bork. I was thinking about writing up some kind of review, but Sarah seems to have captured the concerns of this movie quite nicely in her blog.
Update: she's added another post here with more thoughts on the same issues.
Isn't it just good taste not to speak ill of the dead? A funeral isn't the time to point out flaws in the man.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I struggled a bit with that. Here's the way I look at it: there's the public Ford, and the private Ford.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the Funeral is the appropriate time to say things like: "Ford beat his wife." or "Ford had bad Hygene". (He didn't do either, but you get the point).
However, every newspaper and the country has in the past couple weeks been evaluating Ford's legacy as President and asking how he will fit into history. In that respect, this big blank spot over the East Timor incident begins to become very noticeable by its abscence.
If you've been reading the GR Press the past couple week, you know that the every other single aspect of Ford's Presidency has been under examination.
Plus the magnitude of what happened in East Timor is hard to ignore (although everyone else has been ignoring it). Even by conservative estimates, 1/3 of the population was killed, which means we are talking about Genocide here, aided and abetted by the Ford administration.
Finally this is important because those who fail to remember the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Be ye not deceived, this is not some piece of ancient history that happened once and is no longer relevant to the way the US government functions. Our government still makes unsavory alliances with dictators and backroom deals with dictators across the world.