Who are the No. 1 War Criminals?

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Suharto

Four years after he committed high treason and grabbed power in Indonesia, General Suharto gave his version of why he did it in The Smiling General written with German sociologist O.G. Roeder.⁵⁰ This ghostwriter gratuitously dotted down whatever the general told him as if it was the gospel truth, while in fact he was most frequently lying through his teeth's. Roeder also was obviously ignorant about the modus operandi of intelligence services. He seemed to have been unable to protect Suharto from making a fool of himself in this book.

At the start of his reminiscences the general set forth his reasons for committing insubordination versus his commander-in-chief. He had been very unhappy about developments in Indonesia and above all about ‘Sukarno's rising pro-communist policy and comradeship in arms with Peking.’ There was no rising procommunist policy, neither by Sukarno, nor by any of his collaborators or friends. That fictitious rise of Marx and Lenin existed solely and securely in the sick heads of the idiots that made up the invisible government in Washington and that were always at the look out for dupes in foreign lands that could be subverted - mostly for dollars and promises of power to play the filthy games of the cia and the likes.

To begin with, it was the asinine us military policy in Vietnam that had driven Indonesia, Cambodia and even the Philippines into the direction of both Moscow and Peking. Naturally, the Indonesian pki profited from Yankee stupidities on the world scene. This had nothing to do with Sukarno, or Sihanouk or Diosdado Macapagal. Communists and non-communists alike in Southeast Asia unanimously agreed that the us had no business whatsoever to militarily intervene in their region. Who had extended permission to Washington to invade Vietnam? Of course, American presidents had neglected to ask the Security Council of the un to ask approval for their war in S.E.-Asia. China and the ussr would have vetoed it.

Suharto was first of all an Army man, ignorant in political matters, let alone foreign affairs. He never went beyond a lower high school education. He applied for work with the Dutch Navy. All they had available with his qualifications was a job in the kitchen. Suharto's intellectual output was nil. Next, he applied with the knil, the Dutch colonial Army. He rose in the ranks to the top echelon, because he was an excellent marksman, who punctually followed orders. But, he was also an ambitious chap and wanted more. That was the moment that the Washington invisibles infiltrated the kostrad (Army's Strategic Command) headquarters, where he was boss and began to work on a possible Army coup from there. The man was, unlike Sukarno, also an illiterate on the subject of us intelligence services and therefore an ideal target.

When I returned a year after the 1965 coup to Jakarta,

50 O.G. Roeder, The Smiling General, Gunung Agung, Jakarta, 1969.

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I discovered Colonel Sutikno Lukitodisastro to be Suharto's right-hand man. I already knew Sutikno in 1957 when he was still a Major and serving with the Garuda I Battalion in Gaza and Egypt under the un flag. Since I lived in New-York and Sutikno in the early 60s became military attaché in Washington, we renewed our contacts. I knew him as a Sukarnist. Although I was aware that it was customary for the cia to recruit possible troublemakers from among the military attaché's accredited in the American capital, it never occurred to me Sutikno could have been selected for the job of us babysitter of Suharto. But, in October 1966 I discovered on the spot in Jakarta how unusually close the two men were.

After I left Indonesia in 1957, I was black-listed in Jakarta at the request of the Dutch Government, that was opposed to my critical articles about counter-productive policies by the Hague vis à vis Indonesia. It was Colonel Sutikno who arranged the lifting of restrictions of my reporting on post coup developments. I arrived back in Jakarta October 1, 1966 with a Dutch television team. Again like in 1957, I gained easy access to the palace. The President received each morning guests for tea and breakfast at the backside terrace of the Istana Merdeka (freedom palace). One of his aides would pick me up by jeep at my hotel. These informal gatherings were very informative from a journalist' point of view.

Unexpectedly I became involved in the ongoing wayang (Indonesian shadow play) between the President and his treacherous coup general. To begin with, when I returned to Indonesia in 1966, I had not yet realized to what extend Suharto had already taken over the reins of government. During the ten years I had followed that country's developments Sukarno had been the undisputed leader. He introduced me to the rebellious general as if he was still an insubordinate officer. Suharto greeted me with the typical Javanese attitude of civility towards visitors coupled to his notoriously bogus smile. I blindly bought these public signs of mutual respect between the President and his top military man and was fooled all the way. Sukarno's position had fundamentally changed, which took me time to discover as an entirely new reality in Indonesia.

Colonel Sutikno was aware of the fact, that President Sukarno asked me daily to stay on after the other breakfast guests had left, so we could talk alone. I became privy to a multitude of Sukarno's views on the situation in the country one year after the coup. Colonel Sutikno approached me, surely with Suharto's consent. The main point of friction between the President and the general was Sukarno's steadfast refusal to condemn the pki for having been the cause of the 1965 military coup. Suharto's aide asked me in a roundabout way, if perhaps I could broach this hot potato during our next conversation and make a strenuous effort to convince him to give in on the pki matter to Suharto. I knew for sure, since the President had made this crystal clear, that he was totally convinced,

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that the pki was definitely not involved in the 1965 coup. Perhaps some communists had taken part in it, but the party had nothing to do with it. Washington and the cia accused the communists of having killed the generals, in order to give Suharto and his butcher teams an alibi to start a nationwide sweep on members of the pki and Sukarno supporters. President Sukarno considered the cia and Washington the guilty parties, as the us had continuously interfered since Indonesian Independence in the internal affairs of his nation. He was particularly indignant of some of his own military, who refused to recognize these facts. He was at a loss that some officers like Suharto, allowed themselves to act as traitors and turn themselves into easy tools of the enemies of Indonesia.

Nevertheless, I had a shot at it. I argued Suharto's case. Sukarno presented me with a flood of additional information and proof. He mentioned ambassador Marshall Green as an obvious guilty activist against him, who avoided meeting him and who was constantly travelling to Washington, quite unusual for someone whose office was in Jakarta. The President admonished me to do a better job of looking deeper into the role of the cia in all of this. I went to see Marshall Green and confronted him to his face with the us once more intervening in Indonesia causing a bloody confrontation among Indonesians who had co-existed with the pki which now, at Washington's urging, was being wiped out in a full-scale civil war causing the biggest bloodbath in lndonesia's history.

Forty years ago human rights and the subject of war criminals were not yet in vogue. Those sudden us standards of decency only became popular at Washington urgency after the Soviet empire disappeared. Prior to that epoch-making event, lives of Communists and leftists were to be wasted by any method including mass extermination. Sometimes, during weekends when the President would helicopter to Bogor in the mountains, where he lived in a four room bungalow on the grounds of the former stately colonial summer palace, we continued our conversations there over dinner. I had accused ambassador Green, that by avoiding the President so openly he risked becoming even more suspect of conspiring with the coup generals then he was mistrusted already. Why did he never attend the palace breakfast meetings as ambassadors from other countries were doing? ‘Who invites whom?’ had been his reply. In Bogor Sukarno asked me, ‘Why should I invite him? Green is subversive anyway.’ Colonel Sutikno, however, kept bringing up the subject of the pki and this point of contention between the President and Suharto. I told him ‘why don't you talk to him yourself?’ Again, it was the question of who invites whom to the palace? I suggested to President Sukarno to have Sutikno over. A presidential military aide went to fetch him and half way through the usual breakfast meeting on October 11, 1966, the President invited both the Colonel and me to walk inside the palace and talk alone, which was to become a 45 minute meeting.⁵¹

51 Willem Oltmans, Den Vaderland Getrouwe, Bruna, Utrecht, 1973, p.p. 316-319.

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Here was the man, who pointedly served as liaison between the evil forces in Washington and Suharto, delivering a message in roundabout ways in order not to sound harsh or disrespectful, but actually presenting an ultimatum, that if the President intended to retain his job, he should still condemn the pki for having killed the six generals, which in turn led to the military coup of 1965. The President listened patiently to the Colonel. I sat in, awestruck by the fact that two friends of mine were battling it out, one of them was talking the language of traitors, and the other was fully aware of the truth and abided his time to hit back.

First Sukarno asked Sutikno calmly: ‘What makes you think I intend to hold on to the presidency at any price?’ I knew he was not prepared to barter his self-esteem for anything in the world, not the presidency of Indonesia either. But I also knew, that his enemies were ruthless, and that in refusing to answer their call, he would forfeit his personal safety and protection. I suspected, he was aware of that as well and was ready to pay any price to retain his self-respect, even if it cost him his life. Finally he lashed out at Sutikno in concise and clear terms indicating he knew who the traitors were and who were guilty, Washington and the cia and not the pki. I saw the Colonel slowly lowering his head in shame before his President and tears came to his eyes. Furthermore, the President seemed fully cognisant of the fact, that if he were to answer the call of the coup officers, the blood-bath among opponents to the military dictatorship, would only grow exponentially. Sutikno drove me back in his jeep to ‘Hotel Indonesia’ and felt it had been an excellent meeting: ‘The President will think now about our conversation and take the right decision,’ he told me. I was aware his optimism was totally unfounded. I had come to know Sukarno's mind. He would never bow to traitors, even if it were to mean death for him.

And that was how it was going to end. Sukarno, hero of lndonesian Independence, would become another victim of Murder Incorporated in Washington. Just as another mysterious messenger, Mr. Ujeng Suwargana had already announced in 1962, the murder was to be carried out exactly as announced beforehand. President Sukarno would be isolated and be killed as a flower, that receives no water. The real killers of millions of innocent people in Afro-Asian nations never lost any sleep over their war crimes. The murderers in this holocaust of leftists were never ever even identified, let alone being arrested or forcibly being brought to a War Crimes Tribunal.

Examined closely and objectively, all us presidents, from Eisenhower onwards, qualify as first class war criminals, if they were to be judged by the same standards as some Serb leaders are being brought to trial for. Harry Truman was the only and last President who got the un Security Council to approve the war in Korea. After Truman all us presidents ignored the Charter of the un and a

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required Security Council resolution when it suited their power games, their illegal invasions and covert operations versus sovereign un member states. As a matter of fact, all nato responsible statesmen acted in 1999 as fully fledged war criminals, when they went along with Washington and London to invade the Balkan and bomb the former Yugoslavia.

When Mussolini invaded Abyssinia in 1935 he violated Italy's membership of the League of Nations in Geneva, which was the beginning of the end of the first world organisation. What Eisenhower, jfk, lbj, Nixon and Ford did in Southeast Asia - for which the brothers Diem were assassinated with the connivance of jfk, Sihanouk was exiled for 25 years from his kingdom with the connivance of Nixon and Kissinger, and Sukarno was betrayed and pestered to death with the connivance of lbj - was in essence classic fascist behaviour. When one member of the un no longer observes the agreed and signed up principles of international law and gets away with it like Washington did, the fences are permanently down. Like the League of Nations in the thirties, the United-Nations actually has ceased to exist as the legal enforcer of internationally accepted rules. Washington, unlike what Mussolini did in Ethiopia, never physically occupied Indonesia. Instead, the us installed in 1965 a puppet regime in Jakarta, with Suharto in charge, replacing the father of the nation, who was strongly opposed playing ball with America's imperialist designs.

Instead, Suharto went willingly along with Washington's Dictates. In exchange he was royally rewarded for his smooth cooperation. The West was financing the fascist military regime in Indonesia and looked the other way as their chosen Quisling was stealing himself and his family, in close cooperation with their cronies, filthy rich. Politically, economically and militarily the fourth largest nation in the world was efficiently turned into a us protectorate for no less than an uninterrupted 32 years.

Of course, Suharto can count on the eternal gratitude of Washington and cannot be brought to The Hague to be held accountable for the murdering of hundreds of thousands of people. The same goes for fellow war criminals like Augusto Pinochet, for Belgians involved in hacking Lumumba to pieces, Americans and Cubans, who intended to shoot or poison Castro, nor will these standards be applied to the thousands of Americans who committed the most bloody war crimes on all continents of the world. They have become the fascist untouchables of the 21st century and cannot be brought to justice in contrast to their unfortunate Yugoslavian brethren. The White House, the cia and the invisible government protect them, because mass slaughter of leftists and communists is considered a patriotic American duty. Those who are considered leftist, communist or terrorist fall into Washington's category of humans to be wasted and thrown out.